On Wednesday, I reported on a budding travesty in Manassas, Virginia. A 17-year-old boy was brought up on charges of manufacturing and distributing child pornography for sexting with his 15-year-old girlfriend. He faces imprisonment until he is 21, and could be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. If that wasn’t degrading enough, when the teen refused to plead guilty, Manassas police obtained a search warrant for pictures of the teen’s erect penis. They planned to force the teen to go to a hospital where they would have injected him with a drug to force an erection, than take pictures of it so they could compare the pictures to images on the teen’s iPhone. Not only would this have been horribly traumatizing for the teen, but it also would have been an egregious Fourth Amendment violation. The teen has been identified, but given the incredibly degrading nature of the situation, we aren’t identifying him for now.
Well, late yesterday Manassas police announced they would not pursue plans to get pictures of the teen’s penis. The decision didn’t come without a good bit of prodding. The blogosphere was nearly unanimous in its criticism of police plans to essentially create child porn in order to prosecute someone for creating child porn. The police and city switchboards nearly melted with angry calls from across the country, as well as internationally. According to WRC-TV in Washington, it looks like a pang of decency from Manassas police chief Douglas Keen led to yesterday’s reversal. Keen told WRC that when he found out about the warrant, “we made the decision not to proceed.” Although police have said they will allow the warrant to lapse, the teen’s lawyer, Jessica Foster, issued a statement saying that she intends to fight it since “while it remains outstanding, my client is in jeopardy.” It should be noted that while the warrant is being allowed to lapse, prosecutors are still moving forward with the child porn charges.
The teen’s aunt and legal guardian, Stacy Begley, told WRC that prosecutors offered her nephew a plea deal that would have called for one year’s probation, during which he would have been barred from using a cell phone or surfing the Internet. Her nephew turned the offer down because he was afraid that even a peek at Facebook or Twitter could have exposed him to the double indignity of a felony record and having to register as a sex offender.
Begley appeared on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” last night to discuss the situation. Begley said that in January, police showed up to confiscate her nephew’s iPhone and iPad as part of the investigation. The charges were initially dropped in June on a technicality, but the teen was arrested just hours later on new charges. Later that afternoon, Begley said that her nephew called her from jail and said police forced him to strip naked so they could take nude pictures of him. She also said that the girlfriend’s mother was the one who complained to police–though at present, the girl isn’t facing charges. Earlier, Foster told WRC that when the two sides go back to court on July 15, she will fight to make sure the pictures taken by police aren’t admitted as evidence. Given that police have already violated her client’s Fourth Amendment rights by getting nude pictures of him, Foster is right to be skeptical of the police’s promise to let the warrant lapse. Even without this to consider, you have to seriously wonder about the culture of a police department where anyone could even think this was a good idea.
WRC’s David Culver, who first broke this story last week, said that police are trying to deal with an “epidemic” of sexting in the Manassas school system. He also said that the girlfriend’s mother had told the teen to stop sending sexts on numerous occasions. However, Begley maintains that the girl’s parents never came to her about it. Even if they had, it would seem that using child pornography laws, which carry some of the most draconian penalties in the criminal-justice system, amount to using a pile driver to swat flies. Additionally, any evidential value in getting pictures of an erect penis is substantially outweighed by the sheer ghoulishness of getting such pictures, as well as the severe trauma that the teen would suffer.
Later on, Hayes talked with Abby Philip of The Washington Post, who noted that several states have opted for specific laws dealing with sexting that don’t carry the risk of a teen having a felony on his record, let alone the kind of treatment that this teen has had to endure. After this, it’s well past time for Governor Terry McAuliffe, state attorney general Mark Herring, and the Virginia General Assembly to take a long, hard look at how Virginia handles sexting. One travesty like this one is one too many. Let us know if you feel the same way at the Liberal America Facebook page.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-loverwho has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
