Teen Faces Child Porn Charge for Posting Nude Photos to Instagram

An Edgewater teen has been charged with distributing child pornography after police said he posted nude pictures of classmates online that were sent to him by other students.

Anne Arundel County Police said the 17-year-old boy was charged as a juvenile in July, following an investigation that began in March when police received several complaints about sexually explicit photos of juveniles being posted on Instagram pages. All the pages referenced different county high schools using code names.

“They’re now on the World Wide Web in a sexually explicit manner that we, the police, can’t do anything about. We can’t take it down. We don’t have the ability to take those down,” police Lt. T.J. Smith told WBAL TV.

Investigators determined that many of the photos were taken as selfies or consensually. That prompted authorities to caution parents to talk with their children about the dangers of posting risqué cellphone photos online.

Police say some of the girls sent the photos voluntarily to the suspect, while others were sent to him by boys.

The accused teen was a student at Southern High School last year; his status this school year is not known.

Anyone who notices explicit photos of underage youths online can report them to the Anne Arundel County Police Department, the Instagram Help Center at help.instagram.com, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Cyber Tip Line at http://www.cybertipline.com.

»»»See the full WBAL TV story here.