A smarter legal approach to teenage sexting,
What is this madness? That’s the question I’ve heard over and over on Friday from people who care about the lives and health of teenagers. Canada has been in an uproar over whether a group of boys should be prosecuted for sending around humiliating photos of 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, a girl from Nova Scotia who said the boys raped her. And on Thursday, three 16year-old boys were arrested in San Jose, Calif., for sexually assaulting 15year-old Audrie Pott, who was also humiliated by online photos.
The worst of the awful similarities in these stories is that both girls killed themselves. Audrie hanged herself about seven months ago, eight days after the assault. Rehtaeh hanged herself last weekend, months after the police said they would not prosecute anyone. On Friday, the Halifax police said they would reopen the case.
That is a relief. Still, as we pick through the wreckage of these sad stories, I’m trying to think about a better way to get at some of the harm.
Set aside, for the moment, the alleged assaults. There is a long-standing problem of proof when allegations of rape are made, especially among people who know each other and when drinking or drugs are involved — though the convictions in Steubenville, Ohio, show it can be done. Maybe the Steubenville result, in which a judge found the boys guilty for a sexual assault that the victim could not really remember, will wind up being the just ending to Audrie and Rehtaeh’s cases, too.
But there is also the circulation of the compromising photos, which created a trail of digital evidence. In light of that, we should have a clear way to bring charges against the instigators — a way that recognizes that the boys involved were teenagers, not adults.
Whoever is responsible for circulating the photos of Rehtaeh could be charged under Canada’s child pornography laws. Aconviction would come with a mandatory minimum sentence, federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson emphasized.
In a situation like this, where outrage is understandably everywhere, it’s hard to think about tempering justice with mercy. And for these boys, child pornography charges may well be warranted. But most of the time, charging teenagers as child pornographers shouldn’t be the only option. We should have laws that offer a middle ground between no charges at all and heavy prison sentences with a lifetime on the sex-offender register. We should have laws that specifically address teen sexting.
The key is to distinguish between one kid consensually sending one other kid a sexual photo and one kid sending out a photo that the pictured teenager has not consented to at all. It’s not that the first kind of sexting is a good idea — it’s that
“We should draw the line between my daughter stupidly sending a photo of herself to her boyfriend and her boyfriend sending it to all his friends to humiliate her.” MARSHA LEVICK SPECIALIST IN JUVENILE LAW
kids shouldn’t get caught up in the criminal justice system for it, whereas nonconsensual sexting is a different story. “We should draw the line between my daughter stupidly sending a photo of herself to her boyfriend and her boyfriend sending it to all his friends to humiliate her,” Marsha Levick of the Juvenile Law Center told me. “The first is stupid. The second is more troubling and should be criminal.” In the U.S., states have been trying to sort out sexting laws for the past few years. Levick says not enough lawmakers are picking up on the distinction she makes. Pennsylvania, for example, passed a law with criminal penalties for juvenile sexting with malicious intent — helpful — but also made consensual sexting a misdemeanour. Prime Minister Stephen Harper helped when he said he was “sickened” by Rehtaeh’s death. He pointed out that it’s a misnomer to use the word bullying for the treatment she endured. “What we are dealing with in some of these circumstances is simply criminal activity,” Harper said. “It is youth criminal activity. It is violent criminal activity. It is sexual criminal activity, and it is often Internet criminal activity.” I couldn’t agree more. And that’s why the criminal justice system should take this conduct seriously enough to develop a better response. Something that will at least help other kids should come out of all the sorrow.