Last week鈥檚 conviction of a 17-year-old girl in Victoria Youth Justice Court on child-pornography charges shows that the law needs to catch up to technology. It鈥檚 also a lesson to teenagers, parents and others that it takes more than law reform to prevent stupidity and its long-term, painful consequences.
The teenager was charged after she sent sexualized messages and nude photos of her boyfriend鈥檚 ex-girlfriend to the ex-girlfriend and to another person. The girl was convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography, as well as uttering threats.
The girl鈥檚 actions go beyond bad taste and poor judgment; most people would agree that what she did was reprehensible and deserves appropriate discipline.
But sa国际传媒鈥檚 child-pornography laws were designed to deal with adults exploiting children; adolescents transmitting sexual images and other material do not have the same intent as child pornographers. When those laws were drafted, legislators could not have anticipated how today鈥檚 technology would be used and misused by minors. The legislation needs to be tuned up to fit technology and the circumstances, giving prosecutors more choices when laying charges.
Miscreants should still feel the heavy hand of the law 鈥� malicious abuse cannot be excused or rationalized away 鈥� but giving an adolescent a lifetime label as a child pornographer seems too harsh.
Parents, too, must keep in step with technology, recognizing the dangers in providing smartphones and other electronic gadgets to their children. The kids don鈥檛 need operating instructions 鈥� they seem to figure such things out instantly 鈥� but they do need instructions and boundaries on how the devices are used.
There鈥檚 nothing wrong with setting rules and limits, just as there is nothing wrong with insisting on the use of seatbelts and bicycle helmets. One of the roles of parents is to protect children from themselves.
The challenge is to convince teenagers to consider long-term consequences. Most of them do not think beyond today or tomorrow. When teenagers take, or allow to be taken, sexual photos of themselves, they are not thinking about what happens when those photos are transmitted. Embarrassment and school disciplinary actions, yes, but far worse 鈥� criminal prosecutions can also result, as the Victoria case shows.
And they aren鈥檛 thinking how to explain it to their children when they become parents and those photos are still wafting about in the ether. They can鈥檛 contemplate how such ghosts from the past will haunt them as they go looking for career opportunities. It鈥檚 a kind of pollution that never quite goes away.
Obviously, teenagers aren鈥檛 the only ones who need to learn that lesson. There鈥檚 no shortage of adults whose careers have been damaged or ruined because of inappropriate photos posted by themselves or others. A few that spring to mind are Winnipeg associate chief justice Lori Daniels, former U.S. congressman Anthony Weiner and radio talk-show host and therapist Laura Schlessinger.
A cautionary folk tale likens words of gossip to feathers tossed to the wind, both widely scattered, both impossible to retrieve. It鈥檚 a lesson even more appropriate today, when words and images tossed to the digital wind can be spread around the world instantly.
More important than rules of use or technological restraints are the lessons parents should teach, as much by example as by word, that self-respecting, responsible people do not need to do such things for approval and acceptance.
Those are lessons that must be taught before the cellphones are handed out, before the stupid mistakes happen.
