"the mere possession of these materials (selfies) does constitute an ongoing crime," said District Attorney Thom LeDeux." I hope these kids have rich parents. Based upon "mere possession" all these boys and girls could be adjudicated as adults, JSO's sucked under by the AWA. Isn't it about time someone blamed the AWA act for creating the problem. Lets face it kids do dumb things but prosecute dumb kids who are (LOL) the "victims of their own "crimes"? Mere possession of naked pictures taken of themselves, by themselves? I suppose parents who took naked pictures of their own kids when they were babies should be prosecuted for mere possession too? Quick, hide the family photo album!.

This must be going on everywhere in the world, teenagers are filled with hormones. I know when I was younger it was almost a race to see who would have sex first! Had we had the technology I'm sure we would have been doing the same thing. It seems like the time has come to include this in Sex Education classes, unless maybe some places do already. Get the point across that something that they think may seem perfectly ok to do could land you in very deep water. Charging them seems ridiculous!

My 90 year old mom comes up with very insightful bits of wisdom from time to time - the other day we were talking about something similar to this and she said "We are born sexual animals - why is everyone so surprised we we act on it?" - she said also said God set his own age of consent called puberty .... She is one smart cookie - I guess you do not live that long without seeing a lot of stuff ...

Very smart woman indeed Advocate.

This is complete and utter insanity. I can somewhat follow the legal logic of a 40 year old looking at pictures of a 4 year old being raped is a bad thing. But what is the logic of a 15 year old looking at a nude picture of another 15 year old being a felony? Are they somehow more likely to rape children because they are interested in people their own age? This is just natural behavior especially in our hyper-sexualized society. The fact that everyone is surprised that this happens is surprising.

yes Independent - and in cases like these most of the general public agree with that sentiment but no one (or very rarely) does anything about it

There was a case here a while ago I was told about by one of our agency workers. A teenage boy who was 13 looking at images of girls in the same age group. Nothing was done until he hit 16 which was the age of consent, he was still viewing images of younger teens and was arrested after he had confided in someone he trusted. He was cautioned thankfully.