In a story dated today, The Wall Street Journal reported on the battle between Wyoming District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. and the families of three young girls being victimized by this morality policeman who believes the girls need to be "re-educated" on the proper role of girls and women in society.
I haven't seen any other diaries on this, and I apologize in advance if I'm double posting, but this seems to me to speak volumes about where we are as a culture and a (un)civil society.
Follow me over the jump for what this reveals about us.
The case began when Wyoming County, PA District Attorney George Skumanick, Jr. became involved in a flap at the local high school, where a picture a girl had made for her boyfriend appeared on the cell phone of another young male. By the time all was said and done, Mr. Skumanick had confiscated all the cell phones in the school, copied the pictures off of them, and then called in the parents of the girls appearing in the photos. At the Saturday meeting with a number of parents, and their sons and daughters, Mr. Skumanick announced the girls and boys were guilty of producing and disseminating child pornography, and would be so charged, as felons, if the parents did not agree -- within 48 hours -- to sign their children up for a re-education program, in which they would reflect on the proper role for girls and women in society.
But Mr. Skumanick was uh, imprecise, when discussing what the "re-education" would involve. First it would be 10 months and cost nearly $200 per child; then it would be six months long, then six weeks. The cost fluctuated wildly before settling at $100 per child. There were fewer details on the content of the course, except for the emphasis on girls learning how to behave "properly".
Three families refused and, with the help of the ACLU, filed suit, charging the felony sex charges are a reprisal for refusing to have their daughters "re-educated". Further, according to the suit (Which you can read here), the photos do not meet the legal definition of porn.
Two of the girls are shown at a slumber party, two years before this blew up (when they were 13) sprawled on the floor. Both are shown wearing bras, one speaking on the phone and the other flashing the peace sign -- and smiling at the camera. The third girl appeared with a towel wrapped around her just below her breasts. Another girl who was charged was pictured wearing a bathing suit which, Skumanick said, was pornography because she was posed "provocatively."
Since the story broke this afternoon, numerous comments, blogs and commentary have been published condemning the teens and their parents, despite the fact that U.S. District Judge James M. Munley has granted the ACLU's request for a temporary injunction preventing Mr. Skumanick from pressing ahead with charges against the girls.
I believe this case says more about the District Attorney and the state of our society, than it does about the teens involved. While it is inadvisable for young women to distribute photos of themselves in compromising positions, the photos at issue seem to have been well within the bounds of decency. Further, a photo taken at a slumber party, two years prior to these events, were released without the knowledge of the subjects in the photo. And while one may question the wisdom of a teen girl photographing herself in a towel, virtually topless, it is not illegal.
What I question in this is the action of the government, and society, in fully sexualizing young girls whose only "crime" was to allow themselves to be photographed, clothed, in normal teen activity. Adults who find these, and the photo of a 17 year old girl in a swimsuit to be 'provocative' to the point of constituting child porn indicates a mind that is unable to separate sex from young girls. It kind of gives a new meaning to the term 'perv', to think about the DA searching through every cell phone in the school in order to find such material.
This is not a case where photos of children or teens, engaged in sexually suggestive activity, were presented to the government. This is the result of a fishing expedition conducted by a man, or men, who find gazing at young (13 years old) teenagers chatting on the phone to be sexually stimulating. To me, that is the essence of a sick mind and I would suggest the DA and the principal need to be locked up, not the children.
On a social level, this case merely stokes the flames of fear and hysteria over what the networks have termed "Sexting": the activity of young women sending provocative pictures of themselves to their friends over their cell phones. While I agree such behavior is inadvisable, it disturbs me far less than adults who insist on seeing young women only as sex objects and whose cure is to lock them up.
The Child Pornography laws were designed to keep children and teens from being victimized by adults engaged in behavior that is both prurient and profit-driven. It seems ludicrous, to me, that one can be guilty of victimizing one's self -- that is, unless you take the position that a young woman is somehow "inviting" abuse at the hands of an adult miscreant who cannot help himself because she has made herself visible. This is not even a half step away from the old charge, in rape trials, that the woman "deserved it" for "flaunting herself in those short skirts." Hell, with that defense, men are not required to exercise any self-control or responsibility.
Is this really what the Pennsylvania government wishes to teach these young ladies, by marking them for life as deviants? Do we twist their minds in guilt, convincing them they have forsaken their "proper" role in society instead?
It is as clearly, to me, a violation of these young women as if Mr. Skumanick had thrown them on the floor and raped them himself; for he has given them a Hobbsian choice: plead guilty to being deviant and allow themselves to be re-educated; or accept a lifetime of wearing the Scarlet 'A' of the sex offenders' registry.
That, to me, is the bigget crime of all.