14-Year-Old Boy Placed On Police Register After Sending Naked Picture To Classmate

Ewan Palmer reports: A teenage boy in the UK has had a crime of making and distributing indecent images recorded against him after he sent a naked picture of himself to one of his female classmates. The 14-year-old was not formally arrested after he sent the explicit image to a girl of the same age via Snapchat. The police file against the boy will now remain active for 10 years, meaning any future employer conducting an advanced Criminal Records Bureau check will be aware of the incident. However, it is not clear whether a police file was recorded for the girl who saved and shared the image. Under new legislation, if she had been over 18, the girl could have been convicted under the so called 'revenge porn' law in the UK.

Comments

Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[gurps_npc]

Please? I mean here are two perfectly innocent young children just BEGGING to be thrown to the judicial wolves, torn apart, consumed, and eaten by ridiculous laws that pretend to protect them.

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[nightcats]

it is far easier to classify someone than to understand him; or even to make the effort.

Re: Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother? Power is power. Destroy one to educate one hundred.

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[Obfuscant]

Please? I mean here are two perfectly innocent young children

Huh? One of them is sending unsolicited porn to a girl he knows, the other is spreading that porn to all her friends. Neither is "perfectly innocent."

just BEGGING to be thrown to the judicial wolves, torn apart, consumed, and eaten

One of them is reported to have been put on the list of people who have been accused of crimes. The other we don't know what happened to. Neither one is being charged with anything, neither one is being "thrown to the judicial wolves" or "eaten."

I'm pretty sure that a fourteen year old boy should know it isn't appropriate to send naked pictures of himself to others. That's what makes it a thrill to do, and that's why he used a system deliberately designed to delete images after a short period of time. If it was "perfectly normal" and "perfectly innocent" to send such pictures, why use a system that deletes them automatically?

The girl knew that it was revenge to distribute that picture once she had it. She even had to bypass the normal snapchat limits to save the image, so it's not like her having the image to distribute was some innocent mistake. She had to go out of her way to do it.

Sorry, but actions have consequences, even stupid actions.

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I would have thought it was common sense for how appropriate it is to be sending naked pictures of oneself, even at the age of 14.

A fourteen year old is a child by every definition of the word. We don't allow them to vote, drink alcohol, or drive. So tell me, in what benighted universe are we to hold them responsible for their sexual foibles at a time when they're just entering puberty, usually under the tutelage of adults too terrified of their own sexuality to give them useful advice?

And sign in if you want a response next time, Obfuscant.

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[adolf]

Huh?

1. We don't know that it was unsolicited.

2. We don't know that he's not innocent or normal. I remember when I was a normal-ish 14-year-old boy. I can't honestly say that my mentality at that time would have precluded me sending such pictures in such a way because the technology didn't exist, but I can say that as an adult I've never felt compelled to photograph my bits for sharing with others. But again, at 14: Maybe, if I had the tools.

3. We don't know her intent in distribution. I think that a teenaged girl would likely be all giggles about the thing, without malicious intent. (Have you met a teenaged girl? My own is 14.)

4. We don't know why he chose Snapchat. Perhaps simply because it was convenient, and he was simply familiar with the interface -- we cannot assume, based on what we know, that it was a deliberate decision driven by Snapchat's default nature of deleting things after a short time.

5. We don't know that she's some crypto-savvy script kiddie who went through extensive measures to bypass Snapchat's security. For all we know she did the obvious and simplest thing: She used one handheld device to take a photograph of an image on another handheld device. (The analog hole does not exclude Snapchat.)

That normal, innocent kids might be smart and clever does not mean that their every motivation is evil. Furthermore, normal, innocent kids making unwise decisions is a hallmark of normal, innocent kids: They're kids, FFS.

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[tompaulco]

A fourteen year old is a child by every definition of the word. We don't allow them to vote, drink alcohol, or drive. So tell me, in what benighted universe are we to hold them responsible for their sexual foibles at a time when they're just entering puberty, usually under the tutelage of adults too terrified of their own sexuality to give them useful advice?

