Link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/high-school-defends-staying-silent-while-boys-made-ai-nudes-of-59-classmates/

Girls suing the school argued that at least 59 girls were traumatized by “an extended, catastrophic institutional failure.” They claimed that they “were forced to go to high school while ‘deepfake’ nude images of them were circulating within the school community,” and that appallingly, Lindsay Deibler-Wallace, assistant head of Upper School, took no action to protect them after telling parents that “boys will be boys.”

The victims alleged that the school never suspended the students even after “the LCDS upper school was in a state of acute panic and disruption related to the AI-generated images.” Instead, the school allegedly discouraged girls from going to police, while withholding information from parents and obstructing efforts to investigate the distribution of AI-generated child sex abuse materials (CSAM), such as by refusing to respond to detectives seeking a yearbook photo for comparison.

Two male students have since pleaded guilty to 59 felony counts of sexual abuse of children, and their victims are hoping the court will rule that LCDS was required to report the incident to police, both by law and by “reasonable institutional practice.”

Let's do some rough math for a moment. The article says there's less than 600 students in the school, but let's use that number anyways. About half that number will be girls, so let's say 300. Now assuming there are similar numbers of students per grade, we're going to divide this by 13 to get an average of 23 girls (rounded down) per grade. Another article (linked to in this one) says the perpetrators are both 16 years old. If we assume that they only targed girls that are close in age, so let's say high school aged girls (9th-12th graders), we get 92 girls in that range. So to get to the actual point, based on previous estimates 59 out of 92 girls in those grades had explicit pictures generated. That's approximately 64% of girls in the 14-18 age group at that school.

So anyways, that's my angry math. And the part that makes me angriest it that these two are getting off with a smack on the wrist.

Telling the parents "boys will be boys" is all the school did to take action. Maddening.

The parents must be filled with confidence that the school has their kids’ best interests at heart after hearing them try their hardest to shirk responsibility in court

In Japan, there's a tradition of publishing "graduation anthologies" (or graduation albums) at elementary and junior high school graduations, featuring essays and photographs.

Graduation and Entrance Ceremonies in Japan: How They Differ From Overseas | Japaniche

These anthologies have long been criticized for their high resale value (including essays from Haruki Murakami's childhood and images of actresses in their youth) and their indiscriminate use in crime reporting as "student images" of perpetrators.

Currently, these anthologies are being used as unaltered, clean "material" for deepnude learning, leading to increasing discussion about their need for abolition.

In short, even generations who lived before the age of social media are at increased risk of becoming victims of deepnude through the resale of these publications.

I believe the era of publishing personal information on paper, like gentlemen's directories or phone books, is over.

The culture of graduation anthologies and their accompanying photographs, which even have the potential to be altered for child pornography, should end with this generation.

(Article in Japanese) 卒業アルバム加工した偽の性的画像ＳＮＳ拡散、一部は小中高生らが作成…警察庁がＡＩサイト調査 : 読売新聞

The victims alleged that the school never suspended the students even after “the LCDS upper school was in a state of acute panic and disruption related to the AI-generated images.” Instead, the school allegedly discouraged girls from going to police, while withholding information from parents and obstructing efforts to investigate the distribution of AI-generated child sex abuse materials (CSAM), such as by refusing to respond to detectives seeking a yearbook photo for comparison.

Hot take: schools are so afraid of "angry Karen" parents that they don't dare to punish anyone anymore.

I hate that phrase so much. I appreciate the "guys being guys" crowd trying to reclaim it with videos of dudes being silly and harmless, but it won't ever be enough until the culture changes.

"Boys will be boys" is so maddening to me because not only is it a way to shirk your own responsibility for teaching them to act better, but you are knowingly reinforcing the behavior. They always say, "they'll grow out of it" but I don't think the people saying that even believe it. Either it's men who know firsthand they didn't grow out of it but need to pretend they disapprove of the behavior, or it's women who have turned a blind eye to their brothers and husbands after having to live through it.

I get that the school's actions here are, to put it mildly, less than ideal, but what exactly do we as a society expect a school's role to be in policing the technology use of students? That's not a leading question it's just a regular question.

