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Website featuring girls in lingerie at heart of new law
The website trueteenbabes.com features underage girls from 13 to 17 years old in lingerie and g-strings.
PINELLAS COUNTY Bay area (Bay News 9) -- A website run locally that features underage girls from 13 to 17 years old in lingerie and g-strings is at the heart of a new law signed by Gov. Charlie Crist Wednesday.
House Bill 559 now makes it a third degree felony "for teen modeling agencies that distribute on the internet pictures of minors in provocative circumstances."
The website, trueteenbabes.com, calls the pictures glamour photographs but lawmakers say the shots are borderline pornography.
Senator Mike Fasano (Fl- R) helped create the law.
"True Teen Babes - that was the one that was brought to our attention," Fasano said.
According to the website, they have a studio and take pictures of the teens in Clearwater.
Parents have to sign off on it and they pay the girls a $100 an hour.
"We have an obligation to protect those children if their parents aren't going to," Fasano said.
Fasano said the state attorney's office looked at charging the photographer. They found he wasn't violating any current law and that's why Fasano sponsored the bill.
"Taking pictures of a 13-year-old girl in a bathing suit or less than a bathing suit and broadcasting that picture on a website where it's downloaded and purchased by sick pedophiles then I believe that is against our community standards," Fasano said.
"And the person taking that picture should be prosecuted to the fullest. And I believe it will hold up in federal court."
Fasano said he's learned because of his new law the True Teen Babes' photographer said he's now going to leave the state of Florida.
Bay News 9 tried contacting the photographer but he did not return our emails or calls.
Stetson constitutional law professor Michael Allen said he doesn't think the new law will stand up in federal court because in his opinion it infringes on the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
"It would be extraordinary unlikely that 'True Teen Babes' would be found obscene in a court of law," Allen said. "The law sweeps too broadly and is too vague."
Fasano respectfully disagreed saying he feels it violates community obscenity standards.
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