What You Need to Know to Keep Your Children Safe
Video Transcript: Can your child be charged with a crime for sexting? My name is Brian L. Jackson. I am an attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma with Wirth Law Office, and I want to talk a little bit about kids and sexting.
For starters, we’ll get it out of the way as to what sexting is, is it’s the idea of sending sexually explicit messages. Usually it’s images, although it can also be text, using text messaging or other instant messaging services to a third party. Now, if it’s being done with adults, I would say it’s ill advised for a collection of reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion, but it’s probably not illegal if it’s between adults and the image is depicted are adults.
However, if your minor child generates an explicit image of him or herself and transmits it over the internet, or transmits it by text message to a third party, that could be considered manufacturing and distributing child pornography, and it is a crime.
If you know your child is doing this, obviously it bears stating that this is something to put a stop to. If your child gets caught doing this or soliciting such an image and they are charged, then they need a good lawyer. And this is one of those situations where you really need to have your lawyer get deep into investigating who they were sending it to and why, because you may be looking at an exploitation situation that could be, potentially, a defense to any criminal charges they might otherwise face. It’s a serious situation.
If you find out your kid’s doing this, you really need to put a lid on it now to avoid a problem with failure to protect, or enabling child abuse, or other potential criminal charges. And it could have consequences in family court as well. If the child has been charged for this, then they really need a good lawyer.
If you discover the child’s engaged in this, you probably need to consult with a lawyer anyway to figure out how to mitigate the damage. And one place you can find a good criminal defense lawyer in Tulsa is at makelaweasy.com, and we’ll help you out.
