Okay folks...did these kids commit a crime?

Is there a difference between a wrong doing and a crime?

Will...boys just be boys? Is that wrong?

5th-graders who viewed porn could face charges
American Fork » Boys searched for sex images on school computer.

By Lisa Schencker

The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 04/15/2009 10:50:59 PM MDT

Two American Fork fifth-graders could face criminal charges for looking at pornography on a school computer, but some people are wondering how they were able to access the images in the first place.

Police were called last week after two 11-year-old boys at Forbes Elementary School pulled up images of sexual acts on a school computer and then showed the pictures to nine other students, said American Fork Police Sgt. Gregg Ludlow. The incident came to light when one child told a parent and another told the principal.

Ludlow called the images "pretty explicit" but declined to elaborate. He said the boys made multiple attempts on different days to access inappropriate material. Ultimately, they typed the word "lesbian" into a search engine and were able to pull up pictures not blocked by the school's Internet filter.

The school suspended the boys for two days. They could face charges in juvenile court of dealing in material harmful to a minor or lesser charges for viewing pornography at school, or be referred to the probation department instead of going to court, among other possibilities, said Chris Yannelli, deputy Utah County Attorney. If they are adjudicated in juvenile court, consequences range from community service to serving time in a juvenile detention facility, he said.

Rhonda Bromley, Alpine School District spokeswoman, said district officials decided to involve police based on the seriousness of the case.

"The bottom
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line is, because of the age it's obviously a sensitive thing, but what they did was inappropriate, and it was wrong, so as educators and a society hopefully we need to help them learn that," Bromley said. "It's a little disappointing to hear people say, "Boys will be boys.' ... I don't know what the magic age is when people can stop saying 'Well, boys will be boys.'"

Ludlow said the boys subjected the other children to something they might not otherwise have seen.

"Our main emphasis is not to hammer these kids," Ludlow said. "If we can get them into the juvenile justice system and make sure they're getting some counseling or other services, that's our end goal."

But some say it was the school's responsibility to make sure inappropriate material was blocked from classroom computers, and the students shouldn't face criminal charges. A woman who identified herself as the mother of one of the boys spoke to host Doug Wright during his morning radio show Tuesday on KSL. She said the boys should not have been able to access the images.

"My first reaction was, 'Why did you do something so stupid?' but then I'm like, 'How? How did you do this? How was this able to be accessed when I send you to school and there are supposed to be filtration systems?' " she said on the show. "We are so disturbed at how this could be accessible at school."

Bromley said the district uses a filtration system provided through the Utah Education Network (UEN). All schools must have Internet filters in order to get federal discounts on telecommunication services and Internet access. Jim Stewart, UEN director of technical services, said 38 of the state's 40 school districts use the filter provided through UEN, as do all the state's charter schools. The other two districts, Jordan and Salt Lake City, have their own filtering systems.

The state also requires schools to hand out forms for parents and students to sign each year agreeing to use the Internet appropriately.

Stewart said the filter works by blocking millions of Web sites that contain inappropriate material, everything from pornography to hate speech. Every day, the company that runs the filter adds thousands of new Web sites to the list of sites to be blocked.

Stewart said it can be a challenge to keep up with the constant creation of new pornographic Web sites.

"The pornography sites are constantly changing and adding urls, and filtering providers are constantly out there on a search for those," Stewart said. He said school districts can also block Web sites beyond those on the list. Bromley said Alpine has since taken steps to block the types of sites the boys accessed.

She said the district is also looking into how to handle student Internet access when substitutes are assigned to classrooms. Normally, the boys' teacher would have been able to see all the students' screens on her computer, but a substitute who didn't have access to that system was teaching that day, Bromley said. She said the school has since rearranged the room so that the teacher's desk will face students' computer screens. She said the principal also decided to no longer allow classes to use the computer lab when they have substitute teachers.

"Obviously it's a concern how they were able to get around the filter and how they were able to access it at school," Bromley said. "You want to feel like you can send your kids to school and you want to feel confident something like that isn't going to happen."

