(Lyons/Webster, N.Y.) - A 16-year-old Webster boy is facing felony charges for something many kids do; exchanging pictures or movies over their cell phones.
But, in this case, Wayne County Sheriff’s investigators said the pictures being exchanged were pornographic images of a 15-year-old girl. This constitutes child pornography, and when John Sciabica allegedly sent them to friends, he committed another crime, according to police.
It began when the girl sent sexually explicit images of herself through a cell phone to Sciabica and he was technically possessing child pornography.
"Not too smart from her to actually go through with it, a trusting situation that is going to be a private situation between two people," Wayne County Sheriff’s investigator Lt. Robert Hetzke said. "But, he enticed her to do that."
The crime may have gone unnoticed, but detectives say Sciabica didn't keep the images to himself. Instead, he sent them to friends in his phone’s address book, beginning a string of messages that landed on an unknown number of phones or computers.
When one of those recipients contacted the 15-year-old victim, she and her parents went to the police.
"Now her picture is out there, and we don't know how far it is out there," Hetzke said. "You know once it gets transferred to a telephone that can easily be transferred to an e-mail account, an e-mail account can go out and it could be anyplace in the world with technology."
Sciabica's attorney said the charges exaggerate what really happened. He claims his client received images the victim took, and despite being a young teen he's now facing felony criminal charges and possible jail time.
Investigators see the facts of the case quite differently.
"He disseminated it, promoted it, passed it on to other juveniles and adults, these nude pictures of a juvenile which is a crime," Hetzke said. "Be it the Internet or a telephone, once you hit that ‘send button’ you can't get it back and it's gone, and it's out there, and it happens really fast."
Sciabica’s lawyer said, while being sensitive to the female victim in this circumstance, these charges also provide some level of embarrassment and serious consequences to his client, who is just a year older than the victim. He worries the statutes on the law books don't reflect the society that technology has created, and he’s now handled a few similar cases this year.
Investigators say the charges in cases similar to this one can potentially become federal crimes, with much more serious penalties, if digital images cross state lines.
According to Wayne County Sheriff's Detectives, John Sciabica currently faces a charge of Promoting aA Sexual Performance of a child less than 17 years of age, and another charge for Possessing a Sexual Performance by a child less than 16 years old. Sciabica is due back in court next month to answer to these charges.
