Fairfax County school resource officer Marc MacDonald is part of a new county push to raise awareness of teen “sexting,” a trend of youths sending nude or sexually explicit pictures to each other via cell phones. The county is holding a series of town hall meetings on the issues, the next on Wednesday at West Springfield High School.
What’s driving this new push for awareness?
Teens have their hands on technology that our generation doesn’t know anything about. They can literally send an image around the world in the palm of their hand. They couldn’t do that before. Unfortunately they’re taking advantage of it. …
What is the police department’s strategy? Are there going to be a lot of prosecutions of teenagers?
Our goal is not prosecution. Our goal is to educate parents, specifically, and kids about the consequences of what can happen. There are legal consequences that are possible. But more importantly, the life consequences of one of these images of being forwarded or put on the Internet or sent around the world.
How is “sexting” affecting you on a day-to-day basis? Are you coming across this more and more?
It’s increasing quite a bit, especially with the amount of different devices that can be used to access the Internet to send these pictures, and because of the increase of different types of devices that make it so much easier. Unfortunately, an image can quickly be circulated around an entire group of kids, like a school, or on grade level. It can be forwarded so easily and reach so many kids so quickly that we’re trying to get ahead of it before it happens.
How many cases of “sexting” are you dealing with right now?
We really don’t know, because these cases aren’t all being handled exactly the same right now. Even for a police officer, it’s a fairly new thing. … We’re still trying to get a handle on it ourselves.
