Lancaster Country Day officials should face accountability for mishandling explicit deepfakes that harmed students [editorial]

THE ISSUE

“The Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office on Thursday said it filed charges against two juvenile males in connection with the creation of AI-generated pornographic images of Lancaster Country Day School students and other minors,” LNP | LancasterOnline’s Ashley Stalnecker reported. The DA’s office said each juvenile “faces multiple charges, including criminal conspiracy, sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of obscene materials to minors. Susquehanna Regional Police, the department that’s been investigating the incident since June, identified 60 victims — 48 who are Country Day students and 12 who are connected to the Country Day victims. Only one of the victims was over the age of 18, the DA’s office said.”

The Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office did not reveal the names of the two male juveniles arrested in this matter, citing their minor status.

We understand the need to protect minors. We only wish more had been done to protect the well-being of the female Lancaster Country Day students and other children whose privacy and dignity were grievously violated by the creation of artificial intelligence-generated pornographic images (so-called deepfakes).

In announcing charges against the two male juveniles, District Attorney Heather Adams spoke of the “unimaginable” trauma the victims have endured.

“The method of abuse here is novel but the impact on the victims is the same as in any case of child exploitation,” Adams correctly said. “It has a deeply harmful effect on the lives it touches. My office will make sure that their voices are heard as justice is sought.”

We were glad to hear this.

But we feel compelled to ask: Why is justice not being pursued against the Country Day employees who failed to report this matter to law enforcement as soon as they learned of it?

Are state-mandated reporting requirements — tightened in the wake of Jerry Sandusky’s horrific sexual abuse of children — no longer viewed as important?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are unsatisfying.

Before we explain why, we must state again that we remain appalled by Lancaster Country Day’s handling of this matter. Consider this timeline:

— As LNP | LancasterOnline reported, Country Day officials first learned of the existence of some AI-manipulated nude images of female students in November 2023 when a tip was submitted to Safe2Say Something, a youth violence prevention program operated by the state attorney general’s office.

— Seven months later, in June 2024, the school sent a letter to families informing them of the matter and how it had unfolded: the November anonymous tip and a school investigation of a student believed to be responsible for the deepfakes; a lack of corroboration; a second allegation in May against that student, another investigation and, finally, the removal of that student from the school. That student’s phone was seized by Susquehanna Regional Police in August.

According to one parent, it was a student who made the report to the Safe2Say Something tip line, and then the state attorney general’s office notified Country Day administrators.

As we’ve noted before, the school’s mandated reporters — all of its employees — failed to promptly report this matter to the police or to ChildLine, Pennsylvania’s hotline for reporting suspected child abuse and neglect.

And the school failed to reach out to law enforcement early in the process for help with an investigation.

So we understand why the parents of the Country Day students who were victimized by these AI-generated pornographic images are proceeding with a lawsuit against the private school, even after the arrest of the juveniles who allegedly created and shared those images.

As LNP | LancasterOnline’s Stalnecker reported, attorney Matthew Faranda-Diedrich of the Philadelphia-based law firm Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld said Friday that he and the parents believe DA Adams is missing key details in not pursuing charges against the school’s employees.

The consequences of this lapse were terrible: By failing to alert authorities and to put an end to the creation of the explicit AI-generated images in November 2023, Faranda-Diedrich pointed out, the school’s employees allowed the two juveniles now facing charges to create additional images and to inflict harm on additional victims.

“What’s most important for myself and my family is that we have never really understood or it’s never been investigated why all of these failures occurred,” a parent of one of the victims being represented by Faranda-Diedrich said Friday. “To take a step back from the terminology mandatory reporter or the legal terms, I don’t understand how there’s not an investigation about that gross negligence and failure. Where is that investigation?”

Head of School Matt Micciche lost his job last month and the Country Day board president, Angela Ang-Alhadeff, decided to “step away” from her role. But that shouldn’t be the end of the accountability for the school’s shoddy handling of this incident.

DA Adams maintained in a statement that while child abuse can occur “by failing to act … we cannot hold someone criminally liable for failing to report child abuse when the alleged acts are exempted from that very definition.”

She said the state Legislature “specifically enumerated acts that require mandatory reporting involving child-on-child harm, as we have here, and any crime involving AI pornography is not included in that list.”

Sadly, the district attorney is right that Pennsylvania’s mandated reporting laws only narrowly apply to child-on-child abuse. And those laws clearly did not anticipate the AI threat.

And while Pennsylvania has a new law prohibiting the distribution of AI-generated child sexual abuse material — such as sexually explicit deepfakes — that law hasn’t yet taken effect.

Our child protection laws and systems must address the grave new harms our kids are facing and must acknowledge the complexities of child-on-child abuse. Lawmakers and policymakers must seek the input of expert child advocates and act with urgency.

In the meantime, Lancaster Country Day officials should be as transparent as humanly possible about the school’s handling of this matter. They may not face legal consequences for the school’s failures, but they should acknowledge the seriousness of those failures and work closely with the victims’ parents to make things right.

In failing to alert law enforcement about this matter from its onset, Country Day officials made the same mistake so many other institutions have made — they gave the impression that protecting the institution’s reputation was more important than protecting its children. They must never make that mistake again.

GET HELP

YWCA Lancaster runs a 24-hour sexual assault hotline that connects callers to free, confidential counseling and therapy services for community members impacted by sexual abuse, harassment or assault: 717-392-7273.

Report suspected child abuse to ChildLine: 1-800-932-0313.

Report school threats: safe2saypa.org; 844-SAF2SAY (844-723-2729).

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Originally Appeared Here