A 16-year-old girl has been considered as a child pornographer by Maryland court.
This, after the teenager sent to her friends a video of herself engaging in a consensual sex act through performing fellatio on a male in October 2016.
The girl who was named by the court as S.K. had a group text with her two friends, a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy wherein they exchange “silly photos and videos” to “one up” each other. Then, S. K. sent the act of ‘sexting’. At the end of the year the three friends had a falling-out in Maurice J. McDonough High School, and the video was distributed to other students and that her former friends reported it on the school’s resource officer, as per a report from BuzzFeed.
In its decision, the court considered the act of SK as child pornography – a decision the court said that it had to grapple with applying the state’s child pornography law. This, despite considering the “complexities of the sociocultural phenomenon of ‘sexting’ by minors”.
The Court of Appeals upheld the ruling of the lower giving no exemption to the act of the teenager from the state’s criminal statute.
The CA urged Maryland’s legislator to update its child pornography law reflecting on how teens nowadays use cellphones when it comes to ‘sexting’.
S. K had was not considered as a sex offender but she was undergone electronic monitoring and probation. The case was ordered closed in September 2018.
