Helping teenagers see how an explicit text could ruin lives.

LACEY, Washington - One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend.

Both were in eighth grade. They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it.

“Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” In less than 24 hours, hundreds, possibly thousands, of students had received Margarite’s photo and forwarded it.

In short order, students would be handcuffed and humiliated, parents mortified and lessons learned at a harsh cost. Only then would the community try to turn the fiasco into an opportunity to educate.

American law enforcement officials and educators are struggling with how to confront minors who “sext,” or send sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another.

For teenagers, who have ready access to technology and are growing up in a culture that celebrates body flaunting, sexting is laughably easy, unremarkable and even compelling: the primary reason teenagers sext is to look cool and sexy to someone they find attractive.

“Having a naked picture of your significant other on your cellphone is an advertisement that you’re sexually active to a degree that gives you status,” said Rick Peters, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for Thurston County, which includes Lacey.

Sexting is not illegal. But when that sexually explicit image includes a participant who is under 18, child pornography laws may apply.

“I didn’t know it was against the law,” said Isaiah, who was arrested along with Margarite’s old friend and a 13-year-old girl who was also instrumental in propagating the nude photo. They were charged with dissemination of child pornography and faced up to 36 weeks in a juvenile detention center. They would be registered as sex offenders.

The contemporary teenager’s world, in many devloped countries, is steeped in highly sexualized messages. Extreme pornography is easily available on the Internet. Hit songs and music videos promote stripping and sexting.

“You can’t expect teenagers not to do something they see happening all around them,” said Susannah Stern, an associate professor at the University of San Diego who writes about adolescence and technology.

An Internet poll conducted for The Associated Press and MTV by Knowledge Networks in September 2009 indicated that 24 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds in the United States had been involved in some type of sexting . A December 2009 telephone poll from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that 5 percent of 14- to 17-year-old Americans had sent naked or nearly naked photos or video . Boys and girls send photos in roughly the same proportion, the survey found.

But a double standard holds. While a boy caught sending a picture of himself may be regarded as foolishly boastful, girls, regardless of their bravado, are castigated as sluts.

Photos of girls tend to go viral more often, because boys and girls will circulate girls’ photos in part to shame them, explained Danah Boyd, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Many American school districts have banned sexting and now authorize principals to search cellphones. At least 26 states have tried to pass some sort of sexting legislation since 2009.

“We have to protect kids from themselves sometimes,” said Justin T. Fitzsimmons, a senior attorney at the National District Attorneys Association in Alexandria, Virginia. “We’re on the cusp of teaching them how to manage their electronic reputations.”

Rick Peters, the prosecuting attorney in the Margarite case, never intended for the arrested students to receive draconian sentences. But he wanted to send a strong message to them .

Eventually a deal was brokered for the three teenagers . The offense would be amended from a child pornography felony to a gross misdemeanor of telephone harassment. Isaiah and the two girls would be eligible for a community service program that would keep them out of court, and the case could be dismissed.

Those three students would have to create public service material about the hazards of sexting, attend a session with Margarite to talk about what happened and otherwise have no contact with her.

Margarite had been living with her father, Dan, an industrial engineer, when she sent the sext. At the mediation, he was the last to speak. “I could say it was everyone else’s fault, but I had a piece of it, too,” he said. “I learned a big lesson about my lack of involvement in her use of the phone and texting. I trusted her too much.”

The photo most certainly still exists on cellphones, and perhaps on social networking sites, readily retrievable. “She will have to live with this for the rest of her life,” he said.

In October, authorities held forums about sexting for Lacey’s teachers, parents and student delegations from the town’s four middle schools.

Margarite went to stay with her mother, but within weeks of transferring to a nearby school, she was recognized by a boy who had a picture of her on his cellphone. The girls began to taunt her: Whore. Slut.

In January, almost a year to the day when her photo went viral, she decided to transfer back to her old district, where she figured she at least had some friends.

What is it like to be at school with the former friend who had sent her photo out?

“Before I switched back, I called her,” Margarite said. “I wanted to make sure the drama was squashed between us. She said, were we even legally allowed to talk? And I said we should talk, because we’d have math together. She apologized again.”

What advice would Margarite give anyone thinking of sending such a photo?

“I guess if they are about to send a picture,” she replied, laughing nervously, “and they have a feeling, like, they’re not sure they should, then don’t do it at all. I mean, what are you thinking? It’s freaking stupid!”


By JAN HOFFMAN