Bullycide Because of Sexting: Jesse Logan's Story

Sexting is now a practice that teenager's engage in and encompasses taking nude pictures with their camera phones and sending them to other's. One girl from Ohio had done just this but it was only to her boyfriend so its safe right? Wrong. When the two teenagers broke up the picture she had previously sent him, to a lot of the girls she went to school with. Girls can be very vicious to each other and there isn't a school in this nation that doesn't have that group of "mean girls". With such a personal and intimate picture floating around she became the "slut and whore" and was often reminded of this fact.

Too have to live daily knowing that a naked picture of her many people see has to really affect a teenage girl who has no idea that someone she thinks loves her could betray her in that way. She didn't do it out of a slutty thrill but because these days kids think that is how you show your boyfriend you love them. Boys send around pictures of themselves and they are vulgar and obscene in sexual tones that it probably didn't occur to her that it would be something passed around and that others would see it and that there is no way that she can ever get that photo back.

What is so brave about Jessie Logan is that she went onto a television interview in her Ohio city, to talk about what she has experienced as someone who engaged in the new teen phenomena of sexting. The reason this teen has stepped into the spotlight is because she doesn't want other teen girls to make her mistake and have to go through all that she has had to go through.

Heartbreaking is not long after she had shown such bravery and such compassion for future victims she, two months later in July of 2008, she hung herself in her bedroom.

She was barely 18-years-old.

According to Jessie's mother, this issue is more than the possible criminal charges you can now face for sexting, its actually about life and death. The same way that so many bullies through cyberspace has been depicted, its more about the life and death outcome than facing criminal charges. Its about facing the fact you caused someone to take their own life because of something that was not how a human being treats another and now have to live the rest of your life with the guilt you will one day feel for the way you disregarded someone's actual life.

Due to Sexting becoming a significant problem nationally, there have been laws implemented that can charge someone for sending these images to another minor as distributing child pornography. Truth is a staggering 39% of our kids nationally engage in this sexually explicit behavior with no regard to the consequences it can bring.

When your child is being bullied they are more likely to come and tell their parent about the other's behavior's and will most likely keep it to themselves if its related to sexting. What child wants to say they are being tormented because they took a naked picture of themselves to send to a boy and now that boy doesn't like them anymore and thought it would be funny to distribute it to the school. Jessie never told her mother about it and she only knew there was some problem when the school is sending letters home stating her daughter was habitually skipping school and was truant.

Not too surprising after all the stories I have done thus far, the school was notified by Jessie and they did nothing to help her or stop the behavior.

You know what they did to handle the problem? Went to the girl involved, instructed her to delete the picture, and not to speak to Jessie again. That girl was 16-years old.

The answer as to what they could do came from Jessie herself stating she was going to go on the news.

When the decision was made that Jessie would appear in the media and tackle the problem by taking it public, something that is brave for anyone to do, Lauer was told by an unnamed school official that they gave the option to Jessie of prosecuting her tormentors. Jessie was directly asked if she received this as an option of dealing with the problem and she stated it was a bold faced lie. She further inquired that if this was indeed true, as would be a process of a school to keep a paper trail and protect themselves from false allegations, than a letter would have been mailed to her offering her this option and she never received that or even a casual verbal remark.

After losing her daughter, Mrs Logan went on her own quest for some sort of justice. Her daughter had killed herself after coming home from another teenager she knew's funeral because that teenager had killed themselves. She went through a total of six different attorney's and has had no success in her battle for some justice.

There are laws that apply that concern this kind of situation and does depend on the age of the child. The law if the child is under 18 is that it can be charged as child porn. Even the person that took the picture and sent it the pic that is themselves can be charged. This leaves them registered sex offender's after its all said and done. If the sender is 18 and they sent their photo to a minor they are now giving porn to a minor. They are now criminals too.