Orinda: Nude photos online removed after student writes about them
For about four years, teens in the Lamorinda area widely uploaded and shared hundreds of nude or racy photos of teenage girls and young women to an online Dropbox site that was unknown to parents, teachers and law enforcement.
Among the treasures:Β Demi Lovato
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Adults and police learned of the scandal only after Miramonte High School student journalist Sofia Ruiz on Jan. 9 wrote a story for the school newspaper, The Mirador, titled: “Lamorinda Nudes Dropbox Must Come Down.” The photo gallery has since been removed.
“Although boys don’t generally voice their distaste of the site, many girls tend to be uncomfortable with the thought of their peers being nothing more than ‘trading cards,’ ” she wrote. “So far, people have turned a blind eye to it.”
Also discovered … Brenda Song: –
That changed after the story was published. School administrators contacted police, said Orinda police Chief Mark Nagel. He said the site was a veritable cache of photos, most of them unidentified or misidentified.
Needless to say, Vanessa Hudgens was one of the main character …
“There were over 650 pictures,” he said. “At the time, we couldn’t verify a crime. We couldn’t verify ages; we couldn’t verify people. We couldn’t verify anything. There weren’t obvious pictures of underage kids in this. We didn’t have much to go on.”
When one of the females in a photo was identified as a Moraga resident, Orinda police notified Moraga police.
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Both the Orinda and Moraga police departments notified Dropbox about the site and asked that it be taken down. The company removed the site Feb. 25, said Moraga police Lt. Jon King.
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“A great majority of these photos were taken two, three or some of them four years ago, so this had been going on for a while,” he said. “The women who we spoke with were not interested in pursuing any kind of criminal charges.”
Aly Michalka
This is the second Bay Area social media scandal in recent years involving a large number of high school boys sharing sexual content.
In 2012, administrators at Piedmont High found out about a sex fantasy league that involved boys in varsity sports racking up “points” for participating in sexual activity with girls at the school.
Nagel said teens today appear to treat some activities involving smartphones as “pranks.” Orinda police found that some of the photos were labeled with the names of other people, which appeared to be considered a joke.
“I think they were attaching names to pictures and saying, ‘This is so-and-so,’ and then it wasn’t,” he said. “So, I think it was kind of a prank at times.”
Many of the photos were self-taken, but the majority appeared to have been uploaded by someone else, such as a boyfriend or friend, King said. Police and Acalanes Union High School District officials are trying to spread the message to students that uploading nude photos of girls under 18 is a crime, violating state laws related to lewd and lascivious activity and child pornography, King said.
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Dropbox saved the images and forwarded them to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to see whether any of the photos involve girls who were reported missing or who were taken advantage of, he said. If any such victims are found, he said the case will be returned to the local Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Nagel said Orinda police did not pursue any violations of mandated reporting laws against school employees because he believed they reported the site after they found out about it. Journalism teacher Melissa Quiter said adults at the school were “clueless” about the site until Ruiz wrote about it.
Ashley Tisdale … OK
Quiter said she was proud of Ruiz for taking on such a tough and controversial issue, which showed that student journalists can make a difference.
Ruiz’s piece has received more than 2,500 online hits and prompted a letter to the Mirador editor from Elizabeth Perlman, the executive director of a nonprofit organization that supports girls in finding their voice and developing leadership skills, urging students to stop sexting and treat each other with respect.
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“You can’t honor and respect another person until you can honor and respect yourself,” Perlman said Thursday. “In the culture we live in right now, girls are expected to beΒ not only beautiful but sexy. I don’t think that leads to healthy, satisfying relationships.”
Of course, when it comes to Disney Porn, nothing is complete without Selena Gomez …