Sexting Legislation in the United States and Abroad: A Call for Uniformity

IntroductionIn 2015, North Carolina high school star quarter back Cormega Copening was charged with possession of child pornography and felony child exploitation after he and his girlfriend, Brianna Denson, were caught sexting each other (McGlaughlin, 2015). Both Copening and Denson were sixteen years old, in a dating relationship, and had allowed authorities to search their phones on an unrelated school matter (Miller, 2015). On Copening's phone, authorities found two sexually explicit pictures that Copening had taken of himself and one nude picture of Denson. Denson admitted that she had taken the nude photograph of herself and transmitted it voluntarily to Copening. Copening also voluntarily sent one of his nude selfies to Denson. Although the photos were shared only with each other, both Copening and Denson were arrested (McGlaughlin, 2015; Miller, 2015). Under North Carolina law, it is illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to send or receive sexually explicit photos with a cell phone. Additionally, North Carolina minors can be charged with sending and/or possessing sexually explicit photos of themselves. As a result, Copening and Denson's warrants listed them as both the adult perpetrators (minors in North Carolina can be charged as adults starting at 16 years old) and the minor victims (Miller, 2015, Woolverton, 2015). A conviction for either Copening or Denson could have resulted in a 4- to 10-year prison term and lifelong sex offender registration. Both parties, however, were able to plea bargain their cases to one year's probation (Miller, 2015). Interestingly, while taking and/or possessing nude photographs between minors is illegal in North Carolina, sexual intercourse between 16-year-olds is not, and because of a "close in age exemption" it is legal even for 13, 14, or 15 year olds to have sex with someone who is fewer than four years older (McGlaughlin, 2015). This exemplifies one of numerous inconsistencies that exist with regard to sexting legislation, and Evett (2016) provides a good legal overview of the problems that may occur when a state's age of consent law is not in sync with their sexting regulations. For context, in 30 of 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, the legal age of consent for sexual acts is 16, in 9 states it is 17, and in 11 states, it is 18 (AgeOfConsent.net). Meanwhile, in all of the Englishspeaking countries analyzed here, the age of consent is 165(AgeOfConsent.net). Additionally, like North Carolina, 23 other U.S. states, Canada, England, and some of the states/territories in Australia have a close-in-age-exemption that can be used as a defense for those who engage in consensual sexual acts with those who are within certain age ranges of each other (e.g., within 2 to 5 years of age, provided that they are both over a certain age). In another sensationalized U.S. sexting case, teachers in Colorado discovered a massive sexting ring involving more than 100 middle and high school students. The students were using a cellphone application, which had the appearance of a calculator, to store and hide naked or inappropriate photos of themselves and other students. Many of these photos appeared to be taken on school property, thereby launching a federal investigation of the school (Associated Press, 2015; Martinez, 2015). Because Colorado had no specific sexting legislation at the time, charges for students would have fallen under child pornography statutes and could have amounted to a felony conviction (a crime punishable by a year or more in prison) for all involved, along with mandatory sex offender registration. At the conclusion of the investigation, however, the District Attorney chose not to file charges due to the potential severity of the punishment. In addition, investigators did not find any evidence of aggravating factors, such as adults' involvement, the posting of the images to the Internet, coercion, or unlawful sexual contact (Botelho & Martinez, 2015). …