Sexting with a minor overseas Suppose that a person who is 22 years old and is an Algerian citizen has been sexting a minor who is 16 years old living in the UK. Can the Algerian be prosecuted, and if so for what?
The legal age of consent in the United Kingdom is 16 years old, and the legal age of consent in Algeria is also 16 years old so &quot;sexting&quot; itself would not be against the law. However, it is illegal in the UK &quot;to take, or permit to be taken [..] any indecent photography of a child&quot;. This counterintuitively also applies to a child (under 18 years of age) taking a photo of themselves, as the photo is considered &quot;Indecent&quot;. Within the UK prosecution of possessing, distributing, showing or making of indecent images of children isn't binary. Determining factors in potential prosecution are based on if (amongst other things): There is reason to believe that a child or young person has been coerced, blackmailed or groomed, or there are concerns about their capacity to consent (for example, owing to special educational needs). Source: gov.uk If the adult was trying to repeatedly solicit a picture from the minor then it could come under the Protection of Children Act. It's a legal grey area where it really depends on if the minor was pressured into sending pictures for the purposes of exploitation, malicious intent, persistent behaviour. 'Outcome 21' allows police in the UK discretion to determine if such behaviour occurred and whether to take action against those involved.
Yes, there is legal precedent against this that would only apply to a government employee. First, let's discuss the private sector. In this case, you are a private employee that comes to your place of work and accuses you of "stealing the cookies from the cookie jar" which is a serious criminal offense. They wish to talk and your boss is in the room. You plead the 5th, but your boss says you're fired if you don't talk to the cops. This is legal because you still have the right to refuse to talk, you just lose your job. A private employer has the right to free association, and wants nothing to do with cookie thieves, alleged or actual. However, in the government employ, your boss is an agent of the government. This same situation is different because the government pays the boss and the agent... so in essence the government is saying talk or be fired. This is unconstitutional as the government cannot retalitate against you for your refusal to talk. Generally, in order to talk to you, the investigator would need either a signed Garrity Statement or a Signed Kalkines Statement. The former is a statement saying that they are investigating a wrong doing but you cannot lose your job if you refuse to speak to the investigators, where as Kalkines says you must talk but you are granted immunity for your part in the wrong doing, so long as you make truthful statements. For more on this, check this legal blog. There is also the matter that a false accusation (and let me be clear... this is academic, I'm not saying the accusation in the real life topic is false, nor am I saying that the defense is false... we're merely discussing a possibility) is made to your employer and they do not offer the job on the basis of the accusation alone, this is grounds for defamation actions... and in certain jurisdictions, it's criminal defamation, so there could be jail time. It's interesting you mentioned teachers, because this happens alot. Kids do know that there are certain things that get a teacher fired quickly, so teachers do get the occasional false accusation of sexual assault (I know one teacher who has had multiple accusations over the course of her career). One of the few good things I can say about the Teachers Union is they cover the legal defense of accused teachers. The accusations do get the teacher removed from the class for sometime, but they don't lose their jobs over this matter. It's followed up but the accusation doesn't immediately lead to the teacher getting fired..
Just below the section you quoted it says: (3) The victim’s prior sexual conduct is not a relevant issue in a prosecution under this section. There is no stated provision for the case you mention. I suspect that the law would apply. Whether the authorities would choose to prosecute in such a case is a very different question. There might be caselaw of this subject. I wouldn't know. If this is more than hypothetical, i would urge consulting a lawyer with local knowledge of criminal practice.
The offences found in the Computer Misuse Act 1990 are criminal offences. The Limitations Act 1980 deals with civil offences and is thus not relevant. Apparently, there is no general statute of limitations for criminal offences in the UK (though for summary proceedings, the limit is in general 6 months).
