(video from Vanity Fair)
(Byline: Tom Jackman)
A Manassas City teenager accused of “sexting” a video to his girlfriend is now facing a search warrant in which Manassas City police and Prince William County prosecutors want to take a photo of his erect penis, possibly forcing the teen to become erect by taking him to a hospital and giving him an injection, the teen’s lawyers said. A Prince William County judge allowed the 17-year-old to leave the area without the warrant being served or the pictures being taken — yet.
The teen is facing two felony charges, for possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography, which could lead not only to incarceration until he’s 21, but inclusion on the state sex offender data base for, possibly, the rest of his life. David Culver of NBC Washington first reported the story and interviewed the teen’s guardian, his aunt, who was shocked at the lengths Prince William authorities were willing to go to make a sexting case in juvenile court.
There is more to this story than meets the eye for sure. Reading between the lines, the girl in question was exchanging pictures with the boy. The mother got hold of the pictures of the boy and it hit the fan, so to speak. What we don’t know is if the girl was sending erotic pictures of herself or not. We also don’t know the extent of the relationship. The girl is 15, the boy is 17. Both minors.
The Manassas City police have issued the following statement in response to Tom Jackman’s story in the Washington Post:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Juvenile Sexting Case
On January 23, 2014 Manassas City Police was contacted by a parent of a 15 YOA female juvenile who was sent pornographic videos by a 17 YOA male suspect after repeatedly being told to stop. Upon further investigating the incident charges of manufacturing and distributing child pornography were brought against the 17 YOA male suspect on January 28, 2014 after consultation with the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office. The matter was set for trial on June 4th 2014 where charges were nolle prosqui by a Prince William County Assistant Commonwealth Attorney.
The circumstances on the decision to dismiss charges and bring forward new charges cannot be released at this time due to this incident being an active investigation and involving juveniles. New charges of manufacturing and distributing child pornography have been brought forward and a court date is pending.
It is not the policy of the Manassas City Police or the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office to authorize invasive search procedures of suspects in cases of this nature and no such procedures have been conducted in this case. Beyond that, neither the Police Department nor the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office discusses evidentiary matters prior to court hearings
I need to wear two hats for this story. I am the mother of both a daughter and a son. Fortunately, they came of age pre-digital age. I can see two sides to this story right off the bat. First off, kids show off parts that make older people suck air. Was this simply a case of kids playing show and tell or was it a case of a male being a sexual predator.
My instincts tell me the former, rather than the later. It sounds to me like the kids were having fun comparing parts until one of them got caught. What do you do when you do when you get caught? You blame the other person. If this is the case, then this young man is forever branded as a pervert and he could go to jail until age 21. Additionally, he could land on the sex offender list for the rest of his life. I don’t think the intent of the law is to ruin young people’s lives.
The intent of the law is to protect people, usually females I might add, from sexual predators and youth from having awkward and revealing picture from being passed around for all to see. Once a picture hits the internet, its shelf life becomes forever. Was this young woman being exploited? We will probably never know.
Regardless, this is one hard lesson to learn. Hopefully girls and boys, men and women, will sit up and take note about being very careful who they expose their “junk” to. (I do HATE that expression!) Whatever happened to parents going to other people’s parents? That always stopped unwanted situations when Mama Moonhowler got involved, back in the day. Usually the parents thanked you for letting them know. Problem solved. I bet if this girl’s mother had taken that route, her problem would be solved and two young people’s lives wouldn’t be hanging out for all of us to leer at. Yes, the girl is a victim too. I could find out in 5 minutes who she is if I cared to do so. These things are never private.
This story could well go national. I expect it will since “artificial erection” will probably be used to solve this case. I hate to say it but this case is sounding more and more like Dr. Mengele.
Full story at the washingtonpost.com
This is crazy. If they had been caught naked together….would there have been charges?
You are exactly right. What has happened to the idea of parents going to other parents, and not the cops?
And I speak that way as a parent of a daughter.
Of course, if I caught him naked…they might be calling the cops on me……….
Probably….
Responsible parents or even not such responsible parents have more control over these kinds of situations.
I think I want to go on record as being opposed to “artificial erection” as a crime solving tool.
The city leaders are remarkably silent. Crickets. Where are all the porno experts today? You know, the ones who gathered up their pitchforks and torches before? Its a little different when the “perp” is a 17 year old kid.
Where is Jackson Miller bellowing his city is in flames? It might be if Rachel Maddow hears about this one.
