Pervy Va. Prosecutors Decide Not To Take Pornographic Photos Of Teen After Public Revulsion

Police and prosecutors in Virginia were going to make pornography.  

I sure as hell don't want to see sexually explicit
photos of this kid, but some Virginia prosecutors
(briefly) did.  

Yep, it was all in the name of prosecuting a 17 year old kid for sexting.

Warning for the sensitive: This is kind of a gross story.

Sexting, for the uninitiated, is the act of sending sexually explicit texts to someone in the hopes of getting lucky, so to speak.

Here's what happened. A 17 year old boy was basically acting creepy and sexting a 15 year old girl. This included sending her a picture of his erect penis.

Prosecutors say the girl asked the boy to stop sending such stuff, but he did anyway. Others say there was basically back and forth between this boy and girl.  Stupid stuff. Probably something both kids needed some guidance on.

It's true the boy was wrong and needed to be stopped and probably punished.  He needs to learn to keep it in his pants and not harass people.

But prosecutors decided to really go for broke and charge the kid with manufacturing child pornography, which would make him a sex offender for life and pretty much ruin his life.

Worse, the prosecutors seemed to be enjoying this way too much. They had planned to take the boy to the hospital, get him a hard on and take photos of the penis. You know, to compare with the photos the boy sexted to the girl.

Riiiiigghht.

Because the way to teach a teenager not to send or make dirty pictures for people who don't want them is for so called responsible adults to make pornographic pictures of teenagers.

The boy's lawyer said the threat to take dirty pics of the kid seemed part of a threat.  The lawyer said either the teen pleads guilty or he gets forced to get those photos taken, according to the Washington Post.

After the media got ahold of this story, police and prosecutors changed their tune.   Police issued a statement after all the media attention to this weird, icky issue,  saying they weren't going to take those dirty pictures of the kid's junk after all.

I guess taking dirty pictures of 17 year old boys looks bad from a PR standpoint.

The issue of what to do with teens and sexting is serious. Too bad that, in an effort to look "serious" police and prosecutors in Virginia looked like idiots in this case.