Sexting, The Hidden Dangers
August 10th, 2010 | by Mobile Data Group |Sexually active teenagers who send flirtatious text images to each other are at risk of being prosecuted under child pornography charges because of discrepancies in state and federal laws.
While the age of consent in NSW is 16 - and the legal definition of a child in NSW is the same under the Commonwealth Criminal Code, a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18.
Legal experts claim this makes teenagers who engage in the popular new pastime of ‘’sexting” sending explicit pictures of themselves to their lovers via email or SMS - vulnerable to being charged and placed on the child-sex register. This, in turn, could affect their employment and travel prospects.
A director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, Greg Barns, said the legal grey area could have major repercussions for teenagers whose behaviour was misunderstood by adults. Under present laws, older teenagers who look younger than 18 can also be charged.
”The law was not crafted in the era of sexting, texting and emails, and it needs to be redefined,” Mr Barns said.
”We need laws that can be readily understood by people and not make criminals out of teenagers who are having a bit of innocent, consensual fun together.”
Kath Albury, a researcher at the journalism and media research centre at the University of NSW, said the law needed to distinguish between teenagers innocently flirting with each other and attempts to protect children from sexual predators, cyber bullies and sexual harassment.
”The legal consequences are that these laws can put young people under 18 years of age on a child-sex registry, impacting their future employment prospects,” Ms Albury said. ”These laws have been designed to protect young people but instead instantly [labels] these images child pornography.”
But the NSW Education Department and the Parents and Citizens Federation described sexting as dangerous, no matter what the context. The NSW government has published a pamphlet, Safe Sexting: there is no such thing, detailing the dangers of sexting.