People’s lifecycles often include children being stupid. Here is one story contained in the recent Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion in the case of In Re: S.K. that should give anyone pause, both parents and teenaged children alike.
S.K., a 16-year-old girl sent two friends a one-minute digital video file of herself giving a guy a blowjob. The two friends, one a guy and the other a girl. The three kids regularly exchanged “silly” videos and attempted to “outdo” one another. They supposedly trusted each other to keep these group messages private. At least until two months later, after the three had a falling out and the two recipients reported the incident to, and shared a copy of the video with their school resource officer. The resource officer met with S.K., who acknowledged having sent the video and was concerned that one of the trio had shared the video with other students.
Being a juvenile, S.K. was found to be delinquent and placed on probation with several conditions, including that she undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Parents would do well to discuss this case with their children. Setting the mental and physical health issues of sex aside, making a video of oneself doing it and sending that video via text to anyone is just plain stupid, even if the recipient is needle-in-the-eye sworn to secrecy.
The best of high school friends can become the worst of enemies in a heartbeat and giving them a silver bullet of any kind to shoot you with in the future is, sorry to repeat myself, just plain stupid.
Parents, tell your children, think about what you are doing and why you are doing it and then take a second minute to think about the possible criminal or even reputational effects your actions could have on you for the rest of your life. Even if teenaged sex is both legal and allowed in your family, sending images of it to anyone, even the person with whom you are doing it, is just plain stupid.
And, both parents and kids, if you think such a breach of secrecy would never happen to you, go back and read the court’s opinion yourself. It can be found at: https://www.courts.state.md.us/data/opinions/cosa/2018/0617s17.pdf.