Sexting Didn’t Ruin This Girl’s Life, But an Arrest Might Have

Michaela Snyder, a 15-year-old girl from
Woodbury, Minnesota, was in seventh grade when her boyfriend asked
her to sext with him. She complied—sending him semi-nude pictures
of herself—but eventually her mother found the photos on her
phone. 

Michaela then became the subject of intense bullying at school
because rumors spread that she had deliberately ratted out her
boyfriend. (While I don’t think every bad experience at school
counts as bullying, this sounds like the real deal: Kids tripping
her, boycotting her at lunch, and telling her she should
“die.”)

The whole ordeal sounds just horrible. So here’s the ironic
part, according to Ruben
Rosario in TwinCities.com:

If you think this could not happen to your child, consider that
Michaela is the daughter of Grant Snyder, a veteran Minneapolis
police sergeant in the crimes against children unit who has spent
most of his career busting pimps and trying to help sexually
exploited young girls and women.

“I talked openly with her about the cases I worked on, how
(pimps) manipulate girls into (doing drugs and performing sex for
money),” he said. “I believe if you gave information, that was
protection enough. It wasn’t.

It’s not just ironic that her dad deals with sex crimes. It’s
ironic that he could have arrested his daughter for creating and
disseminating child porn had he wanted to. Then she would have
ended up on the sex offender registry.  That’s how easy it is
to ruin a life.

Sext arrests among minors aren’t theoretical.
Remember this
story? A 17-year-old boy and his 15-year-old girlfriend were
exchanging sexts. The boy was arrested and photographed—sans
undies—to certify him as the miscreant. But that wasn’t enough. The
authorities actually wanted to take him to a hospital and give him
an erection drug (vodka?) to make absolutely sure he was
the—forgive me—hardened criminal in the original photo that they
were calling child porn.

Only universal
ridicule
stopped them.

The happy ending to Michaela’s trauma is that she did not end up
on the sex offender list. What’s more, she rose above the shame,
realized that other young people are probably in her same
situation, and has gone public with her story as a sort of
motivational cautionary tale. Right on!

I hope she takes her story to law enforcement agencies next, to
remind them that often teens make regrettable choices when it comes
to sex. That doesn’t make them sex offenders. It makes them young,
horny, dumb. In other words, human.