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September 30, 2015

Recent Sexting Case Points Up Insanity of Age-Based Sex Laws

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.—As everyone in the adult entertainment field knows, sexually explicit content created with a person who is 17 years, 11 months and (depending on the month) 28, 29, 30 or 31 days old is child pornography. Creating it with that same person one day later is perfectly legal and constitutionally protected. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to be aware of those restrictions, possibly because a lot of under-18 teenagers don't pay much attention to child pornography laws—though recent events suggest that they'd better start doing so ... and soon. Take Cormega Copening, 17 and a former quarterback for the Jack Britt High School football team the Buccaneers. A year ago, he and his girlfriend Brianna Denson, the same age, were very much in love—so much so that they texted nude photos of themselves to each other's cellphone. Trouble is, when police searched Copening's phone (which was registered to his mother) as part of an alleged "statutory rape" investigation, they found five "sexually explicit" photos that Copening and Denson had sent to one another—and promptly busted the pair for creating and trafficking in child pornography. Now, it's unclear how intimate Copening and Denson had been with each other, and for how long, but while the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) National Survey of Family Growth found that the average age for teens' first sexual intercourse was 17, another CDC branch, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, found that in 2005, 6.2 percent of high school students admitted that they'd engaged in sex at or before age 13. And while no figures are available regarding how many children that 6.2 percent represents, the 2010 U.S. Census found that there were then just over 53 million kids age 5 to 17 in the country at that time, so it's safe to say that that 6.2 percent represents upwards of 20 million kids—20 million kids who have had sexual intercourse by age 13. However, it's likely that the police in Cumberland County, where Copening and Denson lived, didn't have those statistics at hand when they busted the pair. Denson copped a plea to reduced charges in July, but until mid-September, Copening remained under indictment on two counts of second degree sexual exploitation of a minor and three counts of third degree sexual exploitation of a minor—all felonies, and each carrying a possible sentence of two years in prison. "In North Carolina you are considered an adult at 16 years old as far as being charged," said Sgt. Sean Swain of the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department. "But to disseminate and receive sexually explicit texts, photos or videos, you must be over 18." Copening was finally allowed to plea-bargain the charges down to several counts of "disseminating harmful materials to a minor," but had he been convicted of (or pled guilty to) any of the charges, he would have been branded as a sex offender for the rest of his life, required to report his address and work status to local police wherever he lives—and where he could live would be extremely limited, due both to various local statutes and to public notices from people who track sex offenders and disseminate their whereabouts. As it is, Copening was cut from his football squad, and both he and Denson will have to spend a year on probation, during which they must stay in school, abstain from drugs or alcohol and agree not to possess a cellphone. "Some people think we targeted these kids, but we saw this and we couldn’t ignore it," Sgt. Swain said. "The law is written by the legislators and we are obligated to follow what the legislators tell us to. We have no choice." "New ground has recently been broken in the incarceration of American teens, however," wrote Ryan Cooper of TheWeek.com. "Several children have been charged as adults for possessing child pornography—of themselves. Apparently, moral panic over sexting means we must entrap our children in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic sandpit before turning them into hardened criminals.  "[R]iddle me this: How can you simultaneously be a minor being victimized by a sex criminal (yourself), and an adult violating an innocent victim (also yourself)?" Cooper added later. "Surely a person is either a child, in which case he can't be held responsible for producing images of himself (or I hope at least they aren't also going to charge Subway Jared's victims); or a person is an adult, in which case sexting is not actually a problem?" Even the far-right website GOPUSA.com posted, without comment, an Associated Press story on the situation—a noteworthy occurrence considering that the site's writers usually have strong and not-at-all-complimentary words to say on issues involving adult content and sexual mores in modern society. What legislators will need to do to avoid situations like this in the future is to realize that there's nothing magic about a person's 18th birthday, and to begin crafting laws that take into account the fact that from the time they reach puberty, children will begin becoming interested in sex and will begin acting out in sexual ways. The question those legislators will have to answer is how willing are they to force those kids into the criminal justice system for what is, to them, innocent fun and/or simply fledgling expressions of sexual desire?

 
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