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Police Arrest 3 Teens in Chester County Middle School Child Porn Bust

Three local middle school students, between the ages of 11 and 15, were arrested after they allegedly created and sent pornographic images and videos of their own classmates to other students on the Internet.

The investigation began in April of 2015 when Tredyffrin Township Police received reports that nude photos of students at Valley Forge Middle School and Tredyffrin-Easttown Middle School were created, sent, stored and viewed by several teens and pre-teens both at their homes and at school. While the images and videos were sent by students to other minors in most cases, in some cases the images were sent to unidentified people who met in Cyber Chats on various social networking apps, police said.

Investigators say in one case a student offered to sell an intimate image of a classmate to another student. They also say a teen boy took an image of a sex act off the Internet, sent it to his classmates and claimed the picture was of a female student. The teen boy’s action led to an assault at the Tredyffrin-Easttown Middle School, according to police.

“Bullying continues,” said Tredyffrin Township Police Detective Sergeant Todd Bereda. “In this day and age it’s cyber-bullying. And this is a perfect example of what can happen when people aren’t paying attention.”

Officials say one parent who routinely checked his child’s cell phone and computer usage, learned his child was using a cloud based storage service to store and retrieve the pornographic photos. Police say many of the images were created by the students taking selfies in their own homes with the location settings on their phones activated.

“This action would allow for viewers of the images, including child predators to locate the homes of the juveniles via Meta data stored in the picture file,” police said.

Three students between the ages of 11 and 15 were arrested and charged with distribution of child pornography as a result of the investigation.

“In making these arrests there’s a statement made that parents beware of what you’re children or doing and how they’re doing it because the next victim could be your own,” Detective Sgt. Bereda said.

Some parents of children in the Tredyffrin Easttown School District told NBC10 they never received any notification from school officials about the nude images.

“With so many kids at such a young age having access to the Internet – everybody has a smart phone now – and unfortunately it’s really difficult to police it,” said Brian Korenstein, a parent of a student in the district.

Investigators say they expect to make more arrests in connection to the case.

Visit the Netsmartz Workshop and Crime Watch websites for tips on keeping your children safe from cyber-bullying.

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