Sexting an issue in Guelph

Sexting, according to Guelph Police, is becoming a more prevalent issue among teens.

And Sergeant Doug Pflug tells 570 News that when teens are sexting, it’s distributing child pornography, “Basically sexting is a situation when a young person will send a nude photo of themselves to a boyfriend, girlfriend, or a friend and basically they’re distributing child pornography if that person is under the age of 18.”

Pflug adds, “If a nude photo comes from anyone who’s under or appears to be under the age of 18, that’s deemed to be child porn. And if someone sends you one of those photos, I would suggest that you erase it right away, because there is an offence of being in possession of child porn and if you yourself send it someone else, you’ve just distributed child porn.”

And he adds there are other things to consider, “There’s no way to track where that picture goes. And that person can be re-victimized. One can only speculate that if down the road, you wanted to get a job, the last thing that you’d want as a 24-25 year old university grad is for an employer to pull out nude photos of you from when you were 15-16.”