Pornography is generally defined as material or images depicting actual or simulated sexual conduct and exposure of sexual organs.
Receiving or sending pornography is illegal in most U.S. states; receiving or sending child pornography is a crime in ALL states. This includes the transmission of photographs of persons known or unknown to the sender under the age of 18, via cell phone, smart phone, or the internet, regardless of whether the subject of the photo has provided his or her consent. Accessing child pornography sites and transmitting child pornography are liable to criminal investigation and prosecution.
AFS participants should NEVER send a nude or partially nude photo of themselves to others, and they should notify their host parent(s), liaison, or trusted adult immediately if they receive such a photo from someone else. In addition, AFS participants should NEVER forward such an image to others as this could be considered “distribution of child pornography," which could have very serious legal consequences for the hosted participant AND the recipient of the photo.
Whether you seek out pornography or you open a pornographic message sent to you without your knowledge, a record of your “contact” with the pornography will be kept in the hard drive of the computer you are using. Such messages may also be traced to a cell phone or smartphone. This record is accessible to interested parties, including government authorities. Should the receipt of such materials be reported to or detected by government authorities, a criminal charge against you could follow.
In addition to very serious legal ramifications, participants should be aware of the negative impact accessing such sites can have on their host family, school, volunteers, and community. It is very unlikely that any host family in the United States would want to continue hosting a participant that they feel associates him or herself with these types of materials. Because of these very serious consequences, if any participant engages in adult or child pornography, he or she may be terminated from the program and returned home early.
As mentioned earlier, you may receive access to pornography involuntarily, in the form of an email or pop-up box on a site that doesn’t appear to have any pornographic content. If you accidentally access pornographic material, you must immediately tell your host family and the local AFS volunteers. Not only will a record of this be kept on the computer’s hard drive, but by accessing one such email, you are telling the sender that your address is “live," and they will send additional messages, which may make the situation worse. In order to avoid accidentally opening a pornographic site that may have come to your computer as spam, you should immediately delete any message from a sender unfamiliar to you WITHOUT clicking on or opening it.
While it may be uncomfortable for you, your host family is likely to discuss this issue with you upon arrival in the U.S. Please know that they are only doing so to make sure that you understand the information presented here and to protect you from the potentially very serious consequences should you access any pornography, accidentally or otherwise.