High schoolers sexting nude pix... involving fruit!

CBCNews has an interesting report today from the eastern Ontario town of Napanee. Seems the Old Bill is thinking about charging some local high school students with, errr, something, after nude photos of teenage girls were allegedly swapped online. Our Canadian legal beagle (aka Agent 3) says the difficulty in knowing what charges to lay may stem from the sexting activity being (apparently) quite voluntary.

The Ontario Provincial Police have interviewed a number of students at Napanee District Secondary School, and the Limestone District School Board has suspended "about 15" boys and girls. Neither the coppers nor school officials would talk about the nature of the "inappropriate images", but the students were not shy about going public with what they saw.

Said one Grade 11 student, "There's some nudes being sent around between different ages and grades. It's pretty hard core. There's been some very inappropriate gestures, and some fruit used."

Students said the exchange of images has been going on for a long time. One kid told the CBC, "Everybody is doing it!"

Cue the inevitable expert on cyberbullying, one Rena Bivens, a sociologist at Ottawa's Carleton University. If teens won't stop sexting, she said, they should at least use precautions. Like what, Rena? Well, "you can cut your head out of the picture. That's one way to try to prevent your identity from being matched to that photo and being spread around."

Forces for Good in the community are rushing to help. The school notified parents in a recorded voicemail that it plans to discuss "cyber safety, and issues of respect and dignity".

And Krishna Burra, the school board's head of the "Safe and Caring Schools Program" said all students involved will need counselling. "Students who made bad choices on either side of this issue, they are going to need support and there's going to be the need for healing through all of this."

Walt is puzzling over how this "issue" can have two sides. What's the choice -- to sext or not to sext? How does a kid make a "bad choice on either side..." Strange...

As for the other buzzwords, let's see... "respect", "dignity", "safety", "counselling", "healing"... anything missing? Can't see anything about kids with raging hormones being allowed to be kids, but hey, this is the 21st century.

Note from Ed.: Surely you don't think we'd publish any of the pictures...especially the ones involving fruit! We don't want to get our dear readers into any trouble. In this era of political correctness, the Thought Police would probably jail you for even thinking about such things!