@Cargosquid
One more thing….if they had been caught naked, would she have cried “rape?” 🙄
Right now, it sounds like digital d*** is far more of a crime than the real thing.
That is screwed up.
This case is going to blow up in the face of the City. Stop now.
I don’t know the specifics of this case – perhaps there is a logic underpinning this.
But in general, I will say, this is presumably much less a big deal to younger people than to us. And it should be. Naked pictures – BFD. They’re a dime a dozen. Any kid can see them at the drop of a button. I think sex is becoming commoditized to younger people, it’s not the special mythical thing that it used to be to teens. A picture of a naked 15 year old is and will be illegal to show or to look at – but beyond that, if it were viewable, BFD. It’s just a naked person. That’s nothing. With a few clicks any kid can (and will) look at women with horses, men and women with dogs, etc. etc. I don;t think it will “haunt” a kid nowadays the way it would decades ago when a naked picture was a special event.
My best guess on what happened here : the “victim”‘s mother has direct or indirect connections with the prosecutors, and pressured them to file. The “perpetrator”‘s guardians are saying, you hurt my kid over this, we’ll drag you into something big – a salacious story for the mass media to chew on. Maybe there’s more to this. I think the prosecutors should tell us. Esp since they are not charging him as a juvenile.
Oh, and there’s definitely a logic to think that since no one can get pregnant from this, or catch a disease from this, that maybe we should stop treating harmless sexual exploration as a big event. Now, maybe the perp is a predator, I don’t know. In general though it’s time to rethink the law and bring it into line with what’s real, the way kids are, the way the world is, and what’s important and what’s not.
This may well be the modern-day equivalent of skinny-dipping.
I have spoken with a couple of folks on the government side of this case, and they say the claims made by the defense attorney and this reporter have more than stretched the truth, as the official statement issued by MCPD would indicate.
If it turns out that this Defense Attorney decided to “make stuff up” to manufacture a public outcry, I would hope that the courts would discipline the attorney, or at the very least a censure issued from the VA Bar.
I think you bring up some interesting points, Steve, and I kept them in mind as I commented on the story. I looked at what part came from the cops, the defense attorney, and then I thought about how I had handled, perhaps not in the promptest manner, a case where an overly ardent wannabe bf was aggressively persuing one of my children. (no digital pictures involved.)
Of course the defense attorney is going to stretch. I will say this, if the kids had a relationship and if the girl was exchanging any salacious pictures, then I think it should be treated differently than if the boy continually sent crotch shots to a female (or male) with whom there was no relationship.
I also know what happens when young ladies get caught doing things their parents wouldn’t approve of…they freak out and place blame on the other person.
So who knows the real story. My sources are telling me that there is a lot of saber rattling from the girl’s family to prosecute. Hearsay.
There is definitely a public cry out there.
I need more information from an unbiased source before I could ever make up my mind. Also, even if I knew all the facts, I might just have mixed emotions still.
Sexting is just a really stupid thing to do. That is a genie that can never get put back in the bottle.
I credit you with providing balance, which the WaPo article didn’t do. What struck me is buried WAYYYYY down in the story, Only the Magistrate has seen the warrant. Not the Defense Attorney, as the warrant had yet to be served. Makes you wonder…..
Now, I’d love to say I know the whole story. I don’t. The only details about the case I got from various news reports. Everyone I’ve asked has referred me to the official statement. Having had experience dealing with the WaPo, and the MCPD, I would tend to believe the MCPD. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
The MCPD also has to listen to the parents, the girl, the boy and the community as well as investigate. What on the surface might appear one way, might have a different outcome if you scratch beneath the surface.
I think if nothing else, this is a discussion the community should be having since it will affect our children, grandchildren, and lord knows who else, in this digital age. Kids o stupid things that appear to be without consequence, appear being the operative word here. Modesty certainly isn’t what it used to be and I hope Rick meant that we older folks have a different reaction to sexual matters and teens than they do rather than that sexual experimentation is without consequence.
I also know things go on in schools on a daily basis (and after school and on weekends) that truly make me suck air. Many kids think nothing of some of the stuff. Generational, yes. But Geez, I was growing up during the summer of love for heaven sake.
Rick,
I think the flaw in your logic is cases like this involve an electronic medium for production, storage and transmission. Once this stuff stored, it can be stolen, as we’ve seen in some very public cases. It can be sent/forwarded to others, without the consent of one or both parties. Bullying, Extortion, “Slut-Shaming”…this stuff can end up on public websites, traded in on-line forums, etc. etc. When the subject of the image is a minor and is of a sexual nature, it is against the law. Period. End of story. Doesn’t matter if the subject, producer, distributor, or the intended recipient are minors themselves. It is the image and the age of the subject that makes it criminal.