I thought schools had blocks on sites. they can't google (or whatever) certain words. not sure I would say it's a crime but the school has the right to have some kind of discipline actions. plus hopefully the school will start blocking those

How do you criminally charge a child with an underdeveloped pre-frontal lobe for an action which does not cause physical harm to another and requires volition, which cannot be had without maturity?

I agree creative

Any thoughts on the boys will be boys thing?

Increasingly school yard play is being criminalized. Boys and girls discover each other in those early years in goofy, awkward ways to be sure but is making them child sex offenders the right thing?

it's natural for kids to be curious. i just wonder why the school didn't have blockers....and where was the teacher?

what exactly could they charge them with? There 11?

The kids are not at fault - in a criminal way - 2 day suspension is punishment enough if they understand what they were doing is wrong anf they knew before the act it was wrong...

Schools censor so much as it is.. boys will be boys.. kids will be kids.. put a rule out there and at LEAST one will try to break it or find a way around it.. the word they typed in was 'lesbian' so be it.. if schools start censoring 'gay' and 'lesbian' now there is going to be bigger issues.. that is JMO..

I dunno', some of those pictures could damage me. They's nasty! I don't go looking for them, danged near any key word will bring them up in the image selection.
If you locked up every kid who checked out porn, 90% of the male population would have been processed through Juvie.
When I was a kid, we had to draw the porn and pass it.

"Our main emphasis is not to hammer these kids," Ludlow said. "If we can get them into the juvenile justice system and make sure they're getting some counseling or other services, that's our end goal."

Really how uptight and anally retentive are we? I can recall sneaking peeks at a friend's father's porn collection and neither of us needed counseling for it. We just need to accept that kids are curious about sex and have need to know about it. What good is done by raising children in a bubble?

Just sneakin' a peek is like Clinton saying he didn't inhale.

HeII, I eyeballed the whole thing and when I learned that thing was fr sex too, I wore that puppy out and tried to get help with it.

well if it was my kid and they were too face criminal charges and/or school punishment

i would go after the school system for providing the means of which to see/view or otherwise obtain materials that could be considered immoral or derogatory in a social setting



THE SCHOOL IS RESPONSIBLE THEY PROVIDED THE MEANS

boys will be what you permit them to be

I was plenty curious and often tried to convince the girls in my neighborhood to help explore.

You can Google some easily evading the filter, a lot you just type in the name of the site (a lot of sites aren't blocked by the filter because they don't have terms like 'xxx' or 'porn, sex' in them).

It is against school rules, suspended. Nothing more, of course there is nothing more they can really do.

I completely agree. We knew more than our parents thought we knew years ago as well, we just didn't blab it to our parents so they could freak out about it.

Punish these kids too strictly and I guarentee they will look for even more hardcore, next time.

I hate when my child's school acts like boys will be boys. That's an just an excuse to me because I see it as the teacher is being lazy.

I am not sure I would put this in a boys will be boys category, or at least not at the worst level of it. Girls a capable of the same thing now, though the boys might be a bit earlier.. It's about exploring what we all started exploring in our early teens even before we realized what exactly we were experiencing. It's why I think kids need to learn the basics about sexuality in teenagers and respect for one another's space, etc. No details just what they should know to protect themselves from abuse.

Ahhh for the 70s All you had to worry about was mom finding the stack of nudie magazines under the bed..Ahh for the 70s again

I actually had something similar happen to my daughter when she was 10 or 11. She was trying to do a report on a president and went to Whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov, or whatever it really is. Turns out whitehouse.com was, at the time, an adult web site with no warning page. My daughter thought she had typed it wrong so she did it again. The librarian at the school saw her do it and took her to the office. Even after she explained what happened they said they had to suspend her because of their 'no tolerance' policy.

I explained that if they suspended her that my attorney would be contacting them about why they didn't protect my daughter against exposure to it.

They decided to let it slide.

And some of the teachers were hot too!
Made for some nice daydreams!