I don’t usually report on national stories, but I think you’ll find this one interesting. According to Slatest, “two children in Valparaiso, Indiana, were each charged yesterday with two felonies after they were caught sexting (sending a text message with a nude picture attached) last week.. The students “were caught when the 13-year-old girl’s cell phone rang in class, and her teacher confiscated it,” the reported yesterday. “The girl cried that she would get in trouble because a 12-year-old boy sent her a ‘dirty picture.’” The boy had sent a picture of his genitals to the girl, who responded by sending him a picture of her naked. The students were both charged with two felonies: child exploitation and possession of child pornography. Both the charges and the sexting phenomenon have raised a lot of questions, especially considering that “four percent of cell phone-owning teens 12 to 17 say they’ve sent nude or nearly nude images or videos of themselves via text,” the Chicago Tribune reported. If the students are convicted on the charged, they will also be required to register as sex offenders.

I am not condoning teen sexting, but these charges seem ridiculously harsh to me. In fact I don’t even think law enforcement should have been involved. Seems to me our law enforcement resources have FAR bigger fish to fry than prosecuting Johnny and Suzie’s “show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine” sext affair.   Why not just warn them, suspend them, and be done with it? Child sextploitation exploitation?? Child pornography?? Um, no. More like poor judgment.

If these kids are made to register as sex offenders the DA in Chicago will have completely ABUSED the sex offender registry. It was never created to humiliate, debase, and ruin the lives of young children.  Who the ##$@ is making the laws in this country? Why are we standing by and doing nothing as legislators turn America into a communist state?

Source: http://slatest.slate.com/id/2243026/entry/10/