I have not read the news report so cannot comment on the alleged offences and police conduct, but what I can say is that the information to given on arrest may be found at section 28 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE): (1) Subject to subsection (5) below, where a person is arrested, otherwise than by being informed that he is under arrest, the arrest is not lawful unless the person arrested is informed that he is under arrest as soon as is practicable after his arrest. (2) Where a person is arrested by a constable, subsection (1) above applies regardless of whether the fact of the arrest is obvious. (3) Subject to subsection (5) below, no arrest is lawful unless the person arrested is informed of the ground for the arrest at the time of, or as soon as is practicable after, the arrest. (4) Where a person is arrested by a constable, subsection (3) above applies regardless of whether the ground for the arrest is obvious. (5) Nothing in this section is to be taken to require a person to be informed— (a) that he is under arrest; or (b) of the ground for the arrest,if it was not reasonably practicable for him to be so informed by reason of his having escaped from arrest before the information could be given. Note the provisions at subsection (3) do not require anyone else to be told the grounds (reasons) at the time of arrest - including members of the public, protesters, bloggers or the press. Kerb-side debates can seriously or significantly distract the officer from ensuring e.g. public safety or preventing e.g. an escape from custody. Also, depending on what else is going on e.g. say in a dynamic and volatile crowd control or public order situation, the person under arrest does not need to told immediately if it would be impractical to do so. The operative phrase being as soon as is practicable, which is not defined by statute as each case needs to be considered individually according to its own set of circumstances. The relevant case law is DPP v Hawkins [1988] 1 WLR 1166, but the only detailed commentary I can find online is behind the PNLD paywall1. Succinctly, the magistrates initially dismissed the case against Hawkins for assaulting four police officers who kept him under arrest without giving the grounds as required by s.28(3) PACE. The DPP appealed, and the Court of Appeal sent the case back to the magistrates saying, inter alia, although there is an obligation under s.28(3) to tell a prisoner of the reason for his arrest as soon as possible (sic) after his arrest, a constable was also under an obligation to maintain that arrest until it was practicable to do so. 1Or free to law enforcement officers
If I were a DA (District Attorney) looking out "stamp out" statutory rape, I would make the rounds of the hospitals, identify women who gave birth, or were impregnated when underaged, and go from there. But few, if any DAs, do this. No, you wouldn't. First, you have neither the time nor the budget to do this. Second hospitals are not public property, you would need a warrant which the court won't give you because you don't have probable cause to believe a crime has or is being committed. As a DA, I would of course, follow up on any complaints lodged by the victim, or even by her/his parents. And maybe I would prosecute a case where people were "caught in the act, or there were nude pictures, etc. May even an especially egregious PDA (public display of affection). No, you wouldn't. You would follow up on complaints to the extent that you have the time, budget and manpower to do so and you would prosecute cases where you believe that you have a reasonable prospect of getting a conviction and where prosecution is, in your opinion, in the public interest. In the real world, that means where the police hand you a brief of evidence that is a lay-down misere and (for statutory rape) where there is a real power imbalance between the perpetrator and the victim - giving 2 willing 15 year old kids the label of 'sex offender' for life is probably not in the public interest. But suppose there were no complaints or smoking guns. Could someone investigate based on something like a teenager "holding hands" with someone much older? To make the question objective, what has historically caused DAs to prosecute people outside of the above parameters? With some exceptions, it is not the role of the DA to initiate or conduct investigations of criminal actions - that is the role of law enforcement officers, usually for this particular crime, police officers. Notwithstanding, the general rule in western, liberal democracies (which the United States, with a certain generosity of spirit, can still be considered) is that citizens are allowed to get on with their lives without day-to-day interference from the state. That is, law enforcement officers do not 'go fishing' for crimes, they investigate crimes that they have a probable cause to believe have actually happened, either because they themselves saw it happen or someone has reported it to them as having happened. The term for having a law enforcement officer following you around waiting for you to break the law is 'harassment' and may itself be illegal. A law enforcement officer can initiate an investigation based on anything but as no law enforcement agency has unlimited resources, they tend to follow only those investigations that might lead somewhere. For example, it has been known for parents to hold the hands of their children and even to publicly display affection towards them and parents are often "much older" then their children - this would not generally be grounds for initiating a statutory rape investigation.
The relevant US law is 18 USC Chapter 110. The law forbids minors depicted as engaging in "sexually explicit conduct", or forbids "child pornography", the latter section also defining "sexually explicit conduct". A minor appearing in a movie containing porn is not prohibited.
In the U.S. Those stories could constitute &quot;obscenity,&quot; in which case they could violate all sorts of federal and state laws. I was surprised to discover on this DoJ page: 18 U.S.C. § 1465 and § 1466: It is illegal to sell and distribute obscene material on the Internet. Convicted offenders face fines and up to 5 years in prison. It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet that includes obscenity and is available to any minor less than 17 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 231 –Child Online Protection Act of 1998). Under some state laws merely authoring or possessing obscene material is a felony. However, if the material is not obscene then it is actually protected by the first amendment. In fact many public schools (at least when I was growing up) required us to read &quot;literature&quot; (e.g., The Color Purple) that included descriptions of child rape and sexual abuse. Descriptions of purportedly actual sexual abuse of minors are also common in the testimony and published biographies of abuse victims. In the U.K. Such obscene stories are also illegal in the U.K. The relevant law is the Obscene Publications Act 1959. The Crown Prosecution Service provides information on the specific application of that and related laws.