VALPARAISO, Ind., Jan. 28 (UPI) -- An Indiana boy and girl were charged with child exploitation and possession of child pornography for sending nude photos of themselves over their cellphones.
The unidentified 12-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl, both students at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Valparaiso, Ind., may also be charged with delinquency for creating and disseminating material harmful to minors, Porter County Prosecuting Attorney Brian Gensel told the Chesterton (Ind.) Tribune Thursday.
"We take this very seriously," Gensel told the newspaper. "Kids don't have an appreciation of the gravity of this thing. They don't appreciate the fact that it's illegal. And they don't appreciate the fact that it can follow them for years or even the rest of their lives. In a worst-case scenario, a person can end up on the sex-offender registry."
The "sexting" incident was discovered last Thursday when the girl's cellphone rang during class and her teacher took it away, a police report said.
When the girl was not allowed to delete an item from the phone before the teacher turned it over to the school's administration, the girl began to cry and told the teacher that a sixth-grade boy "had sent her a dirty picture and that she was going to get into trouble," said the police report, cited by the Post-Tribune of Gary, Ind.
The boy had text-messaged a photo of his partially naked body to the girl and she had done the same to him, the report said.
The girl had also shown the photo of the boy to a seventh-grader at another school, the police report said.
The students' mothers gave permission to police to search the two confiscated phones, and the children were allowed to go home, the newspaper said.
The juvenile prosecutor and child protective services also have been brought into the investigation.
A bill moving through the state Senate would make sexting a delinquent act.
