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16-year-old become youngest person to be convicted of revenge porn (3 February 2015)

Date: 03/02/2015
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, 16-year-old become youngest person to be convicted of revenge porn

A 16-year-old boy has become the youngest person to be convicted of revenge porn, after he sold two images of his former girlfriend for a fee.

The Daily Mail reports that the boy was just 14 when he took possession of the images and the transaction took place.

Police found 170 indecent images of the 15-year-old girl on his phone, two of which he had sold for £10 through Facebook. A court heard that his ex-girlfriend had emailed the images to the teenager before their relationship ended, after which she discovered post that he had sold two of the images of her.

The court was told that the girl at the centre of the case had not thought she was “doing anything wrong” when she sent the images of herself to her then boyfriend. After their relationship ended, she had asked him to destroy the images she had sent – but then discovered he had sold them for a nominal amount of money.

The victim reported the incident to police, who raided the boy’s home and seized his mobile phone, laptop computer and desktop computer.

The second defendant aged 15 claimed that the first image had been sent to him accidentally, but then he had requested more. After paying his friend £10, he was sent two further images described as explicit, which he had saved to a protected file on his computer.

On Friday (30/01/15), at a youth court in Plymouth, the 16-year-old was charged with two counts of distributing photographs of a child – and one count of possession of 24 images of a child with a view to them being distributed or shown to another.

The boy was also charged with three counts of making indecent photographs of a child – and possession of indecent photographs of children.

The friend he sent the images to – now aged 17 – was convicted of two charges of possessing indecent photos of a child.

Both boys were given 12-month referral orders and ordered to each pay £100 in costs. Neither can be named for legal reasons.

Facebook has said that incidents of revenge porn on the site are taken “very seriously”, adding that there is no mechanism for paying for such images on Facebook.

The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill is currently going through Parliament and contains an amendment which could see those convicted of revenge porn facing a two-year jail sentence.

Will Gardner of the charity Childnet said:

”It is essential that schools and parents educate young people about the potentially serious consequences of taking and sharing sexual images.

“Sex education in the digital age needs to teach young people the laws surrounding sex and the Internet – and how consent, respect and trust are essential both online and offline.”

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