You are correct but that was the fuzzy part of the story. Whose parts were displayed. I thought he sent her a genital picture. Was he displaying pictures of her and how did he get them?
Both are minors. I have a huge problem with him if he passed around pictures of her or if she passed around pictures of him (and yes I will confess to not thinking it is an equal sin.) I also have a huge problem with “artificial erection” being used on a kid who really isn’t a sexual predator.
I agree with Steve’s summary. In this case, however, it appears that the individuals involved know each other and I have yet to see any suggestion of bullying or attrempted exploitation. We have a problem with the law and its lagg with technology here and with a MCPD that seems to have a fixation on this subject. I recall that there were a flurry of these kinds of cases coming out of the MCPD a couple of years ago – and they were all internet crimes were the individuals were not being charged with taking the pictures, talking to anybody, meeting anybody or otherwise touching anybody or being paid by anybody, but with possession and distribution. The problem is that you do not have to do anything consiously for this stuff to be downloaded, distributed and redistributed via internal viruses. Its scary stuff. Here we have two young adults that have made a mistake – what happens to those picture now may be out of their control.
In a related matter, I noted an article in the Examiner about Mike Dickinson, a liberal democrat seeking Rep. Cantor’s seat who has publically solicited nude pictures of the 19 year old Texas Tech student that posed in a hunting picture – having killed a lion in Africa. Now, that is wrong.
“I also have a huge problem with “artificial erection” being used on a kid who really isn’t a sexual predator.”
There are two stories here: the crime/investigation, and the claims being made regarding a warrant and affidavit, which has yet to be served, reported that only the magistrate has seen. Not the defense attorney. Not the guardian of the accused. Not the accused, and certainly not the WaPo reporter. What got everyone’s attention? Not the case where a 17 year-old and a 15-year old may have been sending naked pictures back and forth. Nope…it’s the claims that the MCPD and CA’s office want to take the accused, give him a shot, and photograph his genitals. Claims made by the Defense, and the accused’s guardian. Claims regarding a warrant that not been served, and neither have seen. The official response from the MCPD is “We don’t take these actions when investigating a case”.
So I ask the reasonable and rational amongst you: Which side is more credible? Whether or not the kid is a predator, whether there was mutual consent, etc. will come out if/when the case is tried. But we have a whole “nuther issue”…are the defense claims regarding what investigators want to do TRUE? When looking at the article, the statements made by both sides, I have concluded that the defense is full of the stuff I have to pick up when walking my dogs. Your Mileage May Vary.
Steve, I think that you and to a lesser extend myself see this through our generation’s lens, where the shaming and bullying level that could be associated with this is big. I don’t think it’s as big with kids today. There’s potential for shaming and bullying but it’s not at a thermonuclear level.
Sex is becoming commoditized, deromaticized, and normalized. I’m not saying that’s all good or all bad. I’m saying it’s the flow of history.
I think it’s more good than bad, for young people to have a rational perspective on what sex really is. Because what it is is an animal instinct, not an especially etherial or high-minded thing. If they end up more able to direct their lives fruitfully for having a different view tghan my generation on sex, romance, porn, sexting then good for them.
“There’s potential for shaming and bullying but it’s not at a thermonuclear level.”
Till someone tries to get a job, or into a good school, or commits suicide… I think it’s a mistake to minimize this. The fact that kids are becoming desensitized to this is a result of society not taking this seriously enough.
Steve, I agree with you. Some of these things can have devastating and long range impact on people. It should not be minimized. I don’t care whether you do it to yourself of someone does it to you….
How seriously can we take sexting porn photos to each other? Kids all have phones and sexual urges. This is something to be discouraged, like teenage drinking or marijuana use, or actual sex. I’d rather focus on preventing actual ,teen sex than sexting.
There’s an argument to be that really it’s the boy being bullied here, from the little we yet know.
This scenario shouldn’t affect one’s ability to get a job or to get into a good school.
Rick…companies and schools do it all the time. They google the individual, and see what pops up. When I receive an application for an internship, I check their references…and google. If I see pictures of underage drinking, partying, etc… they go to the bottom of the heap. A persons’ electronic reputation is and will continue to be important.
Right – but we generally have control of that. The girl in this case won’t be posting naked pics of herself on facebook. Nor would those pics likely find their way into a google search.
