A sexting scandal involving more than twenty Habersham County middle school students is eliciting a swift response from the Habersham County School System and local law enforcement.
None of the photos were taken on school grounds but were viewed on at least one county school bus. A student who saw one of the photos told officials at South Habersham Middle School last Monday.
How it started
Officer Jamie Carver with the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office says the sexting apparently started when a female student at one of the middle schools sent a nude photo of herself to a male student through the popular photo messaging site SnapChat. The photo was saved and texted to other students. Carver says that caused a chain reaction of events that led to more students SnapChatting nude photos of themselves and sharing internet porn.
The nude images were sent by both male and female students. Carver says the girls’ photos were “collected like baseball cards.” He says the sexting involved students from all three Habersham County middle schools. “It started like wildfire,” Carver says. “Once it started, some of the girls said they would send a picture to one boy who would send the picture to three or four more boys.”
In several cases, Carver says, boys hounded the girls to share the nude photos with them, threatening to tell on them if they didn’t. Some students not involved in the photo sharing received unsolicited sext messages.
Carver says he has not viewed any of the photos but was told they included both rear and frontal nudity. He says no students’ faces were shown. Some students confessed to taking the pictures while at home alone or with friends and sexting them to fellow students. Carver says some of the images were sent under assumed names. He says the sexting was so widespread it’s difficult to determine exactly where all of the photos originated and who sent them.
How it’s being handled
After school administrators were notified, the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office was called in to investigate. Carver – who oversees the HCSO’s Choosing Healthy Activities and Methods Promoting Safety (C.H.A.M.P.S.) program – interviewed dozens of students last week in the course of that investigation. Parents of the involved students were contacted and called in to speak with law enforcement and school administrators.
Carver says some parents and students were visibly upset by the revelation, others just “laughed it off.”
Possession of child pornography is a felony, but Carver says no charges will be filed. Instead, the sheriff’s office and school system are working closely together to educate students and parents about social media safety.
North Habersham Middle School held a series of student assemblies on Friday, Feb. 6, during which female administrators spoke with the girls and Carver and male administrators spoke with the boys.
“When we talked to the kids on Friday the angle that we wanted to go with, more than anything else, is just to make sure they understood the part about self-respect,” says NHMS principal Brent Tuck. She says she finds the whole thing extremely disturbing as both an educator and a parent. “They’ve got to respect themselves and not be talked into something by somebody of the opposite sex. That’s my biggest concern as a mom.”
South Habersham Middle School Principal Daphne Penick says student assemblies also are planned at her school. She’s already met with the vice-principal, counselor and school resource officer (SRO) to prepare. She says the assemblies will focus on the legal, moral and social implications of the use and abuse of social media. “Anytime we have a situation where we feel like a child’s not using good judgement then we have to start educating them and raising awareness,” Penick says. “We’ve talked about social media safety for years and we’re just going to do more of it this year.”
School superintendent Matthew Cooper says student assemblies will be held in all of the county’s secondary schools – grades 6-12 – to educate them on the consequences of sexting and the use of social media, in general. In addition, notices are being sent home to Habersham County school parents this week alerting them to the problem and offering links to resources they can use to help guard their children against the dangers of social media.
The world at their fingertips
While these recent, widespread events bring the issue of sexting to the forefront in Habersham County, Cooper stresses this is not a new problem and it’s one parents and schools face worldwide. “This is an issue that’s been around since cellphones have been around,” he says. “Our concern is that people aren’t shocked anymore by this and they should be. It’s a very serious matter.” He adds, “This is not a good kid, bad kid issue. It’s something that can affect any of our students.”
Carver agrees. He says when you give your child a cellphone you’re handing them “the world” with all the knowledge and dangers that come with it. He likens it to placing pornography in your child’s bedroom and telling them not to look at it.
Law officers and school officials urge parents to remain vigilant when dealing with your kids and social media. “This is easier said than done,” says Penick, “but you have to stay a step ahead of them because they’re smart with technology. You have to constantly monitor what’s coming into your child’s electronics and what’s going out from your child’s electronics.” Tuck adds, “The best advice I can give a parent is just check your child’s phone. If they know you’re going to check it they’ll be more honest about what they do with it.”
Hidden secrets
Routinely checking your child’s cellphone and staying on top of the latest technology are important steps but Carver says, even then, kids still have ways to get around parental controls.
He says the first nude image in this sexting investigation was uncovered on a male student’s phone behind a calculator app. “It looked and worked just like a calculator,” Carver says, “but if you put in a secret sequence of numbers it would open a vault where the pictures were hidden.” He says there are other free apps that can be downloaded off of the internet that allow kids to set up dummy passwords on their phones. “They can have information and pictures on their phones hidden behind layers and layers of security.” The apps are free and don’t show up on cellphone bills so parents don’t know their kid is using them until their child gets into trouble.
So what’s a parent to do?
In reference to the current sexting scandal Carver says, “Some of these kids didn’t know what to do.” He urges parents to talk with their kids about the dangers of social media and stay actively engaged in their childrens’ lives. “The big thing is that you have to be open with your child and they have to have complete and total confidence that they can come to you.”
While the Habersham County School System is currently taking the lead in educating students and parents about social media safety in light of recent events, Carver says, utlimately, it’s the parents’ responsibility to protect their children in today’s digital age. “You never know who’s on the other side of that message,” he warns. He encourages parents to be proactive and ask their kids, “‘Why do you have that app? What do you use it for? Why do you need that app?'”
While there are numerous apps that connect young people to the world through messaging and photos, no app exists to erase that information. “Once they put it out there, who knows where it goes?” says Tuck. And that, she says, is the scariest part of all.