I don't know about these days, but when I was fourteen, we were supposed to be adults. No we couldn't vote, drink alcohol or drive, but we were expected to act like young men and women, be respectful, study hard, hold down a job and if we would have been caught sending a naked photo to a girl, if the police had decided to drop the charges our PARENTS would have insisted that they press charges, just to show that life has consequences.
Call me grandpa if you want, but this was the 80s. It was not so very long ago.

Re: Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother? Power is power. Destroy one to scare and control one hundred

FTFY

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I'm sorry, but fourteen year olds are not "children" by every definition

Oh yes they fucking are. I seriously don't know what's wrong with you perp-walk-lovin' murcans but I sincerely hope you get to enjoty a taste of your own medicine when those skeletons start peeking out of the closet.

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Yeah pull the other one, it has bells on.

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[Areyoukiddingme]

I'm sorry, but fourteen year olds are not "children" by every definition...

Oh yes they fucking are.

No they're not. By the biological definition, once a specimen has reached sexual maturity, it is an adult. Is a 14 year old human physically mature? No. Is a 14 year old human emotionally mature? No. Is a 14 year old human sexually mature? Hell yes. Effectively every 14 year old girl and damn near all of the 14 year old boys are capable of doing their part of what the species does to make more of their species.

So no, 14 year olds are not children by every definition. We would be better off if we acknowledged that and made allowances for it.

The creation of the category "teenager" should have filled that bill, but too many societies on Earth are positively schizophrenic about acknowledging the sexual realities of being a teenager. On the one hand, they're wishing with all their might that teenagers are still children—asexual, trusting, obedient, happy almost by default—and on the other, commercial advertising and entertainment sexually flaunts teenage bodies as the very peak of desirability and perfection, and it's all downhill after that. The reality is complicated, but it does include sex and sexual things.

So here we have a government getting all up in arms about a naked 14 year old boy. Do they think this is the first time in history a teenage girl saw a naked teenage boy unsolicited? Are they stupid? Teenage boys have been flashing teenage girls and vice versa since the dawn of time, when some near-monkey first said, "Shit, it's cold out here. I'ma wrap this bear skin around my naked ass." A week later, a near-monkey girl flipped up her skirt and mooned a boy, and a near-monkey boy dropped his drawers and waggled his penis at a girl, and it's been happening ever since. The use of the precious cell phone is fucking irrelevant, and the police register is fucking moronic. He didn't do a damn thing that hadn't been done before, and civilization didn't fall because of it, then or now.

Re:Won't someone think of hurting the children??

[ag0ny]

In the same universe where we don't just pat them on the head and say "isn't that sweet" when they do other illegal things that they should know are wrong.

You're an idiot, there's no other way to explain your way of thinking.

A 14-year boy is still a boy. He's still learning how to behave, making mistakes and learning from them. He sent a naked photo of himself to a girl. SO FUCKING WHAT? Talk to the parents and let them explain to him why that's not acceptable. It's their responsibility to raise the child and educate him to be able to function in society.

You're arguing that it's acceptable to have laws that give children who make mistakes a criminal record. No, these laws are not acceptable, and they're a sign of how idiotic and shortsighted our society is becoming. People like you are the problem.

The Power of the State.

[roman_mir]

The Power of the State is absolute. What else is there to talk about here except for the complete lack of individual human rights?

A right is protection against government oppression, this is a case of government oppressing a 14 year old child all while using 'think of the children' rhetoric for its own political purposes.

Makes sense

[theCzechGuy]

Boy sends a naked picture to a girl, gets a record. She then sends the picture to host of other people with the clear intent to hurt the boy, but that's fine. How was he distributing the picture and she wasn't? That's just... exactly how the world works. Carry on.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't that she didn't distribute the picture. She did, but women are not responsible for their actions. That's why they have a male guardian and can't vote.

Re:Makes sense

[bondsbw]

But in fairness, the one she unfairly punished was a problem student and did that kind of thing.

