McKayla Maroney was put in a difficult situation over the weekend. Not only was her privacy violated when photos of her were leaked to the internet, but it turns out that the photos were also taken while she was under 18. The US gymnast initially denied the photos were her and within a short time after that more photos of her were released which she still denied were her. Then, yesterday, her lawyers sent off a bunch of letters to different websites, beginning with Reddit and said the photos of McKayla were taken when she was under 18 which would make them child pornography. The difficult situation for McKayla is that first of all I'm guessing she probably told her parents the pictures were fake and continued to stand by that story. When the additional photos were released that story probably did not hold up any longer and she told them the truth. Her second problem is that if she was under age when the photos were taken and she sent the to someone, then she would be guilty of distributing child pornography and the person who received them would be guilty of possessing child pornography because that person would presumably be aware that McKayla was under the age of 18. Even if McKayla didn't send the photos anywhere and even though they are of her own body, she could still potentially be prosecuted for possession of child pornography.
You might be saying to yourself that she won't be prosecuted for sending selfies but there are several states that have punished underage high school students for sending naked selfies of themselves and have especially cracked down when the recipient then forwarded the photos. Just last month a 17 year old teen was arrested in MD after he sent naked selfies that he had been forwarded by classmates he was dating in high school. As for all the people that downloaded the photos of McKayla, nothing will happen to them if they remove the photos because they didn't know she was under 18.
