Canadian newspaper turns readers into sex offenders

I’m sure it wasn’t intentional but the Toronto MetroNews newspaper has potentially caused anyone reading the current issue on their way to work or in the privacy of their own home to potentially be charged as a sex offender.

It is a result of the story titled “Hangin’ Out at St. Peter’s” which had some pictures of St. Peter’s School students frolicking in a hot tub during the annual Kinsman Santa Claus Parade in Peterborough, Ontario (hmm almost next door to me). This might seem innocuous enough except the male student in the front of the photograph had a wardrobe malfunction that left him hanging out for all to see.

The sex offender part comes in because the students are all classified as minors which would make this child pornography and anyone in possession of the picture could be charged as a sex offender and subject to all the penalties under the law as such.

The Torontoist has a pixelated version of the offending image

They have also updated the story with a statement from the Catholic School Board

UPDATE, DECEMBER 9, 2009: According to the Catholic school board which represents St. Peter’s, the photo depicts a current seventeen-year-old student of the school. While the image as it appeared in Metro does not constitute “child pornography”—those depicted are not “engaged in explicit sexual activity” nor was the image’s “dominant characteristic…the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of a sexual organ”—we’ve nonetheless pixellated the point of contention in the photo above.