UPDATE: Teens Fear Reprisals in Rye Middle School "Sexting" Incident
Sources told Patch that school officials have told students they could face child pornography charges for texting and emailing a September photo of a half-naked 12-year-old Rye Middle School student.
On Wednesday Rye Patch learned a 13-year-old classmate was just told by the school this week she could face felony child pornography charges for seeing the image over the weekend and sending it to her friends. Several students interviewed by Patch said the sexually explicit image has spread like wildfire through Rye and neighboring schools, landing in the inbox of "hundreds of students."
It featured a then-11-year-old girl exposing her breasts on a Web cam for a boy she liked and who was also recognizable in the image, several sources said. The case is far from the first of its kind—"sexting" has become a popular term for distributing revealing photos and sexually explicit messages via mobile text messaging.
Rye Schools Superintendent Edward Shine said his administrators reacted appropriately as soon as they learned of the image.
"This happened in the fall. It was dealt with and went away," he said Thursday, adding that the incident emerged outside of school and that technology has created more opportunities for children, but also more dangers. The picture has already been made public by students sending it to their friends, so there is very little the district can do to stop it from being on the Internet, he said.
But some parents and teachers are wondering why the issue wasn't communicated to the school community at the time, considering students were told they could face felony child pornography charges for viewing and possessing the image. Such a charge could land them on public sex-offender registries for life, however unlikely a conviction may be.
They also wonder why the district is painting the case as long over when the image is still being forwarded among students.
One teacher in the district, who did not want her name used for fear of reprisal, said Thursday the district would not have been willing to go public with the incident for fear of bad press. She heard about the incident from her babysitter.
"Usually if there's something significant, they do send a global e-mail to the teachers, but that I have not heard about at all. [Officially] I would not have had a clue about it, for sure," if her babysitter had not told her, the teacher said.
Shine confirmed school officials told students that distributing the image could be considered child pornography, but rejected any notion it amounted to scare tactics.
"Is that bullying if we tell them there are dangers with doing this?" he said.
The school district has talked to students and organized programs about the consequences of certain online activities, Shine said. When told that many students informed Patch they were afraid they could be facing legal or criminal consequences, Shine said that it could help them learn from their mistakes.
"Well that's good, if they feel afraid that they could be charged, then that's good," he said. "Maybe they'll have some second thoughts about doing that in the future."
The incident at Rye Middle School stemmed from a picture taken in September 2009. The now 12-year-old girl involved in the incident was chatting on a Web cam with a 13-year-old boy, also a student at Rye Middle School. It quickly went viral through email and texts in Rye Middle and High School and then onward to Rye Country Day School and in the Harrison, Rye Neck, Blind Brook and Greenwich school districts, sources said.
School officials confiscated students' cell phones to see whether they had the picture and then deleted the photo from several students' phones and returned them, sources said. It was not clear if those parents were notified if their children were caught with the image.
What is also not known is the extent of the involvement of police, though the 13-year-old has been in contact with the Rye Police Department to discuss the matter.
Multiple phone calls to the Rye Police Department on Wednesday and Thursday were not immediately returned.
It's unclear why that may be, but the law involved is just as murky.
Several high profile cases have sparked a national call for clarity when it comes to handling the fallout when teens create sexual or suggestive images and share them with other teens. Should teens be treated the same as a 50-year-old man possessing the same image? What if a very liberal interpretation of the law simply encourages more teens to make foolish mistakes that could haunt them for decades to come?
In most states, teens can certainly face felony child pornography charges and be listed on sex offender registries for passing along sexually explicit photos by cell phone or computer, a punishment many deem excessive.
Last year, then-18-year-old Philip Alpert of Brevard County, Fla. was convicted of child pornography after distributing a revealing photo of his 16-year-old girlfriend after they got into a verbal fight.
He will be labeled a "sex offender" until he is 43 years old.
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