Prosecutor Charges Sexting Teenage Girl

 A 14-year-old Girl from Minnesota is fighting criminal charges that can destroy her future, including her ability to obtain housing, to enroll in college programs, and even to pursue some career paths. Her case does not involve harm to others. It does not involve damage to property. And it does not have anything to do with illegal substances. Her young life could be ruined all because she sent an explicit Snapchat of herself to a boy she liked.


Jane Doe used Snapchat to send a revealing selfie to a boy at her school. He went on to make a copy and distribute it to other students without Jane’s permission. Rice County’s prosecutor charged her with felony distribution of child pornography. A conviction, or even a guilty plea to a lesser charge, would require Jane to spend 10 years on the sex offender registry.



Sending sexually suggestive text messages and explicit photos or videos of oneself has become so commonplace that it has a name sexting case. Conservative estimates on the prevalence of adolescent sexting are that 12 percent of adolescents aged 12-17 have sent an explicit image of themselves to another person at some point in their life.


Sexual abuse of children is abhorrent and that our criminal laws should punish that abuse. And an important means of combatting sexual abuse of children is to prosecute those who create, possess, and disseminate works that are a permanent record of that abuse.


Policy and purpose behind law is to protect minors from the physical and psychological damage caused by their being used in pornographic work depicting sexual conduct which involves minors and to protect the identity of minors who are victimized by involvement in the pornographic work, and to protect minors from future involvement in pornographic work depicting sexual conduct.


Jane created the sext of her own body. She was not an exploited child victim. She was exhibiting normal adolescent behavior in the digital age. Learning to think of oneself as a sexual being and dealing with sexual feelings is an important part of adolescence, and sexual experimentation is one aspect of the trying on of different personalities and new behaviors that is necessary to the process of identity development.

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