It was with special interest that I watched last night’s segment of the John Oliver show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” In the middle of last week, I received a call from one of the show’s researchers, and had an interesting discussion about various state and federal laws that might apply to revenge porn,…
Parents, educators, and law enforcement agencies around the world are grappling with the phenomenon of underage sexting. Despite increasingly strident warnings from adults to children about the risks of taking and distributing nude photos, the trend shows no sign of slacking anytime soon. In fact, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency recently declared that sexting…
[This blog post originally appeared on Good Digital Parenting.] With summer vacation looming (but not fast enough for the kids!), parents are once again confronted with the question of how to keep their children occupied, entertained, and safe during the long break. The challenge of keeping kids safe is a little more complicated than it…
On May 6, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed into law a bill entitled “The End to Cyberbullying Act,” which among other things broadened the definition of bullying in Georgia to specifically include “cyberbullying.” At its meeting on May 28, for instance, the Cobb County Board of Education adopted a couple of amendments to their existing…
Cape May County Prosecutor Cape May County Prosecutor Robert Taylor announced on May 26 that his office has charged 19 juveniles and 1 adult in a two-school sexting scandal. On April 23, a female student told school officials at the Lower Cape May Regional High School that nude photos of a friend were being shared…
Out of the far northeast of England comes a disturbing report, courtesy of a Freedom of Information request filed by the Daily Mail. Over the last year, the Northumbria Police have investigated a number of sexting cases involving children as young as 10, 11, and 12 years of age. The Northumbria Police force is one…
On April 30, the United States Department of Education released a report entitled “Student Reports of Bullying and Cyber-Bullying: Results From the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey.” The report contains good news on the cyberbullying front: The percentage of teens ages 12-18 who reported being bullied at school fell to…
Scott Schermerhorn, 31, a physical education teacher and boys’ golf coach at Clarksville High School in Indiana was arrested and suspended on April 16, when police accused him of soliciting nude photos from underage students at the school. In February, a 15 or 16-year-old girl (accounts differ) told a trusted adult friend that she had…
As I discussed in detail in Cybertraps for the Young, one of the most disturbing aspects of the digital revolution is that it has empowered children to commit crimes that once were exclusively the domain of adults. There is no better example than the fact that every single day, thousands of children around the globe…
Reporter Alyssa Gambla (@AlyssaGambla) had an interesting report on Fox 32’s 9 & 10 News in northern Michigan last night. Entitled “Catching a Sex Offender,” Gambla presented a behind-the-scenes look at the resources deployed by the Charlevoix County Sheriff’s Department. One of the people she interviewed was Deputy Bill Church, who reminded people that when…
