High school students in Plymouth Meeting, PA, were participants at an assembly earlier this month on the dangers of sexting or sending sexually explicit photographs through their cell phones to students or others. While this lesson has likely been transmitted before, this law enforcement run assembly focused also on the legal ramifications of minors sending photographs of themselves in an often-misunderstood form of distributing child pornography.

The students, who were between ninth and tenth grades, were educated about the summary-level offenses that they as minors would be subject to for sharing these explicit photos. A future assembly is planned for upperclassmen in the coming weeks.  The presentations came at a particularly timely point for the school, which is currently dealing with the repercussions of a sexting scandal involving inappropriate photos of the underage students on the file-sharing site Dropbox. There have not yet been any official prosecutions in the sexting scandal, but over 150 people are under criminal investigation by local police and the Montgomery County district attorney.

For those that are to be prosecuted, there are severe consequences attached to a conviction on child pornography cases. In addition to a lifelong sex offender label, convicted individuals can face a felony label and years of prison time.  Even if the charges are unfounded, they can still have devastating effects on an individual’s family, career and overall livelihood. You have a right to an attorney at all times, and should never speak with law enforcement or outside parties without one present. The general start of such charges happens with the seizure of a computer or other recording devices, which happens with a search warrant after an individual reports the finding of child pornography in a person’s possession.

The possession and distribution of child pornography is very different from ‘regular’ porn, which is not criminal. For a guilty conviction to occur, prosecution will need to prove your intent to possess the images, and search warrants require probable cause to institute. These warrants can be flawed or not specific enough to properly allow for the police’s seizure of your equipment. Knowing possession is an especially important part of the case, and can be disproven in instances of a public computer or network, the unintentional cache of images that occur after a pop-up or malicious internet link, or through the actions of a ‘backdoor’ hacker using another person’s computer as a tool to frame them or disguise their own online actions.

In Pennsylvania, the charge of a sex crime results in needing to register for at least ten years, up to life as a sex offender. This includes additional criminal charges for not registering, or not notifying police of your movements or career changes. If you are facing a charge for the possession of child pornography in a sexting scandal like the one above, or other sex-related crime, you need a lawyer specifically trained to handle such cases. Contact us at Sebald, Hackwelder, & Knox today for a fair representation of your case, and receive a free phone consultation at 814-833-1987.