NEWS

No criminal charges in Pleasant photo incident

John Jarvis
Reporter

MARION – Pleasant High School students suspended for allegedly sending inappropriate photos to other students will not face criminal charges, Marion County Assistant Prosecutor Matt Frericks said Friday.

The prosecutor’s office will send warning letters to a male student who admitted that he showed friends a photo of his ex-girlfriend on his phone as well as to the girl, also a Pleasant High student, Frericks said.

“There was one juvenile who advised that one of the photos he was kind of passing around was of an ex-girlfriend,” he said.

The boy told Marion County Sheriff’s Office investigators that he received a Snapchat photo of the girl in which her chest was exposed but her face was not shown, and the sheriff’s office “confirmed with her she did send the photo to her boyfriend about a year ago.”

That would be potentially a crime,” Frericks said, referring to the potential charge of disseminating matter harmful to a juvenile, which can range from a first-degree misdemeanor if the material is not obscene to a fourth-degree felony if the matter is obscene and shown to a person younger than 13.

“Generally, what we do with these sexting-type cases, we send initially a warning letter, saying: ‘Hey, guys, this is against the law ... and this stuff’s out there forever.’ It’s kind of just laying out the dangerousness of it, the potential it is a sex crime, and the juvenile could be classified as a sex offender just for doing something stupid.”

The male student told the sheriff’s office investigators that he deleted the photo from his phone since showing it to his friends, Frericks said.

The letter will warn each of the two students that the prosecutor’s office will pursue charges if either commits the act again, he said.

He said the prosecutor’s office will not pursue charges regarding students showing photos that Pleasant Principal Brian Sparling said were of people taken from the Internet because “that behavior ... is probably not criminal unless the people in those photos were juveniles. We haven’t seen any of these photos. We don’t know the age of the people in the photos.”

He said such incidents could be pursued by others in civil lawsuits.

Sparling said the six students received “severe” suspensions after they allegedly sent inappropriate photos they claimed were of other students. He said he was confident most of the photos were of people taken from the Internet, and he did not see any of the photos. He said that, from what he heard, no faces were recognizable.

Chief Deputy Al Hayden of the sheriff’s office said the students were not using school computers to commit the acts.

Frericks said sexting, transmitting of sexually explicit text messages, “does happen more frequently than people think,” and he emphasized that juveniles must be aware of the consequences of such acts.

“Know what you’re sending out,” he said. “When you send anything ... even if it’s in a private message, that’s out there forever. This is dangerous stuff to be sexting.”

He said it’s mandatory under the law if a juvenile age 16 or 17 is convicted of a “sex-adjudicated” crime to classify them as a juvenile sex offender.

“That’s pretty big consequences for doing something like this,” Frericks said.

“A few years ago, when it really was kind of starting, we would get a lot more, but I think the schools and law enforcement are all on the same page,” he said, referring to the earlier years of texting. “We don’t want to charge every child for doing something stupid like this with a sex crime.”

jjarvis@marionstar.com

740-375-5154

Twitter: @jmwjarvis