POSTED: 2:37 pm PDT October 18, 2004
OLYMPIA, Wash. – A 13-year-old Lacey boy who posted pictures of himself on the Internet was charged with possessing and dealing in child pornography.
A Thurston County deputy prosecutor, John Skinder, said the boy was charged Friday with possessing and dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in explicit behavior.
He was released to his parents while the case is pending. If convicted he faces up to 60 days in juvenile detention. "
Now, the whole issue of child porn is raw meat for discussing issues of morality, justice, censorship and the law and any other value that causes controversy…
so the main question that arrises out of the above case is, should the 13 year old be accountable?.. i can see the valid argument for this but i’d like to what people here have to say…
my take is that its kinda like a woman raping herself… Of course, for anyone else to possess the pictures its obviously illegal possession, but how can you be held accountable for your own godgiven body??? this is weird for some reason
the only slam dunk i can see in its criminality would be that it is illegal for minor to be active in pornography… but its like they’re only held responsible if they do the wrong thing…
Hm – I think (legally) it’s on the level of underage drinking, driving, smoking, voting, getting married, and everything else kids aren’t allowed to do that adults are allowed to do.
I think in our culture we pretty much accept that a lot of times a young adult is mentally ready to learn things on their own and explore at their own risk before the age of 18/21… which is why in a lot of cases people just look the other way when kids go to parties where there’s drinking or when they sleep w/ eachother or whatever… it’s why parents (basically trusted by the state …as extensions of the state… to know what their child is ready for) are allowed to sign something which allows their kid to get married… 18 is just too long to make some folks wait.
I think the case where that school teacher hooked up with her student and had two kids by him is an interesting one.
On underage drinking, I think it’s pretty backward that kids can do pretty much everything at 18 besides alcohol… even go to war.
Well, that’s news to me. It’s not like that at every post. I asked my husband (ex-mil) about it and he confirmed what you said, but there are posts (the ones we’ve been at) that have the drinking age at 21.
So, I s’pose I ammend what I said earlier to fit the new (to me) info.