Police busted a middle school boy for renting out his iPod Touch packed with sexy photos and videos of underage girls.
The iPod Touch’s large storage capacity and big screen were put to use for an increasingly common kind of extracurricular activity. The boy’s business was halted when a renter of the illicit images was caught last week at Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland.
Students id’d the girls in photos as fellow students — sixth to eighth graders — as well as some from a nearby high school. In a letter to parents, school officials said that their investigation revealed the girls posed willingly and that the photo and video sessions took place outside school grounds.
Kids playing doctor run into a whole new set of problems in the digital age — in this case, they risk being charged with child porn distribution, manufacturing or possession Montgomery County police Sgt. C. Thomas Jordan told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a mess to figure out, and once it is, it’ll be up to prosecutors to determine how to proceed.”
Worst case scenario: because all images of underage kids are treated as child pornography in state law, the adolescents charged in the case risk a minimum 10 years in prison and could end up on the sex offender registry with rapists and pedophiles.
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you’re doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
