Crime and Punishment: Teen Sexting in Context
By Julia Halloran McLaughlin.
In 2009, teen sexting dominated news headlines. A Pennsylvania prosecutor made history when he arrested and charged a group of eighteen teens with sex abuse of a minor, a felony charge carrying a prison term and the further penalty of registering as a sex offender. In Ohio, eight teens were caught trading nude photos on their cell phones and were charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. Tragically, in July 2008, an Ohio eighteen-year-old committed suicide following the dissemination by her former boyfriend of nude photos she had shared with him while dating. A similar revenge sexting episode occurred in Orlando, when an eighteen year-old man sent a nude photo of his former girlfriend, aged seventeen, to seventy people.
Most recently, on February 24, 2010, a Wisconsin teen was sentenced to fifteen years in prison after he pleaded no contest to two felony charges of sexual abuse of a child. Anthony Stancl admittedly used Facebook to pose as a girl and convinced more than thirty of his New Berlin High School male classmates to send him naked pictures of themselves. He then used the photos to “blackmail at least seven boys, ages 15 to 17, into performing sex acts.”
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