Ruskin teen's suicide following topless photo draws attention to sexting

A Ruskin 13-year-old's suicide after a topless photo she sent to a boy made its way to classmates has focused the spotlight on sexting - sharing sexually explicit photos, videos and chat by cell phone or online.

Hope Witsell hung herself in her bedroom - her mother Donna found her body - after enduring taunts at Shields Middle School. The eighth-grader expected the cell phone photo of her bare chest to be kept private but it somehow made the rounds.

The abuse from fellow students was too much to bear, Donna Witsell said Wednesday during an appearance on NBC's "Today" show. She said she didn't find out about the harassment until three days before Hope took her own life on Sept. 12.

Of course, Witsell's death is an extreme case, and sexting is fairly commonplace among young people, despite the consequences for those who do it. More than a quarter of young people have been involved in sexting in some form, an Associated Press-MTV poll found.

"There's definitely the invincibility factor that young people feel," said Kathleen Bogle, a sociology professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia and author of the book, "Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus."

"That's part of the reason why they have a high rate of car accidents and things like that, is they think, 'Oh, well, that will never happen to me,'" Bogle said.

Research shows teenage brains are not mature enough to make good decisions consistently. By the mid-teens, the brain's reward centers, the parts involved in emotional arousal, are well-developed, making teens more vulnerable to peer pressure.

But it is not until the early 20s that the brain's frontal cortex, where reasoning connects with emotion, enabling people to weigh consequences, has finished forming.

Jerome Corbett, senior director for specialized services for the Polk County School District, said students don't comprehend the consequences of their actions.

"Once you put something out there it's out there permanently, and these kids don't realize they could be ruining their careers based on something they did as a 14- or 15-year-old," he said.

Kelly Lane, director of development for Boys & Girls Clubs of Lakeland and Mulberry, said she watches out for sexting among the teenagers in her after-school programs.

"We have to stay ahead of the curve as far as what the trends are and what dangers are out there for them," she said.

"It's difficult to explain and show to them that this is a message that you are putting out to people, and the message is that this is what you think of yourself. You are willing to participate in this, and you're okay with it," Lane said.

Sexting doesn't stop with teenagers. Young adults are even more likely to have sexted; one-third of them said they had been involved in sexting, compared with about one-quarter of teenagers.

Those who sent nude pictures of themselves mostly said they went to a boyfriend, girlfriend or romantic interest.

But 14 percent said they suspect the pictures were shared without permission, and they might be right: Seventeen percent of those who received naked pictures said they passed them along to someone else, often to more than just one person.

Boys were a little more likely than girls to say they received naked pictures or video of someone that had been passed around without the person's consent. Girls were a little more likely to send pictures of themselves. Yet boys were more likely to say that sexting is "hot," while most girls called it "slutty."

. Hope's case was the second where sexting was linked to suicide. Last year in Cincinnati, 18-year-old Jessica Logan hanged herself after weeks of ridicule at school; she had sent a nude cell phone picture to her boyfriend, and after they broke up, he forwarded the picture to other girls.

Hope's mother said her daughter, who was a good student who attended church, at first never let on about her problems at school. Donna Witsell quoted Hope's diary during her appearance on the "Today" show:

"Please don't let them remember me by mistakes I have made," she said in the live interview from New York. "Please, please, make sure they remember me for who I was."

Other teenage suicides have been linked to online bullying, also a subject of the AP-MTV poll. Half of all young people said they have been targets of digital bullying.

That can mean someone wrote something about them on the Internet that was mean or a lie, or someone shared an e-mail or instant message that was supposed to be private. Less often, it can be more serious, such as taking pictures or video of someone in a sexual situation and sharing it with others.

The AP-MTV poll was conducted Sept. 11-22, and involved online interviews with 1,247 teenagers and adults ages 14-24. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

The poll is part of an MTV campaign, "A Thin Line," aiming to stop the spread of digital abuse.

The survey was conducted by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone and mail polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.