Nude Images Taken at Seventeen: Who Is Criminally Liable

Attorney Answer

Because you were 17 when those images were made, they are child sexual abuse material under both New Mexico and federal law — and that cuts two ways. Anyone who now has them or shares them is committing a felony, and the narrow protection the statute gave you for your own copies ended the day you turned 18.

New Mexico's statute is NMSA 1978 § 30-6A-3, sexual exploitation of children. Intentional possession of an obscene visual medium depicting a prohibited sexual act by a person known or reasonably knowable to be under 18 is a fourth degree felony under Subsection A. Intentional distribution is a third degree felony under Subsection C. Intentional manufacture is a second degree felony under Subsection E. Your age at the time the images were made is what controls, not your age now — so the fact that you have since turned 18 does not take the images out of the statute.

Subsection B is the part nobody tells people about. It provides a defense, but only for a depiction possessed by a person who is still under eighteen, where the depicted child was between 14 and 18 and knowingly and voluntarily consented to or produced the depiction without coercion. That carve-out does not protect an adult possessor such as your ex-boyfriend's grandfather. It also no longer protects you, now that you are 18, if you still have copies on your own devices. That is not a comfortable thing to read, but you need to know it before you go looking for the files.

There is a federal layer as well. 18 U.S.C. § 2252A prohibits knowingly mailing, transporting, receiving, distributing, reproducing for distribution, or possessing child pornography where the material was produced using a minor and moved in or affected interstate or foreign commerce — a requirement that ordinary electronic transmission or cloud storage routinely satisfies.

Separately, if the images are shared to hurt you, NMSA 1978 § 30-37A-1 criminalizes distributing, publishing, or otherwise making available sensitive images of a person without consent, where it is done with intent to harass, humiliate, intimidate, cause fear, cause unwanted contact or injury, or cause substantial emotional distress, and where the conduct would cause a reasonable person substantial emotional distress. A first violation is a misdemeanor; a second or later conviction is a fourth degree felony. Be clear about what this section is and is not: it creates criminal liability only, and it does not contain a private right to sue.

What you can do

1. Do not ask anyone to send you the images to "prove" they exist, and do not go collecting copies. Under § 30-6A-3(B) that defense stopped covering you at 18. 2. Delete any copies still on your own phone, cloud backup, or old devices. 3. Save the text where your ex told you his grandfather has them. Screenshot the message, with the sender and date visible — save the message, not the images. 4. Report it. Call your local police department, and also file with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline. NCMEC's free Take It Down service is built specifically for removing images of people who were under 18 when the images were made. 5. If the images were posted anywhere online, report them to that platform directly under its rules for nonconsensual and minor-related content. 6. If you want your ex charged for sharing them, tell police exactly what he said and why — § 30-37A-1 turns on his intent, so his own words matter. 7. Write down a timeline now, while it is fresh: when the images were sent, to whom, and how you learned the grandfather had them.