Measured Against Reality

Saturday, October 18, 2008

15-year-old Sex Offender?

If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that the ridiculous misapplication of sex laws to minors doing things to themselves/with other minors is something that infuriates me. So this story got my blood pressure up.

A 15-year-old girl is accused of distributing nude photos of herself to other minors, and one state legislator is questioning whether she should be labeled a sex offender.
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The Licking Valley High School student was arrested Friday after school officials discovered the materials and brought in the school's resource officer for a police investigation.

After spending the weekend incarcerated, she pleaded deny Monday to both charges: illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, a second-degree felony; and possession of criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony.


Look, I'm not going to defend what she did, kids shouldn't be doing that crap. But expecting them not to is absurd, given our culture (I'm not complaining about it, but it's a reality people have to face). What we should do in these cases is give a strong reprimand, make the parents know that they need to be in charge of their children, and leave it be. Punish repeat offenders, but even then be lenient. I just cannot fathom why these people think labeling some poor 15-year-old a sex offender and charging her with felonies is in any way productive. It's not, and ANY reasonable person will agree.

The good news is that it seems like she won't get that life-destroying label, but I still think that holding her over the weekend was a ridiculous overreaction. Best of luck to her (and all like her), they'll need it dealing with our fucked-up legal system.

7 Comments:

  • My fellow citizens. All I wish is that you attempt to cast off the years of indoctrination, the brainwashing all of us undergo to convince us that the way things are is correct, proper... as it should be.

    From schooling to the mass media to general culture...we are constantly bombarded that the present status quo is the only RIGHT way to handle things.

    Educate yourselves!!! Don't let the self-centered greedy elite class do your thinking for you.

    Don't let the Rush Limbaugh's of the world implant their propaganda. Those folks are merely shills for the elite class!!!

    I remain convinced that the greatest threat to our freedoms is our own elite class; more of a threat than all foreign terrorists combined.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:29 PM, October 18, 2008  

  • I agree that she's behaved inappropriately, but yeah, look at the culture we're living in. Who hasn't released a sex tape or appeared nearly naked on a major magazine cover? Looking at the celebrities girls these days seem to admire or aspire to be is depressing.

    I also there there are too many conflicting messages about sexuality and kids are constantly bombarded with them. Do kids these days learn anything about respectability or good sense? I guess some must but not the ones who wind up in stories like these.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:38 AM, October 19, 2008  

  • Yeah, let's protect children from themselves BY THROWING THEM IN PRISON!

    By Blogger The Nerd, at 2:00 PM, October 21, 2008  

  • What the last several generations have done, is distort and blur the differences between nudity and sexuality, which are not the same.

    In High School, my classmates and I swam all together in the school pool nude. My friends and I on many occasions would disrobed and swim together in the local lake. Why now, does nudity equate to sex? Why were her pictures even considered sexual abuse?

    I think people that do see them as such, are the ones with hidden perversive thoughts. Maybe what she did may have been poor judgement, yet at the most, she only hurt herself.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:33 AM, January 22, 2009  

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