Law student calls for sexting rethink
The law's double standard surrounding children consensually sexting each other needs to be re-examined with other methods of punishment and criminal action desperately needed, Australia's top law student says.
University of WA law honours student Rachel Lee recently submitted her thesis into sexting and found children faced the potential of serious legal consequences if found to be sending or receiving images of their peers.
Ms Lee, who was recently awarded the 2014 Law Student of the Year as part of Lawyer's Weekly Australian Law Awards, said the very severe laws used for paedophiles were being applied to children exchanging the messages and this caused a "double standard" for young people.
"Adults who engage in sexting don't have any legal framework that applies to them, unless it is stalking or threatening conduct, whereas there is this huge double standard for young people who may have a propensity to make decisions without appreciating the impact of those decisions," Ms Lee said.
She said sexting was part of a phenomenon where technology performed a role in people's lives that we have never seen it perform before.
"These are ordinary things that have always happened in the schoolyard - it's the new kissing behind the bike shed," Ms Lee said.
In her thesis she makes three main recommendations centred on dealing with sexting.
She said if sexting required a criminal response, where for example, images had been obtained through coercion, the under-utilised Federal offence of using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend should be used.
Second, Ms Lee said more research was needed into non-legal avenues of managing sexting, including the role teachers played in being able to deal with the issue.
Ms Lee would also like to see an exception to the law that would mean young people under 18 and within five years of age of each other would not be dealt with under child pornography laws.