I really don't know how you enforce any kind of policy about AI use or even general communications between students if those things are not primarily happening both with school devices and on school grounds. You could ban all personal devices on campus but I don't see that going over well with students or parents. Anything short of a total ban seems unlikely to be effective in any meaningful sense but even that wouldn't stop the behavior, it just pushes most of the consequences outside the walls of the school. What then is the solution?

So they are seen as complicit in producing child pornography ?

They at least have to not protect, csam generating children, or try to mediate by making people speak to each other to understand each other point of vue. You know being human. Trying to educated. Trying to help people instead of blocking csam investigations...
They tried nothing and you ask what could they do ?
Trying to do their job may be ? By educating people instead of counting monney.

When was this golden era when schools did punish people?

Boys will be boys, right?

They could have at least cooperated in the investigation.

Not only that but schools have a duty to facilitate a healthy learning environment for all students. When some of those students are generating nudes of others and passing them around, it affects those students within the walls.

You're projecting your own bullshit on me. Nothing I said is a defense of anything that was done here. I asked how you propose to fix the problem. It's a simple question directly related to the discussion that you presumably hoped to start by posting this in the first place. Or did you simply wish to say "all men are evil" and leave it at that?

I asked what their job is. I didn't defend anything they did. If they have a role to play then what is it?

You said educate people. OK, what the hell does that mean in this context? Imagine you're the principal of the next school this happens at. What exactly do you do when you find out there's AI generated images of students circulating around? It sounds like your plan is to ask them nicely to stop. Do you genuinely think that's going to fix the problem? If that's not your suggestion then what is?

It's incredibly easy to say "do better" without any conception of what that would actually entail. If you don't know then just say that like I did.

I got yelled at by my principal for being late. When I was in elementary school and my mom drove me and she was late getting me there. So there's that. Cuz somehow by being ready earlier would have made my mom ready earlier?

I also got in trouble after I shoved my friend for literally kicking my schoolbook around after my smug-ass incompetent teacher threw me under the bus and got me an in school suspension (which was an absolute joke; I sat in a comfy office chair in the front office all day and got to say hi to everyone that came by)

I mean, I could keep going on about how I was punished but was never a perpetrator of harm

Sure, I'm not disputing that. I'm asking how you solve the problem. I don't see a specific suggestion in your reply aside from "don't hinder investigations". That's a pretty low bar of effort don't you think? Would you be satisfied with your child's school's response to a similar situation if that's all they did? If not, then what exactly does facilitating a healthy learning environment require of a school in a situation like this?

Don't hinder investigations.

We can teach our children how to respect boundaries, what rape culture is, that there will be consequences for sexualizing their peers without consent, take action to help with investigations, inform the parents, make their own reports to the authorities, offer counseling to the victims, I may keep editing this as I think of more tbh.

There are many ways the school could have shown they support the victims and help the perpetrators be brought to justice.

There’s an incredible amount of ways the school could have taken action here and being willfully obtuse about what consequences look like for perpetrators only helps the narrative that there’s nothing to be done here.

I can pull hundreds of stories about schools covering up sexual abuses. Probably thousands going back far enough.

That’s more what I was referencing vs the smaller disciplinary actions.

Not to harp on your angry math, but there are slightly more boys than girls born each year in the U.S.

It's like 51/49% boys/girls, so about 105 boys per 100 girls. So there are likely more boys than girls at the school, which shouldn't skew the numbers too much but it is a factor.

Name two then. You're calling me obtuse and yet you've only said things so vague as to be functionally meaningless.

So you don't expect the school to take any action at all other than a passive one? That doesn't seem to jive with the rest of the comments in this thread that appear to be calling for active intervention. I don't think that's going to help much but you're right that it is better than what this particular school did.

Yeah they grow out of running around and playing in the mud and tracking it in, they grow out of food fights, they grow out of stuff like that. They dont grow out of sexual predation and/or abuse, that's infuriatingly unacceptable and they probably learned it from some fucked up parent.

If it was boys being nudified they would have absolutely gotten the perps arrested.

