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Another Teen Sexting Suit Comes to Allentown, PA

by Matthew Zuras on May 22, 2010 at 09:00 AM

Teen sextingA high school in Allentown, Pennsylvania -- in the same district that originated the first criminal sexting case ever to reach a federal appeals court -- is now embroiled in yet another sexting lawsuit. A female student claims that Tunkhannock Area High School Principal Gregory Ellsworth confiscated her cell phone in January of last year, found nude photos that the girl had taken of herself and turned the phone over to a local district attorney.

The student, who was 17 when her cell phone was taken, says that she only meant for the photos to be seen by "only herself and, perhaps, her long-time boyfriend," according to the federal lawsuit. The district attorney who received the phone from Ellsworth, Georgr Skumanick Jr., allegedly threatened to file felony child pornography charges against the now-19-year-old student unless she enrolled in a "sexual violence" class. (We're sort of at a loss to explain what that might entail.)

The student was understandably horrified that her naked photos were passed among school officials, state prosecutors and the police. "Those pictures were extremely private and not meant for anyone else's eyes. What they did is the equivalent of spying on me through my bedroom window," she said in a statement released by the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

The oversexed teens of Allentown are really trying the patience of the undersexed officials who are supposed to keep them in check. We're not sure what cause Ellsworth had to confiscate this girl's phone in the first place, or why he would scroll through her picture roll unless he was looking (or expecting) to find some steamy pics. It all sounds very fishy. And while we don't necessarily support the fad of teen sexting, we also think that it should be the role of parents to uncover and deal with illicit photos of their own children, and not high school principals or D.A.s with questionable motives. [From: MSNBC]

Tags: ACLU, allentown, cellphones, district attorney, DistrictAttorney, lawsuit, sexting, SextingTeens, teen sexting, TeenSexting, top

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