We recently brought you the WTF story of a 17-year-old boy who is in court in Virginia for sexting nudies of himself to his girlfriend, and now a similar case has been brought to light in the UK, where two teenagers have cautions after sending nudies.
A schoolgirl, who hasn’t been named (all we know is that she is under 18) sent a topless photo of herself to her boyfriend, who is also under 18, reports The Metro. He then sent it to other friends, following an argument. Both of them have got police cautions from Nottinghamshire Police after committing the offence of ‘distributing an indecent image of a child’. The cautions will remain on their records for life.
In another incident, a boy who took a photo of himself nude to send to friends as a joke (come on, we’ve all been there) has been cautioned.
Nottinghamshire Police has now sent a letter to every school in the county, advising them to warn pupils that this sort of shit could get them in trouble. Charity Childline has received 351 calls in the past year about sexting, with most of them coming from 12-15 year olds and nine out of ten from girls.
We’re not entirely behind sexting photos of yourself to people when you’re underage, because those stats above can only hint at the horrors some children must be going through after experimenting in the wrong way. But the funny thing (well, it’s not funny) is that the girl, who was taking a photo of her own body and sharing it with her own permission, got the exact same punishment as the boy, who was effectively seeking revenge on her by showing friends the topless photo, without her permission after they had an argument.
It seems likely, if such strong action was taken in this incident, that the girl was a lot younger than 18. However, there’s a couple of weird years between 16 and 18 where a teenager could totally be allowed to have consensual sex with another adult over 16, but wouldn’t be able to send nudies to that person. Which strikes us as a bit weird, but then, when you think about the drama that comes with nudies ending up in the wrong hands (or in the possession of people who you once trusted but now don’t), it’s probably good to safeguard young people from the sort of hassle that comes from a nudie leaking out to people.
Detective Sergeant Jan Rusdale said that children need to be careful on their phones, ‘When they come to getting a job this would then count against them. We just want to get the message out there that this is a very serious offence.’
However, cautioning a girl just for taking a topless photo of herself, or a boy for joking about with his knob out to his friends? Seems a bit extreme. Hopefully this will act as a warning to anyone thinking of doing anything a lot more severe, but in the mean time, the police could do better than to punish a girl for taking a naked picture of her own body.
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Picture: Anna Jay
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.