A girl from the Beverly community used the phone app Snapchat to text a nude photograph of herself to her boyfriend in Oak Lawn, who then used the app to disseminate the photo to other students and blackmail her into sending him more photos, according to Chicago police Detective Charlie Hollendoner and Ald. Matt O’Shea (D-19th).
“The victim’s family keeps calling because there’s another kid who sent it,” O’Shea said. “Every week, I’m getting a phone call (about more people seeing her photo).”
O’Shea and Hollendoner withheld the names of the girl and her school, as well as her grade level, to protect her from further embarrassment and to accommodate the ongoing police investigation, in which Hollendoner said “all parties are being investigated,” including the girl who sent the photo and the boy who used it, for potential violations of the state sexting law and possibly the child pornography statute.
“It’s a new crisis,” O’Shea said. “Girls all are sending nude photographs of themselves all over the place.”
Representatives for the clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, the state’s attorney’s office and the office of the chief judge said they did not have information readily available on whether there has been any recent increase in juvenile sexting or child pornography incidents.
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Hollendoner, who has investigated hundreds of sex crimes cases, said he has seen an increase in cases involving nude selfies by minors, witnessing “probably three a week” in the past year alone.
Peer pressure, he says, is the reason for the increased incidents, noting that students he spoke to – in the “more than 100” presentations he said he gave parents and students in the past year – have told him they “think it’s funny” or that they were trying to impress someone else.
“Public figures who are adults are doing it and laughing about it,” Hollendoner said.
The Beverly incident, which happened in March, spurred Chicago police and O’Shea to hold a “parents only” meeting at one of the schools in the area, St. John Fisher Grade School, 10200 S Washtenaw Ave. The meeting will be held Thursday, May 14 at 7 p.m., in the school’s basement, Kane Hall, O’Shea said, adding that parents from all schools in the 19th Ward are invited to attend.
At the meeting, Hollendoner, who has worked for the Chicago Police Department for more than 20 years, will give a presentation educating parents on the various pitfalls associated with minors having unchecked access to social media, including non-sexual incidents like the arrest in April of a 16-year-old at Marist High School who allegedly posted an online threat directed at a teacher, as previously reported in the Tribune. That student faces the felony charge of making a cyber threat; his next hearing is scheduled for May 14, according to Steve Campbell of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. A voicemail left with the Marist High School principal on Monday afternoon was not immediately returned.
Sister Jean McGrath, principal of St. John’s Fisher, said that while she appreciates the “vast opportunities” that technology brings students, “young and curious minds do not realize that the lack of security” on websites and apps.
“Kids trust that a single message to a ‘friend’ will go no farther than his or her phone,” but a single press of a button “releases the message far beyond the intended receiver.”
McGrath said her school has “carefully documented Internet safety policies, but it is almost impossible to keep up with exponential growth and change in social media.”
Cate Reidy, principal at Mount Greenwood Elementary School, which educates kindergarten through eighth grade pupils, said she also has witnessed an increase in social media incidents involving her students since she started her job eight years ago.
“When I started, cellphones were popular in eighth grade, but now it’s third grade,” she said, addressing the wider reach of social media these days. “We have third graders with iPhones — it’s ridiculous.”
The parents, she said, “don’t understand the ramifications that come with putting such a powerful tool in their kids’ hands.”
The incidents at Mount Greenwood, according to Reidy, haven’t involved nude photos or cyber threats, but “what I am seeing are pictures I would not be proud of my son or daughter posting. I am seeing a level of meanness in response to photos students post.”
Reidy said she learns about these incidents when students talk about them throughout the school or when parents call to complain about what their child’s peers have done to ridicule them online.
She said she hopes the meeting on Thursday will lead parents to more regularly check their children’s devices for social media use.
“I can’t parent 1,100 children,” said Reidy, who said she enforces a strict “no cellphones” policy for her students on school grounds, allowing them to use the main office phone if necessary. “I have to ask my parents, when it comes to this technology, that they take a more active role. They have to.”
Hollendoner agreed, pointing out that parents need to be involved when minors have free rein over their own devices: “There’s no big family computer in the living room anymore. Kids have to be taught responsibility, and the only way is if parents teach them.”
One of the hurdles, he said, is teaching all parents – even the parents of “good kids” – about social media risks:
“Parents should have an open mind, and not have this ‘my child would never do that’ mentality. It’s happening throughout the city, not just the Beverly or Mount Greenwood areas, but throughout the city we’re just getting inundated with these cases.”
Reidy agreed: “Everyone says I trust my child. All good kids make bad choices.”
A juvenile found in violation of the state sexting law, Hollendoner added, faces the penalty of counseling and does not receive a criminal charge or arrest history, even though the case is documented in reports in case of future incidents.
The child pornography statute, which could lead to a 10-year sex offender registration, he said, would require meeting a higher threshold of evidence and accounting for other factors, like the offender’s age. Minors who commit child pornography – photographing or sharing sexual photos of other minors – he said, are often not charged with child pornography violations, because that would be “too much for a stupid mistake” for someone so young.
Hollendoner, also a member of the Cook County tate’s Attorney’s Office of Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said he hopes to devise “a plan before the next school year so that kids can face more consequences for their actions.”
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Tara Kadioglu is a freelance reporter.