No... in "fairness", the girls who threw the object were the problem students. Let the troublemaker boy get punished for his own crimes.

Re:Makes sense

[PRMan]

He's male. She's female. Therefore he's a guilty perv and she's completely innocent.

Re:so they should

[RabidReindeer]

As a culture we need to take a deep breath and figure out when our attempts to "protect" children are significantly more traumatic and damaging than simply leaving them to resolve their problems themselves.

And start by remembering that not so long ago, 14-year old kids would be expected by their elders and the community to have already started raising their own kids. Which takes a lot more than just looking at pictures.

Somehow we managed to survive that for many millennia.

Objectivity, lost.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 3 things to observe about this case:
1. The kid is a dumb idiot and needs to be punished for sending naked pics.
2. The girl is a dumb idiot and needs to be punished for further forwarding and spreading the pics.
3. The police are dumb idiots who have such a low standard, and such low quality as a police force, that publicizing and making a police statement out of a god damn random teenager over naked pics is something they are more proud of; instead of seeking to publicize and make statements about real crime with real criminals that would actually require effort and principles (in the case of corrupt politicians which there are plenty of).

Captcha: excrete
How fitting.

Re:Parenting failure.

[Anonymous Coward]

there *must* be consequences

Sorry, why must there be consequences? Why is it being taking as a fundamental truth that the kids did anything wrong here? Why exactly is it that, at the arbitrary age of 16 (this is the UK), suddenly anything and everything sexual is ok, but, before that anything and everything sexual requires "consequences"? Or, what level of sexual activity requires consequences? Does looking at the opposite sex require consequences. Dancing with a good half metre of space between? Dancing with *gasp*... touching? Kissing? Kissing with *tongues*!? Light petting? Medium petting? Heavy petting? I'll show you mine and you show me yours? Digital (fingers) sex? Digital (computers) sex? Oral sex? Vaginal sex? Vaginal sex with interesting positions? Anal sex? Kinky sex? Group orgies? Where do _you_ draw the line!? What's your logical, reasoned argument for why everyone should draw the line exactly where you do? What do you say about parents whose standards are less strict than yours? For that matter, what do you say about parents whose standards are more strict than yours? What level of "consequences" do you support? Do you think that girls who perform sex acts before marriage (consensually), should be honour-killed?

Seriously, what is wrong with you people. So many people seem to be so harshly judgmental. It's so freaking disturbing. I was that age once. I was the goody two shoes, innocent, one who would have never done anything like this ever. Meanwhile, I know that a good 70+ percent of my age-mates were up to things like this constantly. Where are their voices now? I'll tell you where they are. They've mostly joined the chorus of the harshly judgemental.

Re:so they should

[unimacs]

Just because we survived as a species does not mean that young girls lead idyllic lives when they were married off or sold into slavery at 13. When whole populations could be wiped out by disease, famine, or war, producing lots of babies was important to survival. Even then, there were pretty strict mores regarding sex. Violating them could mean a death sentence or being ostracized.

Typically, as societies become more successful and wealthy, women have fewer kids and wait until later in life to have them. And even though we are physically able to produce children at young ages, it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Our brains aren't fully developed until around age 25 or so. Because of this many adolescents are practically wired to make crappy decisions. Sometimes the natural consequences are what's necessary to keep them from repeating the same mistakes. Other times some intervention or prevention is necessary. Lots of teens are definitely at risk for suicide. You don't always want to wait for them to work it out themselves.

I have a 15 year old son, and a 12 year old daughter so I'm right in the middle of this. Even though my son's hormones are raging and my daughter's are headed in that direction, they aren't even close to being physically or emotionally mature. They do not have the means to raise a child on their own. Of course, there is such a thing as birth control, but the chemical methods have bad side effects and potential health risks when used for a long time. Non-chemical methods tend not to be that reliable. So delaying full blown sex until their later teens or early twenties is something we'd like to see. Definitely past 14. Past 17 is probably pushing it, but we can hope. 17 is the current average for when kids become sexually active.