Disciplined through the school? The school is an institution for educating children. It is not the responsibility of the Cobb County School District to teach children the basic difference between right and wrong. It is not the responsibility of the Cobb County School District to rear children. When parents begin taking responsibility - teachers can concentrate on teaching.

I am curious, did the incident take place on school property or during school hours? The article does not provide that specific information.

Mike, why should the court and police be trying to do the parents' jobs either? If it was on school property, it was the responsibility of the school to address, probably by calling in the parents and then later discussing the rules again at a student assembly. Suspending the boy for a week or so. If it was off school property, then yes, it's completely the parents' responsibility.

Having the government handle this criminally is an overreach by government, trying to encroach on raising children.

It is expected schools, as essentially acting caregivers for the time students are in school, need to act as caregivers to some degree especially since school is required. Police and the courts are not caregivers. They should let the parents do their job.

If they were all adults, he wouldn't have been arrested.

It's a double-standard that he's treated in essence like an adult when if he were recieving the text he'd be considered a child victim.

According to statistics, 15% of teenagers would be thrown in prison if they caught every one of them. I'm sure everyone would be up in arms if they did this, since they'd know a kid that got locked up. So why are we ok with a few victims of the law?

It's very simple: Either they are old enough to make the decision and cannot be arrested for a crime they are not old enough to consent to, or they are old enough and the receivers were not victims either. Otherwise, it's a double-standard.

I would contact both the police and government officials to complain. It could be your kid next.

My children are too young to worry about this right now but if I had high school or middle aged school kids, I'd be raising a stink about this since I wouldn't want it to happen to my kid if they made a stupid decision. I am fully capable of raising my own kid and dealing with the issue with the parents of the other children and would't need my kid sent off to Juvenile detention for something like this.

That's how it works in a patriarchal society. You'd have to trace this back to Babylonian times and thereabouts when patriarchal societies took over most matriarchal societies, through war and domination of course. Patriarchal societies tend to be far more violent and control procreation. I'm not an advocate of either matriarchal or patriarchal societies. Both have their problems.

Our society is definitely patriarchal in origin and you can see that in the norms and laws.

Most people have identified that the main victim is the boy who is being arrested as if he's an adult. He's a victim of overzealous prosecution of sexting, as many unfortunate children have been.

This is absolutely not something for criminal courts. According to your logic, 15% of teenagers should be in prison.

He's lucky there's a Rome and Juliet law, essentially making this a misdemeanor, or he'd have a felon record as a juvenile. However, he doesn't need to go through this at all. Parents could have handled it.

This isn't something for the courts to decide. The boy is a minor. It's for the parents to do their job. They need to all meet and have a talk with their kids, and possibly all meet with the boy's parents and find out what's going on. If it was on school property, then the school should be disciplining as well (suspension, talking to the parents, warning all students against sexting, etc).

The problem today is that so many people would rather let the criminal courts take over their responsibility of what really should be done by the people themselves, especially parenting. However, laws are imperfect, so you get cases like this where you end up with a 17 year old victim of the system. However, we can't control everything our legislative bodies and the repercussions until after there are already victims.

What if it was your girl that sent the picture? Then would it be appropriate to throw her behind the iron bars and toss away the key?

First of all, I do vote. Second of all, it's the legislative system that creates the laws, not the judicial system. The judicial system simply interprets or strikes down laws as they are tested. Third, it's our job to do more than vote and elect the politicians. We are expected to provide feedback. Otherwise, only the extremists do. I'm sure you don't want some fascists or religious fundamentalists being the only ones speaking up when they don't agree with something.

Your viewpoint seems callous. What about the fact that 15% of teenagers should be arrested according to the law? By the way, it's probably more because some teenagers were probably afraid to answer truthfully. If your son or daughter, let's say 15 years old, sent his or her pictures to a schoolmate, would you be happy to see him or her arrested and think it was appropriate?

This is also a waste of taxpayer money if the law was successfully enforced and 15% (or more) of teenagers were arrested.

> If the parents have not taught him how to act in 17 years then I doubt that their is any hope for him at this point.

Ridiculous. Now not only are you saying he should be taught a lesson, but you are branding him as a criminal for the rest of his life because he did something that was poor judgement but happens all the time. You think he should be criminalized and become a hardened criminal.

good point, Mike.