Some teens do it as a joke. Others to impress their boyfriends. Three-fourths of them know it may lead to trouble.

It’s sexting and as many as 39 percent of teens do it.

Sexting or sex texting entails sending sexually explicit photos or messages via cell phone.

For today’s teenagers sexting is the updated version of passing a note to a classmate. Or is it something more dangerous?

That is the question facing lawmakers, the courts and police as more and more people send explicit photos or messages via cell phones.

Prosecuting the increasing number of criminal cases involving sexting is frustrating for district attorneys and law enforcement agencies across the state, because Oregon law lags behind the technology, Coos County District Attorney R. Paul Frasier said.

For parents whose kids have been caught in the courts, sexting is no innocent game or harmless flirtation.

The mother of a man convicted in Coos County on a charge involving sexting said the people who sex text the most — teens and young adults — are often unaware of the consequences of sending and responding to naughty messages.

Until they are slapped with charges.

Those charges can include online corruption of a child, using a child in a sexual display and encouraging child sex abuse. A conviction brings jail time.

When is it child abuse?

Frasier is hesitant file charges in circumstances where kids are just being kids — sending flirtatious messages and photos to each other.

“Part of me says if it’s kids doing something stupid, that doesn’t necessarily need to involve the courts,” the DA said. “But it’s a different story if an adult wants to convince a minor to engage in sexual activity by sending explicit materials.”

 Oregon lawmakers just made it easier to prosecute those kinds of cases. The Legislature updated a law expanding Oregon’s definition of online corruption of a child to include sexting.

Co-sponsor Rep. Andy Olson, R-Albany, said he decided to sponsor a bill a couple years ago, after state agencies could not prosecute a Scio teacher who had been sending a student inappropriate messages.

“There wasn’t really any law that prohibited that.” Olson said. “Today it’s a whole different ball game.”

The original law passed in 2007.

 “We didn’t really consider the technology aspect,” he said. “That happens when you develop policy. You don’t catch everything right at the beginning.”

Consequences

Olson expects there will be more laws to address sexting. He is thinking about sponsoring legislation to make it a crime for a minor to send explicit text messages or photos to another minor if the recipient is at least three years younger than the sender.

Olson said the law would not apply to teens who are sending and receiving the messages willingly.

“You are going to have to have a victim,” he said. “If you don’t have a victim, you don’t have a crime.”

There’s more than the criminal aspect of sexting to consider before shooting off a text.

“Kids need to realize if they send it out, it’s there forever,” Frasier said. “It’s going to be in a database somewhere.”

Images can spread like wildfire, from one cell phone-toting teen to another.

Frasier also warns that photos meant for a teen’s boyfriend or girlfriend can end up on the computers of dangerous people.

“Sexual predators look for that kind of picture,” he said.

What seems innocent and one moment, may soon become a regrettable mistake.

“A lot of people did something when they were younger they wish they could take back.” Frasier said. “I think this would be one of them.”

A mother’s regret

The parent of a man recently convicted in a sexting case said adults too should be keenly aware of criminal implications of the changing technological environment.

Lori Spray’s 27-year-old son, Jeremiah Ackerman, was convicted last month of online corruption of a child, a case which involved text messaging and sending photos via computer and cell phone. He was sentenced to a year and a half in prison and will have to register as a sex offender.

She isn’t saying her son shouldn’t be punished. He is an adult and should pay for his actions, she said, but he shouldn’t have to pay for the rest of his life. Spray said her son’s mistake was responding to the photos the girl sent to him.

She is hoping to work with Oregon lawmakers on legislation that would allow the review of cases of nonviolent, first-time offenders after a certain amount of years following the conviction. If they have not re-offended, they could have a chance to have the sex offender label removed.

“My heart hurts because if things aren’t ever to change for my son, his life is ruined,” she said.