FAIRFAX, Va., April 18 (UPI) -- Three Fairfax County, Va., high school students who made cellphone videos of sex acts with friends face child pornography charges, authorities said.
The trial of the three boys, two 16-year-olds and a 15-year-old, on a charge normally reserved for adult predators, begins Thursday. They were charged with possession and distribution of child pornography in January after they recorded themselves "sexting," engaged in sex acts with at least six teenage girls and then distributing the videos, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Citing a source in the Fairfax County school administration, the newspaper said the videos were made surreptitiously, without the consent of some of those involved.
Rodney Leffler, an attorney for one of the accused, said all the sex acts were consensual, and the 10 videos at the heart of the case were shot at parties at the defendant's homes beginning in December 2011.
Leffler said the girls in the videos eventually learned their actions were recorded, and the boys shared the videos among themselves but did not distribute them widely.
The newspaper noted the case is an example of how law has not caught up with teens, technology and "sexting" -- and that prosecutors across the United States must rely on a patchwork of laws, created before the advance of smartphones, to handle such cases.
