The story involved a major police investigation into “sexting” in a Falls Church middle school — yes, middle school, grades six through eight. Sexting, in case you’ve just been rescued from years of isolation on a desert island somewhere, involves the transmission of sexually explicit images via, usually, cell phone.

While no one has been charged so far in the probe, and naturally the identities of those involved are being withheld, the Post reported that “investigators with the Falls Church police have recovered explicit images, discovered some were posted on social media and learned one high school student appeared topless during a live session on Instagram, according to the search warrant.”

What will become of the investigation is unclear, because while there has apparently been some wildly inappropriate stuff going on with minors (and the implication is that this is not at all a unique situation), there is a difficulty in charging young people with sexting. The closest statute covers child pornography. Sexting sort of falls under that category since it involves explicit images of minors. But police, prosecutors, parents and judges often can see a wide distinction between the creep exploiting children for some other creep to get his jollies versus the thirteen-year-old executing bad judgment.

Some efforts have been made to codify a more appropriate law, perhaps making sexting among minors a misdemeanor as opposed to a felony. But these efforts have yet to gain much momentum. In practice, the child porn charges against minors apparently are usually reduced to lesser offenses in a plea bargain anyway.

Now, let me be clear: the suggestion that the punishment should fit the crime in no way downplays the seriousness of the offense. While some are prone to shrug off sexting as an innocent byproduct of raging hormones (for instance, look at the comments on the Washington Post story), this practice can have serious, and seriously unintended, consequences.

In the Falls Church case, part of the story involved a couple of children sending each other photos while in a relationship, wildly inappropriate to their ages though it was. However, as will come as no great surprise to anyone except adolescents, adolescent romances don’t tend to last very long. Once the couple, only a few years removed from napping with teddy bears, broke up, the lurid images were distributed farther than either party intended.

The investigation continues and charges may or may not result. But clearly these two kids can only look back on the episode with regret. What were they thinking, one wonders, and hopefully parents have asked repeatedly.

It seems to me it’s the girl who is most apt to be hurt by such inappropriate relationships. We don’t know many particulars of the case described above. But it’s not hard to imagine other cases in which girls are pressured into sending photos to their boyfriends; the boyfriends then share the images around the locker room and online. The girl finds not only her feelings crushed, but her body exploited. And why? Probably because she’s been fed the lie that this is what a relationship in 2018 is. She thinks he’ll love her forever. He just sees her as an object.