As soon as he woke up the next morning, Phillip Alpert knew that he hadmade a huge mistake. Angry that he was unable to get the attention ofhis ex-girlfriend, the then-18-year-old Florida teen arose from asleeping-pill-induced stupor at 3 a.m. and forwarded some sexually explicit images that she had given him to everyone on his distribution list as a means of getting a reaction.

When he was arrested on child-pornography charges and ordered to register as a sex offender a short time later, Alpert  that sexting has very real consequences, ones the teen couldnever have imagined.

"Sexting cases are unusual and few and far between these days, andthey don't fit into any particular category or set of standards," saidLawrence Walters, Alpert's lawyer, who has taken on thenow-20-year-old's case pro bono, in part to help publicize the issue."Usually police, prosecutors, judges and lawyers default to treatingthem as child-pornography cases, and the knee-jerk reaction is to havethem register as sex offenders, which ruins their lives."

While Walters said Alpert quickly realized how wrong hisbehavior was, he stressed that sexting between underage parties (whoare, essentially, both victim and perpetrator) is a very differentthing than an adult exploiting a child by making them participate inpornographic photos or films in which they are unwilling participants.

"Society is starting to recognize that maybe this is somethingdifferent, a phenomenon we haven't dealt with before, but currentlythey're doing it in the worst way possible, by lumping these kids inwith pedophiles and molesters," said Walters, who is pushing for the legal system to come up with a new means of dealing with sexting casesamong minors. "[They're being punished for] doing things kids have done for time immemorial: playing doctor, truth or dare and exploring theirsexuality with each other. We just happen to have given them the tools to create digital copies to record them and send them around easily."

Alpert tells his story in "Sexting in America: When Privates Go Public,"a 30-minute special airing Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on MTV, in which we takea closer look at the dangers of sexting and the serious repercussionsfor the people who send and receive naked pictures of peers on theirmobile phones and other devices.

In Alpert's case, after being arrested for child-pornographydistribution, he was put on five years' probation and required toregister on the public sex-offender list, which lists his age, haircolor, eye color and home address and is readily available to anyoneand everyone. "I've actually had a lot of neighbors come to my doorbefore ... to check if it was safe for their kids to play aroundoutside, with me here," Alpert says in the show. "I'm extremely sorryfor what I did, but the sex-offender thing, which is going to lastuntil I'm 43, that's overkill."

Images taken of someone under the age of 18 constitutes child pornography, according to Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy and securitylawyer. "If you take a picture, you can be accused of producing childpornography; if you send it to somebody, you can be accused of distributing child pornography; and if you keep a picture, you can be accused of possessing child pornography," Aftab explained. "Any where along this chain of transmission of the images, you can be charged as a registered sex offender.'

Walters said Alpert's message is not that sexting is OK orshould be decriminalized, but rather, "Look at me. Don't make themistake I did." Perhaps the worst part is that Alpert's dream of beingan animator has been dashed because of the tight restrictions placed onhis Internet use as a registered sex offender. "He can't live within acertain distance of schools, so he can't live with his father, becausehe lives too close to the high school that [Phillip] attended," thelawyer explained. "He can't be near places where minors congregate, butif you're 18 and have underage friends, what do you do?"

Because of his lack of privacy, Alpert is afraid to even sendhis lawyer e-mail, because if his probation officer decides that thee-mail was not work- or school-related, Alpert could go to prison forfive years. "He can't find a job, because he has to tell people he's aregistered sex offender," Walter said. "It's hard to make new friendsand date."

But perhaps the worst punishment is the requirement that Alpert attend weekly sex-offender re-education classes for five years.

"Here, he's being trained not to reoffend and deal with his pedophilia or sexual deviance, which does not exist," Walters said."He's stuck with people who did terrible things with minors, and he'sforced to tell his story over and over again and can't move beyond it.For a 19- to 20-year-old kid, that's not a healthy thing. The more hedoes this and the longer he goes to these classes, the more he concludes, 'I guess I am one of them. I must have done something so horrible to be considered like the dregs of society.' It has a terrible impact on his self-worth."

The MTV News special "Sexting in America: When Privates Go Public," premieres Sunday, February 14, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1631734/20100211/index.jhtml