Seems to me the only way this haunts her is if her identity becomes known, which is what the boys’ lawyers are angling at.
Now, by contrast, if the boy has to register as a sex offender, that will affect his life drastically.
I sure half the City of Manassas knows who she is. MC has that small town flair about it.
Yes, it seems like he has the most to lose. Good reason to keep your fly up when you are using your cell phone. I hope everyone learns a lesson.
Hows that song from the 70’s show Beretta go? Something about “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time…” yeah, that’s it.
It’s analogous to labeling someone a sex offender for skinnydipping. The laws are out of touch with the world.
If the lawyer is speaking the truth, then perhaps. Defense lawyers being what they are….who knows. That is the reason I find this situation so hard to choose sides. Who do we believe? What motive do the cops have to lie? What motive does the defense attorney have?
Rick…you thing FB is the only medium being used? Twitter, Pinterst, and a whole host of social media are out there, all searchable via google. All it takes is for someone to get ahold of the phone for a couple of minutes, and those pics are going viral.
You have to define “viral”. Twitter and Pinterest posts are short-lived data, and aren’t likely to show up in a Google search after a while.
The NSA will have the naked pic of the girl. But it won’t be front and center to most of us.
What’s found will hopefully be placed in context. I can find reference to the “used condom girl” harassment if I search on that woman’s name. But I wouldn’t choose to define her by that, or hold someone else’s misogyny against her. Much less hold something against a 15 year old girl if a child porn pic had gone “viral” somehow. Which isn’t a possible scenario.
When a kid starts job hunting, they can make their Facebook posts private, or delete Twitter posts. Happens every day.
I think youtube is actually the most dangerous mechanism for sexual harassment. You can find kids on there taking “upskirt” videos of teachers and posting them. You can post and disseminate something nasty on there and it’ll get around before anyone takes it down. This is the world we live in.
If a guy goes out and takes high-def pics of a hooker walking down a public street, and after a disagreement posts pics of her face and talks about how someone should shoot her, well that’s doable. That’s the world we live in. Though if he works in radio he might lose his job.
It’s a different world out there now. Today’s kids live in this new world. It’s not surprising to me that a 15 year old girl and a 17 year old boy are sending genital pics to each other (if that’s what happened). I do believe it’s safer and less problematical than the idea of them having real sex, which happens all the time. I believe the girl’s life is going to be less affected by any realistic scenario involving those pictures than uit would be from catching herpes or chlymydia, much less AIDS, or from getting pregnant. Things which happen in mass quantities every day.
Rick, google caches everything…pretty much for ever.
Sounds as if the MCPD did have a plan to do the “search” and that it wasn’t a mere figment of the defense attorney’s imagination. From the WaPo:
Manassas City police said Thursday they would not serve a search warrant seeking to take photos of a 17-year-old boy charged with “sexting” an explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend earlier this year.
The teen is facing felony counts of manufacturing and distributing child pornography. As the case was headed to trial last week, Manassas City police and Prince William County prosecutors said in juvenile court that they had obtained a warrant to photograph the teen’s erect genitalia, in order to compare with the video he allegedly sent in January, according to the teen’s lawyers. When defense lawyer Jessica Harbeson Foster asked how they would obtain a photo of her client while aroused, she said police told her they would take him to a hospital and inject him with a drug to force an erection.
On Thursday, Prince William authorities decided to drop that plan. Lt. Brian Larkin of the Manassas City police said, “We are not going to pursue it.” He said the police planned to allow the search warrant, obtained last week, to expire. He would not say why the decision had been made to abandon the warrant or discuss the reasons for the search.
Foster was not immediately available for comment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/07/10/manassas-city-police-say-they-will-not-serve-search-warrant-in-teen-sexting-case/?hpid=z2
Now it is more confusing than ever. Did someone recant their story?
Google does not cache everything, forever. It takes scans of “current” web content. So if you delete something from Facebook or Twitter – or make the Facebook content accessible to members only – it won’t be in Gogle after some period of time. Presumably days or weeks at the most.
There are sites that take “snapshots” of the Internet, attempting to store them forever – such as The Wayback Machine at http://archive.org/web/ . But that’s not what google is doing. If you can remove something from the web, and remove all references that quote that content, it’s gone from Google searches.
(Here’s an example of something from the Wayback machine – antibvbl from July 2008 – http://web.archive.org/web/20080731183429/http://www.antibvbl.net/ ).
