High school sexting ring in Long Island leads to arrests, suspensions

Long Island teens as young as 14 have been arrested or suspended after an alleged middle school sexting ring, police said.

Police said students at Kings Park High School and William T. Rogers Middle School allegedly used their phones to circulate sexually explicit material of another student, Pix11 reported. Suffolk County police said an off-campus encounter between a male and female was recorded on a cellphone by a male acquaintance and distributed electronically.

Those boys were arrested on various charges including disseminating indecent material to minors and promoting the sexual performance of a child, the report said.

School officials investigating the episode suspended about 20 other students for between one and five days, Fox claimed in a related article, adding that students who only possessed or saw the illicit material received less severe punishment than those who also distributed it.

The suspension of those 20 students is setting up a showdown between parents and the school principal as the principal is reportedly vowing to arrest students who try to defy their suspensions Tuesday, according to Fox, which added that police maintained a presence at the school on Tuesday morning.

“I’m a little upset about it, because my son is facing suspension as an unwitting participant,” Thomas Phelan, a parent of one of those suspended, was quoted by Fox.

“Anyone who distributes the material will be arrested,” a spokesperson for the Suffolk County Police Department told Fox. “The ones that were suspended, at this point, they’re not really sure if they distributed it. They may have just received it.”