Texting trouble

LIMA - The spurned underage teen sulks in her bedroom, mourning the lost relationship with a boy.

She doesn't want it to end. She loves him, or at least she thinks she does. She'll do anything to keep him in her life.

She pulls out her cell phone and removes her clothing. She snaps a nude self-portrait to send to the boy. "See what you're missing?" she taps on the tiny keypad before sending it off to her boyfriend.

She just committed a felony. If caught, she faces up to eight years in prison on a second-degree felony. Thanks to her erotic message, nicknamed "sexting," she must register as a sex offender for 20-plus years under current laws.

"I don't think they really understand what may happen," said Lauren Miller, an 18-year-old senior at Allen East High School who watched a sexting case there last year disrupt the school. "I think they think, ‘Oh, this guy might like me, so if I just send this picture he might like me even more.' "

The boy receives the picture on his cell phone. He can't believe what he sees. Titillated by it, he forwards it to several friends. They forward it to more people. Before long, most of the school sees that image of the minor girl trying to lure back her ex-boyfriend.

That boy and all of his friends also just committed felonies, subject to 18 months in prison for a fifth-degree offense.

It's a crime committed in teenagers' bedrooms all across the region. If you don't think it happens in your community, think again, says Allen County Prosecutor Juergen Waldick. He speaks to teens across the county. He asks if they've come across these pornographic self-portraits of teen boys and girls. Most of the hands in the room pop up.

"I jokingly say to them, ‘At the end of this program, we're going to ask you to pass your cell phones to the middle. We'll collect them, and we'll check them for these pictures.' You can hear a pin drop," Waldick said. "Then I tell them, ‘From your actions, I can tell some of you have pictures on your phones you really need to erase.' "

Local cases

Sexting grabs national attention every time a high-profile case hits. Local officials try to handle cases as discreetly as possible, but it certainly happens here, they say.

The Lima schools dealt with a sexting case earlier this school year in one of its three middle schools, Assistant Superintendent Jill Ackerman said. A female pupil took pictures on a cell phone over a weekend, and a group of boys ogled the cell phone picture in a bathroom.

The girl remains at the school, and the school used the incident as a learning tool, Ackerman said.

"The counselors in the school have to go talk directly to those classes," she said. "There's a lot of rumor control and repairing of reputations. In many cases, it's very damaging to the child. Sometimes, it's a real eye-opener with the other kids."

Miller said the incident at Allen East last year upended the school's social structure.

"It gets everyone talking. Of course, that person gets kind of a bad reputation," she said. "They get made fun of. I think it's stupid and dumb in the first place."

Most local schools have policies against using cell phones during school hours. Still, what happens with the phones after school greatly affects life during school hours.

While most of the high-profile cases involve females, there are plenty of males sending photographs around, said Sgt. Brett Lee, of the Allen County Sheriff's Office's investigative decision.

"There are some proud guys out there who take pictures of themselves and say, ‘Look at me,' " he said. "They send them to their girlfriends and send them around."

When someone forwards a picture, it doesn't take long for everyone in a school to see it, said Waldick, who says having two teenage children opened his eyes to many of the issues.

"I don't think it's that many kids taking pictures of themselves," he said. "But if one child does, that picture makes the rounds of the whole school in a matter of hours."

A national online survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy showed nearly one in five teens admitted to sexting. While it wasn't a scientific study, it shows how widespread the issue is.

Even after seeing a classmate's troubles, teens won't necessarily change their behaviors, Miller said.

"I think they understand better, but I don't think it'll stop them from doing anything," she said. "They think it's their life, and no one can tell me I can or can't."

From cell to cops

Law enforcement officials in Allen, Auglaize and Putnam counties say they haven't seen many cases come through yet, but they acknowledge they've heard more about it in the past six months.

They generally only find the pornographic images when a cell phone goes through the crime lab for unrelated offenses, said Kevin DeLong, an investigator with Lima Police Department's Technology Crimes Unit.

"I fall out of my chair every time I see an image like that," DeLong said. "I don't see how kids, knowing how technology works, would take a picture of themselves, knowing how easy it is to reproduce and post somewhere."

Many teens just save the pictures to their phones, leaving them there for a parent to eventually find.

"We run into it a lot of times when a juvenile has some parent who confiscated the cell phone," Lee said. "They find inappropriate pictures of a boyfriend or girlfriend. We know everybody's doing it."