(Looking around in old content I found my favorite thread hijack of all time, 60% of the way down here. My finest work. Still proud of this. http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2008/10/08/mccain-calls-for-more-socialism/ )
You devil. I wonder what happened to all those people. I always figured for the most part, it was Greg talking to himself and his other selves.
@Rick Bentley
Now you’ve caused me to lose an hour of my life looking backward! lol If only that web aggregator that picked up Greg’s deleted posts could be found!
The part that bugs me about this case is how the boy is the criminal but the girl isn’t even though the girl reportedly started the sexting with a picture of herself who is more under-age than the boy. I wish that there was an even playing field between sexes when it comes to applying the law regarding child porn to sexting. Women get a lot of power to entrap and when that doesn’t work they can cry rape. Boys are the one’s in danger in anything regarding sex because girls are always princesses.
I think our laws regarding child porn case need to make a distinction between production, distribution and viewing. Minors should be immune from prosecution for production and everyone should be immune from prosecution for viewing child porn.
I am not willing to let minors off the hook. Scenario: Betty Lou, age 16, goes to a party and drinks too much. She gets druses out, and a gang of her supposed friends strip her and take pictures and pass them around to everyone they know.
To me, someone needs to do a little jail time. That is tantamount to rape of sorts.
No Moon, the split personality was me.
I looked at some of the stuff from back then on both boards. I remember myself being angrier than I am now. But I was apparently angrier than I remember being.
Here we go…story made national news.
All In with Chris Hayes
Trey Simms and his aunt Stacey Bigly appeared on his show.
The aunt says the couple were boy friend and girl friend. Her theory is the same as mine.
Tell me, why is it that the City of Manassas is known for its penis stories? First the Bobbitts, now “artificial erection-gate.” I have a Manassas address. I am embarrassed. Let’s start getting known for some other body parts, please.
“Google does not cache everything, forever. It takes scans of “current” web content. So if you delete something from Facebook or Twitter – or make the Facebook content accessible to members only – it won’t be in Gogle after some period of time. Presumably days or weeks at the most.
Rick,
This is not correct. I have had several clients that were required to remove content from their websites, due to copyright infringement. The offending material was removed from their website, and all back-up medium. Two and sometimes three years later, the clients got hit with a removal order again. We investigated in these cases, and could not locate the offending material on any of the client’s systems, their website, etc. When working with the complaining organization, they responded with “the material is showing up in google search”. We contacted Google, who had to go in and clear their cache servers. 6 months later, it happened again. We contacted Google, and they apologized. They had restored a cache back-up, and in doing so, the content became available again in google search.
So when I say the stuff will be out there for ever, it will be, unless the subject goes through many iterations of removal requests, and Google actively complies. Perhaps this personal knowledge of how much and how long Google stores content, is one of the reasons why I am very concerned about the cavalier attitude young people are taking, with regard to “sexting”. In our day, something got written on a bathroom wall. A janitor with a little windex could take care of it. The digital world is different, and kids need to understand why it’s different. The problem is, we adults who remember a time “before the web” have given kids this technology, without a complete understanding of the potential consequences and responsibilities that come with using it.
Self-produced pictures aren’t anything close to rape. Selfie kiddie porn production and viewing should not be a crime. Moon, your scenario is close to rape because she was forcefully undressed. If she willing undressed because of being drunk and an exhibitionist, and her friends took pictures of her but no one touched her, then I’d argue the friends were mean but I wouldn’t classify them as sexual predators. I fear the law makes them sexual criminals, though.
The European lawsuit which Google lost will provide some technological advances in removing inappropriate content.
That’s interesting Steve. I wouldn’t have expected that. They don’t literally cache things forever. But they do cache them for some period of time. 6 months? Suprising; must be some quirk in their crawling algorithm, by accident or by design, that caused that.
As far as caching or saving stuff long term, of course the NSA is building a center in Utah to do just that.
Apparently Google will remove a page from “cache” – we’re calling it cache here, but what we’re talking about is their current image/representation of what’s on the web – only when it crawls to that URL and sees a “404” error indicating that the server doesn’t have that page anymore. If the server just goes down or is taken offline, the web crawler assumes that it is temporarily down and will likely come back up, so it doesn’t remove the associated content from Google. Only when the server is up and the content is gone. And the crawler will generally detect this within 3 to 5 days.
that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to work, and probably generally does – http://lifehacker.com/166500/deleting-things-from-googles-cache
Man, only government officials would think of injecting a chemical to force an erection. A 17 year old boy- are you kidding me? About the only time he WOULDN’T have an erection is in a police station!
Talk about cruel and unusual!