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There are sane people in Ohio, after all

The 15-year-old Ohio girl charged with sending nude photos via cell phone to classmates will not be listed as a sex offender.

The Newark, Ohio, high school student agreed Nov. 20 to court-mandated conditions, which for a teen are essentially house arrest, to avoid being charged with a felony and ending up on sex offender lists for the rest of her life.

She needs to comply with restrictions on cell-phone and Internet usage, as well as a curfew, and the case will apparently be dismissed in the spring and the whole fiasco wiped from her record, according to this report in her local paper.

Earlier in the fall, the girl had taken nude photos of herself with her own cellphone, and sent them to several classmates. The pics promptly went viral in Licking Valley High School, and school authorities soon went berserk, pointlessly confiscating cell phones (closing the barn door after the horses are gone) and calling the cops to arrest the girl for sex crimes.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Three layers of stupid. First layer: the girl sends the photos. Second layer: school goes ballistic. Third layer: law enforcement over-reacts. At least the courts are sensible.

Here’s the icing on the stupid cake. The local newspaper insists on identifying the girl as a foster child, as if that status explains everything. (“Look, she’s a foster kid, and you know they’re trouble. A regular kid wouldn’t be a perv.”) The first report about her made a point of telling the world she was fostered out. This most recent one quotes her “foster mother,” perpetuating the label.

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A little perspective, people, please?

Folks in middle America seem obsessed with making (1) everything illegal and (2) treating teenage pranks like crimes against humanity.

The instruments of mass destruction are teenagers’ cellphones. The crime: sending and/or possessing nude photos of female classmates. In both cases, the girls in the photographs sent the photos to their classmates.

In Ohio, authorities have charged one girl with two felonies, and may require her to be listed as sex offender. In Michigan, no charges have been filed, but law enforcement officials have warned students that face possession of pornography charges if they keep the nude photo on their phones.

The Ohio teen’s alleged offense and subsequent arrest occurred just days after representatives from the Licking County prosecutors office visited local high schools and told students about the illegality of sending pornographic pictures with their cell phones.

Apparently, adolescent psych classes are not part of lawyers’ training. Telling a teenager not to do something is little like talking to a tree.

This case was the latest in a veritable epidemic — 20 — of similar incidents in Licking County, near Columbus. Adults there have been appalled at the graphic images and text on teenagers’ cell phones, so the prosecutors felt it their mission to try to put a stop to this electronic scourge.

The lightning rod in this case is a 15-year-old at Licking Valley High School in Newark, Ohio (that’s new-ark — two words — for those of you from Jersey). She was arrested after school officials discovered the photos on students’ cell phones.

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