Yearbooks are printed in schools across the country annually that contain hundreds of pictures capturing events that occurred throughout the year. They are supposed to celebrate the accomplishments of the student body, the efforts made by sports teams, the current events and many more memories.
In one public school however, juveniles were threatened with felony possession of child pornography for their failure to return a yearbook that contained allegedly explicit material. The allegedly explicit material was a picture that happened to capture two students engaging in questionable behavior in the background of a photo.
The photo captured a 17-year-old male student with his hand up the skirt of a 15-year-old female student at one of the school sponsored dances. The inappropriate behavior was not the focus of the photo and according to students was unnoticeable until they received text messages telling them exactly on what page and what picture the image was located.
The yearbook staff editors failed to catch the behavior of the students in the background of one of the photos and the hundreds of yearbooks were printed and distributed. According to school officials, they have begun an investigation into the photo.
Although most students willingly volunteered to have their yearbooks edited to removed the picture or returned for a refund, it was the criminal threats that upset the students and their parents. “I am very angry,” said one father. “I know a lot of the kids that were threatened. I coach football up here, and a lot of them were very upset with the threats.”
Source: abc News, “Child Porn Found in School Yearbook,” Christina Caron, 17 June 2011