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Florida Teen Phillip Alpert Arrested in Sexting Case
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by Jordan Yerman | April 8, 2009 at 08:38 am
2114 views | 1 Recommendation | 2 comments
Sexting is back in the news. Previously, a group of New Jersey teens was spared sex-offense prosecution, but this latest case is a different story: in Florida, an 18-year-old boy who had a fight with his girlfriend (who is under 18) sent some nude photos of her to his friends... and to her family.
Phillip Alpert was arrested and charged for "distributing child pornography".
While it's unlikely he sent the images with the intent for subsequent distribution, it's obvious that, once out in the wild, digital images have a way of replicating... and replicating... and replicating. Also, while this wasn't a physical attack, the young man was indeed weaponizing sexuality.
The high school sweethearts had been dating for almost 2½ years. "It was a stupid thing I did because I was upset and tired and it was the middle of the night and I was an immature kid," says Alpert.
Orlando, Florida, police didn't see it that way. Alpert was arrested and charged with sending child pornography, a felony to which he pleaded no contest but was later convicted. He was sentenced to five years probation and required by Florida law to register as a sex offender.
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at 14:28 on April 17th, 2009
Possible First Amendment protection for teen “sexters?”
The justification for not protecting child pornography under the First Amendment is that it is necessary to take prurient advantage of a child to make the picture. Hand drawn or computer generated child porn is not illegal (unless they use a live child for an artist’s subject I suppose) – one thinks movie scenes in “The Glitter Dome.”
A sexting teen who transmits her own is not being taken advantage of by an adult or anyone else. If she sends nude pictures to an 80 year old her part in the transaction might very well be protected under the First Amendment – once the first principles of the scenario are considered. Ditto for her side of sexting to a friend.
There is an outside chance a child possessing such the “sext” should be considered to be taking prurient advantage of a minor under the First Amendment (depending on which generation of judges gets hold of it maybe) – but does it make sense to make a teen boyfriend -- who may even have made legal sexual contact with the girl -- the equivalent of an adult who possesses child pornography?
The free speech crossover seems to be when boys distribute nude pictures of girls among themselves without the girls permission – certainly not free speech. But to begin with no child was hurt making the image. The kind of personal damage to a child making pornographic images may be much more devastating than that of having the image passed around (again, once thinks of “The Glitter Dome”) – at least most of the time.
Wouldn’t we feel more comfortable with law that punishes such a gross invasion of privacy in a case for case damage way – not rounding up dozens of students and plastering them all with sex offender status and heavy jail time – but treating the offense as the privacy offense it really is?
at 06:10 on April 19th, 2009
If a teen sexting pictures of herself is First Amendment protected because no harm is done to a juvenile in making the picture (the classic rationale for exempting child pornography from constitutional protection as far as I know -- computer created or drawn pictures of underage children are protected, at least so far) then images mal-distributed by an angry boyfriend AFTER the child turns 18 could also meet the no child injured standard: possibly letting the Florida boy go free if his ex were 18 by at the time.
Another possible defense angle: if no junvenile was harmed making the picture (because the juvenile made the picture) then it might require brand new legislation to make distribution illegal -- the old legislation being intended only for "harmed-child" images.
Related defense angle: if harm to the juvenile permits constitution banning of maldistribution of nude images of a juvenile, it perhaps ought not to be catagorized as a SEXUAL offense against the child. Maldistribution of nude images of an adult would not be considered an offense of a sexual nature -- equal protection.
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If the practice of teen sexting goes on long enough and becomes widespread enough the sense of violation from having images of yourself spread beyond your intended recievers may become substantially watered down just because the experience may become so commonplace.