Within about a month, up to five local teenagers could face sentencing for a sexting case that has drawn attention to Hillsdale from around the state.
The story broke in October when Hillsdale’s assistant county prosecutor began investigating allegations that two underage women from Hillsdale High School sent sexually explicit pictures of themselves to an underage male student who attends Quincy High School.
Megan Stiverson, the prosecutor, said that because of statewide budget cuts, crime labs have a backlog that has delayed the case’s resolution. She said she expects to get results from the subpoena of the phones’ hardware and finish the investigation within the next 30 days. She also said that the results of the subpoena could implicate two more students in the crime.
This isn’t the first sexting case Stiverson has prosecuted.
“It’s not just a Hillsdale County problem, either,” she said. “It’s widespread, it’s throughout the state, and it’s throughout the country, too.”
She said that prosecuting these crimes, which may seem victimless, helps keep pornographic material from reaching pedophiles.
“If you take a picture, it’s there forever, and some of this stuff comes back to haunt these kids,” she said.
It’s illegal to possess, distribute, and manufacture sexually explicit material containing minors –– which means that as soon as minors take sexually explicit photos of themselves, they have broken the law, even if they never send those pictures to anyone else.
Stiverson said that she thinks the rate of sexting has increased in part because growing numbers of high school students have cell phones.
“It’s a lot easier to flirt with someone or enter some kind of relationship if you don’t have to look that person in the face,” she said.
