As you probably know it's perfectly legal for a 16-year-old to consent to sex in the UK. However, if you're under the age of 18 then the person who you send those images to may find themselves in deep water.

The Mirror has a story about how two people, the man aged 22 and the woman aged 17 had exchanged the usual images that tend to happen when you're in a relationship with someone. Sadly the police have arrested the man for possession of indecent images of a child.

The girl argues that the law is absurd, she can consent to have sex, but not to send images of herself. This was her decision, and her older boyfriend had no idea that he was committing a crime. She also says that the intimacy of the police questioning was, in itself, incredibly invasive.

The young lady has had to quit college as the stress mounted, and she and her mother are now asking for changes to the law. She won't be charged with creating images of a minor, because the police took her age into account and saw that such a thing would be absurd. Her boyfriend isn't so lucky, sadly.

The pictures were only discovered when, through other and unrelated incident that left the police with her phone.

Of course protecting our youth is very important, but this is clearly ridiculous. The police have the ability to make logical decisions and this lacks any intelligent thinking whatsoever. Will the Crown Prosecution Service pursue this? Who knows, but two people have had their lives severely upset by something consensual.

It's time to change the law.

Source: The Mirror