US court on 'sexting': Child porn or child's play?

A county prosecutor in northeastern Pennsylvania threatened to pursue felony charges if the girls skipped his "re-education" course on such topics as sexual predators and "what it means to be a girl in today's society."

The photos show two 12-year-olds in training bras at a sleepover and a topless 16-year-old stepping out of the shower.

MaryJo Miller, 45, of Tunkhannock, thought her daughter Marissa and friend Grace Kelly were being "goofballs" in the 2007 slumber-party shot, which mysteriously surfaced two years late in student cell phones confiscated at school.

"You're going to see more provocative photos in a Victoria's Secret catalog," Miller, a classroom aide in the Tunkhannock Area School District, said after the hearing.

County officials say they are trying to address the pervasive problem of teens sexting, or exchanging sexually explicit photos and e-mails on their cell phones. According to one study, 20 percent of U.S. teens admit they have done it.

The American Civil Liberties Union considers the images in the Pennsylvania case harmless.

"We've been mystified how anybody can look at these photos and say these are second-degree felonies," Witold J. Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania's legal director, argued Friday in the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.