Putnam County Sheriff James Beutler said his office saw one case of a teen's nude photograph on a cell phone. The case never went to court, though, as officers couldn't confirm the person's identity or age.

"There's probably a lot of this going on that we just don't see and don't realize what a problem it really is," Beutler said. "It's a rare incident when these kids are getting caught."

The big concern is the photographs ending up in the hands of the people the laws are designed to catch, the true sexual offenders. Waldick said perverts trade thousands of these naked self-portraits on online forums "like we used to trade baseball cards."

"Obviously, we don't want additional child pornography being produced, then distributed," Lima's DeLong said. "There are Web sites dedicated to these cell phone pictures. They get a hold of them and put them right there."

Victim and perpetrator

Most laws have a clear victim and a clear perpetrator. But Ohio's laws for pandering obscenity involving a minor never considered the possibility of sexting.

"Now you're dealing with a victim who's also the suspect, since it's a self-portrait. It's a very difficult situation," DeLong said.

"What's really ironic about the whole thing is that these laws are designed to protect kids," Waldick said. "They're designed to prevent the exploitation of your children in pornography, yet they run afoul when the kids run afoul themselves."

The potential penalties are steep. The person taking the photograph faces possible second-degree felony charges if they're under 18, since the law prohibits taking images of children under 18. That comes along with a possible eight-year prison sentence and, with federal sexual offender laws, the necessity to register as a federal sexual offender for 20-plus years.

It's also a fifth-degree felony to forward those same pictures, complete with a 18-month prison sentence. That's just as stiff as the charge for possession of cocaine, another fifth-degree felony charge.

"They're not seeing it as doing something wrong," Lee said. "But Ohio law does. It's a pretty big shock to them when they realize how wrong it is."

The current law contains "a heavy dose of two things," said Bryan Ward, the director of clinical programs and a professor of law at Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law.

"The first heavy dose is pure morality," Ward said. "It's our view of what's appropriate in society, and we don't want to contemplate this as OK. It's also a heavy dose of concern about exploitation. There's a sense women engaging in pornography are not necessarily doing it because they want to. ... But I'm not sure if that's the case with sexting."

Waldick repeatedly emphasizes his goal is to "alter their behavior" of teens. He said he doesn't want to ruin teens' lives, but they must understand the consequences of their actions. He said his office tries to work with the juvenile court system to help the children alter their behavior.

"You don't want to foreclose all opportunities for them in the future," Waldick said. "What all won't they be able to do? You can't become a teacher. You can't get a nursing license. You can't go to medical school. All those kinds of things, you close all those doors."

There's a movement in the Ohio Statehouse to rewrite the law and account for teen's actions. State Sen. Bob Shuler, R-Sycamore Township, and Rep. Ron Maag, R-Lebanon, introduced bills in April. They would give prosecutors a misdemeanor option when it comes to teens sending nude images.

"My concern is that something like this doesn't really fit in the category of someone who is a sex offender," said state Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, who supports the proposal by Shuler and Maag. "A label like that lasts for a lifetime. It's meant for people who sell child pornography. That new legislation creates a new avenue in this case for juvenile court."

Parental involvement

One agreed-upon solution to the problem is the same solution to any child's disciplinary problem: solid parenting.

"Parents should definitely watch out for it," said Auglaize County detective Sgt. Jerry Sawmiller. "I would venture a guess to say the bottom line is this: Parents are probably the ones paying the bill, so they have a right to check them for this."

Parents need to talk to their children about sexting before they get involved in the middle of it, Perry High School Principal Nick Weingart said.

"It's almost a taboo issue, and it's a little bit embarrassing to talk about," he said. "These are sensitive issues. If it would be your daughter or your son who's the person who wound up posting a picture on text messaging, it'd be a very embarrassing thing for a parent. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

While the school systems try to educate students on the issues, parents have to lay the moral groundwork, Elida High School Principal Sarah Burden said.

"I want to know where the parents are," Burden said. "I can't understand how they would allow their kids to even think this was a good thing, a right thing. I was surprised and shocked when I heard this was happening. It makes me kind of wonder where society is going."

Beutler agreed issues such as sexting show a shift in values.

"The younger generation in today's world does not have the same values," he said. "They are a little more free and open. They're a little more explicit with themselves. It's the age they're growing up in. Society is changing, no doubt."