A teenage girl, 16, in Virginia has been charged with child pornography after she posted nude photos of herself on Twitter, according to The Huffington Post.
An anonymous tip was sent to authorities on January 30 that described the pictures. The girl is a student in James City County. She has admitted to posting ‘multiple’ pictures of herself to Twitter.
“One of our school resource officers made contact with her and her mother,” Stephanie Williams-Ortery, a spokeswoman for the James City County Police Department said.
“The young lady acknowledged that she had posted the pictures of herself [and] the mother acknowledged that the photos were of her daughter,” Williams-Ortery said.
The girl has not been named and police say that she admitted to sending the pictures directly to male friends whom she wanted to impress. The girl has been charged as a juvenile with felony “possession, reproduction, distribution, solicitation and facilitation of child pornography,” Williams-Ortery noted.
There are some people from the region who do not agree with how the issue has been handled by the police.
“I don’t think she should be charged with child pornography, because she is a child herself,” one parent, Emily Altman, said to WAVY.com.
Another parent, Dometre Mobley, said, “That is distributing child pornography? She is a child.”
Because the girl is a juvenile, Virginia law does not require her to register as a sex offender if found guilty.
Soon a child looking at their naked self will be aggravated child molestation, punishable by 25 years to life.