When a revealing photo of a Nampa high school girl was sent by text message to many of her classmates, the case hit the headlines as the first case of "sexting" in the Treasure Valley.

Prosecutors in Ada and Canyon counties, however, said this was just one of many, but the first to become known to the broader community.

The problem - of children sending sexual photos of themselves and others via cell phones, computers and other electronic devices - has been growing over the past five years, they said.

Bryan Taylor, chief of the special victims unit at the Canyon County Sheriff's Office, said that over the past two months he's been getting two calls a week from school resource officers alerting him to inappropriate photos disseminated by students.

"We catch them with the cell phones in schools," Taylor said.

No specific numbers were available, but most cases are handled quietly out of court through diversion programs. The most serious cases end up in juvenile court - where the records are sealed.

Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Jean Fisher, supervisor of the unit for crimes against children and sexual assault, said the office reviews cases of kids disseminating pornographic photos every month, often several a month.

BALANCING EDUCATION AND PUNISHMENT

Parents may think forwarding photos is little more than a harmless prank by hormonal teens, but kids in some parts of the country are being prosecuted under felony child pornography laws. Those convicted must register as juvenile sex offenders.

"They are seeing so much of it that they are trying to stop it," said New Jersey attorney Parry Aftab, a national expert on "sexting" who created the informational Web sites WiredSafety.org and WiredKids.org. "They don't know what to do. It's either prosecute or don't prosecute."

Local prosecutors say felony porn charges are too punitive for most sexting cases, but they also say teens must be punished for actions that are harmful to their peers.

"There does need to be some kind of consequence," Canyon County Prosecutor John Bujak said.

Canyon County kids who do this in the future may face charges of misdemeanor disseminating material harmful to minors. Those convicted face up to 90 days in juvenile detention.

Bujak said his office met with law enforcement officials from several agencies in Canyon County last week, and all agreed that kids need to be educated on the issue. They plan to visit schools in the fall to talk to students, possibly even sixth-graders.

"There were concerns that this stuff may be happening at the middle-school level," Bujak said.

NOT A HARMLESS PRANK

Fisher, the Ada County deputy prosecutor, said one of the most common scenarios is a boy who sends out photos of a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend he is mad at. The malice is evident.

"It's not usually sent out in a nice manner. It might say, 'Look at this whore, or look at this bitch,' " Fisher said. "It's never done, in my mind, harmlessly."

Fisher said the girls whose photos are forwarded to classmates often suffer bullying or taunting by other students afterward.

"As it goes through the school and kids start to turn on them, they say, 'Yeah, you are a slut.' Their lives are upside down," Fisher said. "This is not just a magazine with some woman you don't know. There is a real person behind this."

The victims of this kind of humiliation don't always recover. Jessica Logan, an 18-year-old Ohio girl whose boyfriend circulated nude photos of Logan after they broke up, hanged herself in 2008.

The problem is more common than you may think. A 2008 survey by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that 22 percent of teen girls and 18 percent of teen boys had electronically sent or posted online nude or semi-nude photos or videos.

Aftab said kids who get caught up in this find it hard to talk to adults about it.

"How are you going to tell your parents 'I took naked photos of myself' (and sent them to someone). ... They can't go to their parents for help," Aftab said.

A NEW TWIST ON AN OLD, TROUBLING, TIME OF LIFE

Bujak and Fisher said the scope of the problem has widened with technology, because kids can now forward inappropriate photos and messages to hundreds of classmates by pushing a few buttons. Such messages go "viral" and spread like wildfire.

"The text phones are a really easy avenue to attach photos and send," said Fisher, who noted that kids also use their phones to shoot video. In some cases, that footage has been used to prosecute them for crimes such as rape.

The kids who create sexually explicit photos of themselves usually don't think the images will go beyond a single intended recipient.

Contemporary technology has added a new twist to the old story of teens exploring their burgeoning sexuality, says Boise State University psychology professor Eric Landrum.

"Teenagers forever have had chances to embarrass themselves, deal with trust issues and make good or poor choices," Landrum said.

While teenagers 20 years ago might have passed around a Polaroid photo, today they can send one via text message to everyone in their school.

The consequences can be devastating, as the recent Nampa sexting case has shown. Police say a female student at Nampa High School sent a sexually explicit photo to a boy, who then forwarded it on to a number of others. How many others is unclear.

"It went out to a huge number of students," Bujak said.

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN IT HAPPENS?

Parents should keep in mind that kids may receive unsolicited photos from others they barely know, as kids sometimes swap phone numbers and e-mail addresses with others when socializing.

Aftab, the national expert on sexting issues, said anyone who receives sexually explicit photos should delete them immediately. If you hang on to a photo like that or forward it, you could face charges for possession or dissemination of child porn.

Keeping kids from getting into trouble with their phones, computers and social media isn't impossible. Parents are key.

Boise mom Denise Engebrecht said she found a number of ways to prevent her kids from receiving or passing along inappropriate items from friends or the Internet, including naked photos.

First, she asked her cell phone service provider to disable the feature on her sons' phones that allowed them to send and receive photos.

"From day one, I just had it that way," Engebrecht said. "I just told them I didn't want them to be able to have the picture message feature."

She monitored her kids' computer usage in a variety of ways, never assuming that AOL's parental controls had prevented them from inadvertently or intentionally accessing inappropriate things. Once they were in high school, she got rid of AOL but continued to make regular checks of where the kids had been online and did not allow them to have computers in their rooms.

When her kids joined Facebook, she insisted that they become "friends" with her so that she could keep in touch with what they were up to online.

"It's easy for kids to hide what they are looking at from their parents, if they are in their bedrooms ... computers should be in the living room, facing out," Engebrecht said. "I feel really strongly about this.

Katy Moeller: 377-6413