have you guys heard this story? so outrageous and so sad. what is our country coming to?
Nude pics bring suspensions for Pascack students
Monday, June 9, 2008
Last updated: Monday June 9, 2008, EDT 9:13 PM
BY LESLIE BRODY
STAFF WRITER
Seven
ninth-graders at Pascack Valley High School have been suspended for the
rest of the school year for distributing racy photos of middle school
girls via cell phones and school-issued laptops.
A student who saw the photos on a laptop tipped off a teacher, and the
administration alerted Hillsdale police last week, district
Superintendent Benedict Tantillo III said today.
More than 20 girls who are now in ninth grade were in the photos, the
superintendent said. Some pictures appeared to have been taken two or
three years ago, and some of the subjects moved to private high school
instead of Pascack Valley. The girls were seen from the waist up in
various states of undress, typically with bare breasts, he said.
“I have not seen the pictures,” he added. “I don’t want to see the pictures.”
Citing a school inquiry, he said it was unclear whether the shots were
self-portraits or snapped by others but none appeared to have been
filmed on district property. He said one boy had asked girls to send
him photos so they could star in a “gallery” he was assembling.
“As a father of three girls, I can’t imagine (any young women) taking
pictures of themselves and sending them around knowing they would be
distributed,” Tantillo said.
Cases of teens sending around lewd cell phone pictures of their bodies
have been reported in New York, Connecticut, Alabama, Utah,
Pennsylvania, Texas and Connecticut. Psychologists say the phenomenon
reflects young hormones and impulsivity, with technology increasing the
potential for long-term humiliation. It may also reflect a vogue for
exhibitionism, as demonstrated on MySpace, YouTube and other Web sites.
Craig Fabrikant, a Westwood psychologist who works with many northern
Bergen teens, said that sadly, trading nude cell phone pictures is
common around here these days.
Why?
“The novelty,” he said. “It’s a way of getting attention. . . Kids
today, in terms of sexuality, are much more open than previous
generations. The promiscuity of it is psychologically worrisome. It’s
degrading to our value system.”
So are parents supposed to spy on their teens’ cell phone snapshots now
to censor the scandalous? “That’s a good question and opens up a whole
area of you-don’t-trust-me-mom,” Fabrikant said. “Is there a good
answer? I don’t have it.”
Pascack Valley notified parents of the unsettling incident last week.
“This constitutes possession and or distribution of child pornography
and it is a violation of the district’s acceptable use policy,” high
school Principal Thomas DeMaio said in a June 5 letter to parents.
The letter said the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office had issued a
48-hour grace period to let students delete these items from their
computers, cell phones and iPods. Anyone found to have these images
after 48 hours risked being charged with the 4th degree crime of
possession of child pornography, it said.
Joseph Macellaro, chief of detectives of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s
Office, said today that his staff’s investigation is continuing.
“We are still looking into it, and we will make a decision based on
what we find out,” he said. “It is more than likely there won’t be any
charges.”
Hillsdale Police Chief Chip Stalter said his department was letting the
school handle the incident as an internal disciplinary matter. Laws
against child pornography were meant to be applied to “pedophiles and
child predators, not high school hi-jinx,” he said.
Two of his staffers — Patrolman Jeffrey Angermeyer, who is on the
prosecutor’s computer crimes task force, and school resource officer
Sean Kavanagh — lectured the entire high school on Friday to warn
students against the dangers of sending sexy photos to even one friend.
They stressed that once photos enter cyberspace, they can be seen by
college admissions officers and potential employers as well as
lascivious voyeurs.
“These things you think are very innocent and done in fun . . . can
ruin good chances for jobs later in life and cause great
embarrassment,” he said.
Parents picking up their teens from the high school on Monday expressed
dismay and alarm. Some students said the stern lecture from police made
them more aware of the consequences of such risky communications.
Anthony Delchop of Hillsdale, the parent of a 14-year-old freshman boy,
was sympathetic to the students. “I’m sure the ones who are hurt the
most are the parents of the girls and the boys who are being punished,”
Delchop added.
“You’re always worried,” said Gina Pille of Hillsdale, the parent of a
sophomore girl. “I don’t even know what they do on the computer.”
Joanne Ramella, of Hillsdale, the mother of a freshman, said she came
from a generation that did not use computers. She said her daughter,
from a more sheltered private school, had never been so close to such
turmoil.
