In the hierarchy of dangerous teen activities - drinking, unprotected sex, reckless driving - the act of texting an explicit photo might not top most parental lists.
But in "Exposure," a new novel by North Carolina's Therese Fowler, two families are nearly destroyed when some naked photos prompt a sexting charge.
While the book is fiction, Fowler, who lives in Wake Forest, was inspired by her own son's ordeal. He had recently turned 19 when he was arrested in 2009 for sending explicit photos to a 16-year-old girl who was a friend. The charge shook Fowler's family, as her son confronted consequences that could follow him for life.
As it turns out, the book's timing couldn't have been better. Sexting is in the national spotlight, as schools and law enforcement agencies struggle to deal with young people who "sext," sending explicit photos, videos or texts by cell phone. The New York Times recently gave the topic front-page coverage, with a story about an eighth-grade girl whose nude photo went to cell phones of hundreds of other middle schoolers.
Prosecutors eventually dismissed the charge against Fowler's son. But she realized she had the premise for a riveting story. She persuaded her publisher to let her set aside a novel in the works to write another inspired by her son's experience.
"I realized," she said, "I had this unique opportunity to talk about this issue."
In "Exposure," high school seniors Anthony and Amelia are young lovers who attend a private school in Raleigh called Ravenswood Academy. (No reference intended, Fowler said, to Raleigh's Ravenscroft School.)
Amelia hides their relationship from her parents, knowing her overprotective father, a wealthy auto dealer, wouldn't approve. Anthony attends the posh school only because his divorced mother teaches there.
When Amelia's father discovers nude photos of Anthony on his daughter's computer, he calls the police. Anthony is arrested on a misdemeanor sexual offense, then Amelia is arrested when the district attorney launches a crusade against sexting.
Like Anthony, Fowler's son faced a misdemeanor charge of disseminating harmful materials to a minor. Fowler recounts this real-life incident in an author's note in the book. She's not revealing her son's name to protect his privacy.
And like Anthony, Fowler's son was handcuffed and taken to the Wake County jail. A prosecutor dismissed the charge after several months. If her son had been convicted, she says, he might have had to register as a sex offender.
Fowler didn't approve of her son's action. Her response, she says, was similar to Anthony's mother's reaction in the novel:
"Anthony, what were you thinking?"
Still, she didn't understand why it warranted a criminal charge. "If he had been sleeping with her, that wouldn't have been illegal," she said.
Existing pornography laws, she realized, weren't created to handle teenagers wielding smartphones.
Child porn laws at issue
Part of the problem dates back to the '90s, when legislatures began strengthening child pornography laws, said criminologist Andrew Harris, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell who is leading a study to help develop policies to address sexting.
"Nobody anticipated," he said, "that we were going to have 15 year olds producing their own pornography."
Now, he said, some states, though not North Carolina, have enacted new sexting laws that allow a more measured response.
Once Fowler began writing, she had a first draft of "Exposure" within five months. The writing came easily, she said, because she knew the story.
She interviewed her son for details to write the scene in which Anthony is processed for arrest at the jail:
After following instructions to take off his belt and remove his shoestrings, Anthony continued down a hallway, "shuffling so that he wouldn't walk out of his shoes. Now he could hear men's voices, some screaming in anger, others loud with laughter. Then, the closed-in smell of the hallways and rooms he'd been in gave way to the rank odors of locked-up unwashed humans and stale food."
Published in 28 nations
Fowler, 44, became a writer in her 30s, after enrolling as an undergraduate at N.C. State University. There, she gained confidence when an English professor, writer John Kessel, told her she had promise.
"Exposure" is her third novel. Her first two, "Souvenir" and "Reunion," have been published in more than 28 countries.
Fowler had never heard of sexting until her son's arrest, so the book's timing, she said, "is just a freaky coincidence." Her goal wasn't to spread an educational message, and yet, "I do think that's what books can do."
As a parent, she knows that teen brains don't finish developing until their early 20s. The last area to mature is the prefrontal cortex, which governs impulse control and risk-taking.
"It's partly just development that prevents them from seeing that big picture of consequences, and they seem to learn best by seeing experiences," she said. "So I'm hoping putting this in story form might do some good."
