The Vermont Legislature is the first among the states to do the right thing and update its child pornography laws to bring them in line with the changing technological times.

At the time most child pornography laws were written, no one could have imagined that teens would be using cell phone cameras to take naked pictures of themselves and sending them via text message to friends.

That’s the reason overzealous police were able to charge teen girls with violating laws against distributing child pornography. The laws just weren’t written with that kind of behavior in mind.

The laws were written to protect teens from being exploited. They weren’t written to punish the victimless behavior of the teens, no matter how tasteless and immature it was.

I’ve written about the hypocrisy of charging people with violating the very law that was written to protect them elsewhere in this child injury blog. In this post, I just wish to recognize Vermont as a thought leader and applaud the speed with which the state acted to prevent the stupid, unnecessary and even tragic consequences of punishing these girls as sex offenders.

David Martin, a 40-year-old Rockledge man, was arrested and charged with sexual battery. Because the boys are 12 or older but less than 18 and Martin was a person in a position of authority, Martin will be charged with a first degree felony. Martin was also charged with lewd or lascivious molestation.

Two boys, ages 11 and 13, said that Martin molested them inside a cabin at the Life for Youth Church Camp in Vero Beach. The boys were visiting the camp as part of a church group from the Faith Fellowship Church in Melbourne.

Of course the perpetrator was “very well liked and someone who was very active with the kids and just had great relationships with the adults and children” the news report reads.

Martin attracted several hundred children to his congregation. At the time this blog was published, no other victims had come forward.

I would be quite surprised if a civil lawsuit did not arise from this in addition to the criminal charges. This type of behavior is dispicable. I wonder if there were warning signs from previous boys at previous camps.

This type of behavior is usually habitual and a 40-year-old has likely left signs that he had committed these acts previously. That is why I am going to lobby the Florida Legislature to enact a law providing for civil remedies against people who fail to report suspected child abuse of any kind,  sexual or otherwise.

Now, istitutions have no incentive to train employees to look for telltail signs of abuse and investigate them appropriately because the only punishment for remaining silent while a child is abused is criminal. The institutions can not be held liable under today’s law.

They should be liable. We entrust our children to them and they should be trained to detect abuse and required to report it. Stay tuned to this blog for further news on my lobbying efforts.

The girls are charged with possession of, and manufacturing and distributing child pornography. While absolutely tasteless, the behavior was in no way criminal.

The girls voluntarily took naked or near-naked self-portraits with their phones, and then sent them to the boys via text message (hence the moniker “sexting”). One Florida cyber crime lawyer points out that these charges make the girls “simultaneously the victims and the perpetrators of the alleged crime — a nonsensical situation.” Indeed.

I admit their acts were tasteless, immature and childish, but law enforcement’s response was even more so. What we have here is a typical situation of teenagers exploring their sexuality. The girls were certainly naïve and lacked foresight, but that’s just par for the course as teens. It is certainly not criminal. To charge them with child pornography is a result that can be reached by using only the most faulty of reasoning.

The problem here is law enforcement officials’ rote application of a rule without thinking. Child pornography laws are intended to protect our youth from adults who seek to exploit them. The laws were never intended to protect teens from their own sexual curiosity or consensual behavior with each other.

If I were the teenagers’ attorney, I would advise them to counter-sue the school and police for violating their right to privacy. The pictures were discovered after a teacher confiscated one of their phones because the owner was using it during school hours.

Where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, it is illegal for others to intrude. One may argue that the girls did not have an expectation of privacy because they sent the pictures via text message. However, federal law recognizes a right to privacy in telephone conversations. I see no meaningful differences between a phone conversation and a text message.

I doubt that these charges will stand, but this episode is not isolated and should stand as a sharp reminder that we should all think before we misapply a rule or law in contexts where it is not appropriate. Legislatures across the country need to address this problem in their next session.

Otherwise, teens could find themselves subject to lifelong sex offender registration requirements. State legislatures must fix this problem. They would be irresponsible to allow the mindless enforcement of laws out of the context they were intended for to ruin the lives of some teens simply because those teens behaved stupidly.

Putting teens in jail doesn’t protect them or other youths from sexual predators.