What is your point here? I said they should have cooperated in the investigation. Don't project anything else onto me.

"their victims are hoping the court will rule that LCDS was required to report the incident to police, both by law and by “reasonable institutional practice.”"

Answer is already in the post.

Hey, something more specific and without the unnecessary judgement, I knew you could do it. Thank you.

When you say teaching them that there are consequences for sexualizing peers without consent are you referring to legal consequences or social consequences?

AI generated nudes are an interesting subject from a legal perspective. Afaik the law treats them the same as pictures taken with consent and then later distributed in an unwanted fashion. I could be wrong but I don't think that is actually illegal unless the person in the image is under 18. Do you think a change in law is necessary to make sexualized images distributed without consent illegal in all cases?

I'm asking you to clarify your answer. People seem to be calling for specific actions. What you described was a passive response. Is that all you expect of a school in a situation like this?

Well yeah ok, me too, but I was giving my personal experience and it was an offhand comment. I get that the ones that commit offences aren't being punished

my bad that my experience wasn't as horrible.

That's a no from me. I don't need to clarify my answer beyond what I've already said.

To give a better answer would mean doing research into the american education system, which I have no time or interest in doing at the moment.

It may seem crazy to you, but my lack of tailored and informed solutions doesn't mean I'm against solving problems.

I wasn’t admonishing you, sorry to be blunt! Just conversing and clarifying my earlier comment.

I had commented specific actions before your other snide comment requesting it from me, but thanks for your derision here.

I think that's a stretch.

Well, you seem to be a rather negative and toxic person to allow into my feed, so I'm just going to block you. Bye-bye!

Think you have that backwards

If you don't have an answer then why are you responding to someone asking for one?

I've been trying to ask you questions about your opinion and all you're doing is avoiding the conversation. I even said explicitly right from the beginning that I'm not asking leading questions. It feels like I'm pulling teeth just to get you to engage beyond a gut reaction to the headline. If you don't want to talk about it why the hell did you post this?

Yeah, people who try to foster discussion are real pieces of shit

They did give you an answer.

I may not be engaging in conversation the way you’d prefer, but that doesn’t mean I’m not engaging in conversation at all.

I gave you a detailed answer and you were snotty with me. I don’t need to engage any more beyond that.

According to what?

Edit: https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/102-child-population-by-gender#detailed/1/any/false/575,1096,2545,1095,2048,574,1729,37,871,870/14,15,65/421,422

Please tell me which number is bigger.

Imagine downvoting raw numbers in a thread about a math problem, you people are silly.

You gave an actual answer after you posted three comments either doing your best to avoid saying anything substantive or calling me obtuse for asking you to engage in a meaningful fashion. I responded to your one real comment and you down voted me and didn't respond again. If that's what conversation is to you then I have no interest in pursuing it further. Enjoy the one sentence surface level replies I guess

I did answer you. You weren't satisfied with the amount of energy I put into that answer.

Yes I downvoted you, your reply was rude right off the bat.

Have a good one.

The high school near me has a police officer on site every day. Any potential illegal behavior is reported to the police officer. Kids known to be involved are put into individual rooms until parents show up. Then the police officer conducts an investigation.

The easy answer is the school should be reporting potentially illegal conduct and they should also be enthusiastic contributors to both reporting and to the subsequent investigation. From there it’s the responsibility of the executive and judicial to handle. Why exactly do you think a school has to have any active responsibility in enforcing the law beyond reporting and cooperating with the actual professionals that are specifically hired to handle such things? Two things in which this school actively failed at doing I might add.

Edit: I will add that, without naming minor students by name, they send an email to all parents of all students a summary of the situation prior to the end of the school day in nearly every case. So there, that’s three things that the school could easily do to make a huge difference from what this school did, which was actively hostile to the victims instead.

obstructing efforts to investigate the distribution of AI-generated child sex abuse materials (CSAM)

I always thought that actively hiding and shielding criminals is a prosecutable offense. Huh.

Yes, that’s why boys famously never ever ever experience sexual harassment at school. That’s definitely true.

There was certainly an era where schools beat children regularly. I wouldn’t call that era particularly golden though…