“I’m disappointed,” Ramella said, as her daughter nodded in agreement.
“What’s important is educating young daughters what not to do and our
young men on how to be gentlemen.”
Sandra Russo of Washington Township has two nephews attending Pascack
Valley. She criticized the school’s computer protections and said the
school should be more careful in checking out laptops it issues.
“I would be furious if I were a parent and this were on their
computers,” Russo said. “It is absolutely crazy. Where is the security?”
Tantillo said the school’s spam filters blocked pictures from entering
its laptops via email. The offending photos must have been loaded onto
somebody’s pen drive, which was then plugged into laptops. Raunchy
photos were found on six or seven laptops, and on a cell phone
confiscated from a male student. The seven suspended students also lost
their privileges to access school technology networks and school email.
Students trading nude pics all too common, expert says
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Last updated: Tuesday June 10, 2008, EDT 8:01 PM
BY LESLIE BRODY
STAFF WRITER
The
Bergen County prosecutor said Tuesday that his office has investigated
a half-dozen incidents of students using their cell phones to trade
nude photos of classmates, and that children who do so often fail to
grasp the consequences.
John L. Molinelli said he is aware of at
least six incidents since he was appointed prosecutor six years ago in
which students were caught transmitting nude photos of their peers. The
latest incident resulted in the suspension of seven ninth-graders at
Pascack Valley High School for allegedly using cell phones and school
laptops to distribute nude photos of middle school girls.
“The
kids involved have absolutely no concept of what they are doing and how
dangerous it is,” Molinelli said. “They don’t understand the criminal
aspect of it.”
Fort Lee Detective Sgt. Patrick Kissane, president
of the New Jersey Association of School Resource Officers, said the
practice is alarmingly common, and it causes more pain and humiliation
than students realize.
“I can’t tell you the damage it does to
young teens when they’re at the most critical point of their lives
emotionally,” Kissane said. “It concerns cops not just as cops but as
parents. You see the damage done just by the push of the send button.”
Kissane’s
warning came the day after news broke about the suspensions at Pascack
Valley High School. More than 20 girls appeared in the photos, which
typically featured bare breasts. They are now in the ninth grade, but
school officials said they were photographed off campus when they were
in middle school.
Similar cases have hit the news recently from
several states across the country. Kissane said the issue stirred a lot
of discussion among police attending the New Jersey Juvenile Officers
Association three weeks ago even though the subject wasn’t on the
agenda. Several members said they had wrestled with similar incidents
in their districts.
“Sometimes girls take pictures of their
breasts and send them to boyfriends, and some boys send them pictures
of their genitals,” he said. “Or people are being intimate and taking
pictures of each other, and then they’re not friends anymore and they
send them around to embarrass” each other.
School officials and
police often don’t hear about these incidents because many families
don’t realize it’s a crime, or parents don’t want to amplify a teen’s
embarrassment by asking authorities to investigate.
Technically,
these offenses can be considered creation or distribution of child
pornography, and endangering the welfare of a child.
The
Hillsdale police decided to let the school treat the Pascack Valley
case as an internal disciplinary matter, on the grounds that child
pornography laws are aimed to catch sexual predators, not high school
pranksters. Molinelli said he supported that decision.
“We would rather that they understand the consequences of what they are doing through other means,” he said.
The
prosecutor’s office dispatched a representative to the high school on
Friday to explain the gravity of the offense to students at an assembly.
Molinelli
declined to identify the schools where the previous five incidents
occurred. In each case, the students were gien 48 hours to delete the
images to avoid prosecution.
“We had very successful results in
all five cases, and the students walked away with a much better
attitude about the issue,” he said.
Kissane said parents need to
be vigilant about how teens use ever-changing technology. Many parents
heed warnings that computers should be located in public spaces in
homes, “but now students are carrying mini-computers around with them
on their hips.”
He said schools need to teach kids to be more
wary too; “typically sex ed courses are about relationships and
pregnancy, but we need to do more to educate kids about protecting
their own integrity.”
The Pascack Valley superintendent, Benedict
Tantillo III, said Tuesday that reaction to the school’s handling of
the matter had “run the gamut.”
“Some parents are happy we went
through this and the students faced consequences,” he said. “Other
parents thought it was no big deal because all the kids do it.”
He
said none of the girls in the photos were suspended because it was
impossible to tell whether the pictures were self-portraits or snapped
by other people.
Praise God!
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