LA County sheriff warns children about dangers of sending 'nude selfies'

LOS ANGELES >> Decrying a wave of nude selfies being uploaded by children across America, the Los Angeles County sheriff sent an open letter waing children of the risk of snapping obscene pictures of their nude bodies.

Obscene selfies “are forever present on the Inteet, viewed and traded like baseball cards by child molesters, predators, and extortionists,” Sheriff Jim McDoell wrote in a letter posted Sunday on Facebook and other social media sites.

“What may have started as a copycat of an online trend is now manifesting itself as a nexus between our teens and the predators who seek to exploit them for profit,” he said.

The sheriff waed parents to understand the legal jeopardy for teens sending nude photos over the Inteet or cellular devices. “Directing someone to make, send, or possess these photos is both a federal and state crime,” he said.

The department’s Human Trafficking Bureau has investigated 519 episodes of nude pictures of children on the web, with 81 of those cases in the past 73 days, he said.

About a quarter of these criminal cases involved young teenage girls and boys who had taken nude selfies “perhaps as an ‘act of love’ for a boyfriend or girlfriend, an act of teenage rebellion, a cry for attention ...” McDoell wrote.

Or, he continued, they were duped into taking the nude selfies by someone posing as a friend or teenage acquaintance.

“All too often, these images end up on the Inteet or in the hands of child predators, some of whom actually make contact with these children with specific intent of luring them into a relationship, extorting them for additional photos and videos, or in some cases, even money,” McDoell wrote.

The sheriff called on uamed “high profile individuals” to demonstrate ‘the importance of setting goals and teaching our children, especially our girls, that they have more to offer than just their bodies.”

“Our youth need public figures and parents to work together and provide information to our families about the high-risk consequences of inappropriate photo sharing,” the sheriff wrote.

“Online forums and websites that market themselves as platforms where these images ‘disappear’ are very misleading; let me be clear; these images never disappear,” McDoell waed.

And he said the consequences for the children can be catastrophic as the nude images are reposted on file sharing sites, “exponentially exposing these inappropriate and illegal images of a young girl or boy.”

Advertisement

“Afterward, our young victims often fall into deep depression and have suicidal feelings which stay with them for a lifetime,” McDoell said.