LLG Ludwin Law Group, P.A.
(561) 455-4455
For parents, and for anyone under 18 · Florida

If the person in the images is under 18, this page is for you.

Go to the police. Do not screenshot it. Do not send it to us.

Our firm handles intimate-image cases for adults. We cannot take a case involving images of a minor, and this page explains why in plain terms. It also tells you what to do tonight, who to call, and what the law says, because a parent searching at 2 a.m. deserves a straight answer.

What to do tonight Who to call
  • Do not send the images to anyone, including a lawyer
  • Police and NCMEC are the right first calls
  • Nothing here is a substitute for a police report

Do this tonight, in this order

These steps come from the statutes and from the agencies that handle these cases. None of them requires a lawyer.

  1. Do not save, screenshot, or forward the image. Not to a friend, not to the school, not to a lawyer.

    Florida’s statute makes it a second-degree felony to knowingly possess or intentionally view an image of a person under 18 engaged in sexual conduct, and every copy is a separate offense. The only exception written into the statute is for a law enforcement investigation. There is no exception for parents, and none for lawyers. Federal law reads the same way. Write down where you saw it, the account name, and the date, and leave the image where it is.

  2. Give what you know to the police.

    Florida law says a person who reports suspected child sexual abuse material to a law enforcement officer “may not be held civilly liable for such reporting,” and that the report “may include furnishing the law enforcement officer with any image” the person believes is evidence. That is the one place the image is supposed to go. If there is a threat to your child’s safety right now, call 911. Otherwise call your local police department’s non-emergency line and ask for a report number.

  3. Report it to NCMEC’s CyberTipline.

    The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children runs “the nation’s centralized reporting system for the online exploitation of children.” The public can report there, online or at 1-800-843-5678, and it accepts reports of child sexual abuse material and online enticement.

  4. Start a Take It Down request.

    Take It Down is NCMEC’s free service for people who have nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit images of themselves that were taken when they were under 18. The image never leaves the device; the service creates a digital fingerprint that participating platforms use to find and remove copies. It does not work on encrypted platforms, and an adult can use it for an image taken when they were a minor. The service’s own pages do not say whether a parent can submit on a child’s behalf, so the safest path is for the young person to run it with you beside them.

  5. If someone is demanding money or more images, call the FBI.

    The FBI describes sextortion as “a crime that involves adults coercing kids and teens into sending explicit images online” and asks victims to call 1-800-CALL-FBI, report at tips.fbi.gov, or contact local law enforcement. Its advice to parents is to tell your child, in advance, that your first move will always be to help. Its warning: “Don’t fall prey to for-profit companies charging sextortion victims for help.”

  6. If your child was pressured or tricked into making the image, call the Florida Abuse Hotline too.

    Florida’s child-welfare definition of “sexual abuse of a child” includes “allowing, encouraging, or forcing a child to … engage in a sexual performance,” and any person who knows or has reasonable cause to suspect it “shall report” it to the central abuse hotline, whoever the offender is. The hotline is 1-800-962-2873, or reportabuse.myflfamilies.com. When the image already existed and someone simply shared it, the hotline’s definition does not plainly reach that, and police and the CyberTipline are the right calls.

Why a civil law firm cannot take this case

In an adult case, the evidence is the image, and a firm can receive it, preserve it, and use it. When the person depicted is under 18, the image itself is contraband. Florida’s possession statute has one exception, for law enforcement investigations, and federal law has none for parents or lawyers. A firm that accepted the image into its files would be committing the offense it was hired to address.

That is why this page sends you to police, the FBI, and NCMEC first. They can lawfully hold the evidence. We cannot, and neither can you.

If your child has since turned 18, or if the person in the images is an adult, our main Private Again page covers those cases and you can reach us there.

What a parent can legally do. Look, without saving. Write down the URL, the account, the date, and the time. Tell the police what you saw and let them collect it. Florida law protects a person who reports and hands the image to an officer. The possession statute’s only exception is a law enforcement investigation, so keeping a copy “for the case” is not protected.

What Florida law says, as of July 1, 2026

Two laws that took effect July 1, 2026 rewrote Florida’s child-image statutes and replaced the term “child pornography” with “child sexual abuse material.” The text below is the current text.

Possessing or viewing the image

Section 827.071(5): knowingly soliciting, possessing, controlling, or intentionally viewing child sexual abuse material is a felony of the second degree. Each image, and each child in each image, is a separate offense. The only exception is material handled “as part of a law enforcement investigation.”

Fla. Stat. 827.071(5)

Making a child produce the image

Section 827.071(2): a person who “employs, authorizes, or induces a child to engage in a sexual performance” commits a felony of the first degree, with a 15-year mandatory minimum for an adult offender. Where the child is under 12, it is a life felony with a 25-year minimum.

Fla. Stat. 827.071(2)

AI-generated or altered images

An image “created, altered, adapted, or modified” to portray a real, identifiable minor in sexual conduct is child sexual abuse material under section 827.071. A generated image of a fictitious person who “a reasonable person would regard as being a real person younger than 18” is covered by section 827.072: possession is a third-degree felony, and creating or transmitting it is a second-degree felony.

Fla. Stat. 827.071(1)(b), 827.072

Threats and demands

Florida has no statute that uses the word “sextortion.” A malicious threat “to expose another to disgrace, or to expose any secret affecting another,” made to extort money or to compel someone to act, is extortion under section 836.05, a second-degree felony. Demanding new images from a child is “inducing” a sexual performance under section 827.071(2).

Fla. Stat. 836.05, 827.071(2)
If your own child sent the image. Florida’s sexting statute, section 847.0141, applies to a minor who sends another minor a nude image “of any person,” and to a minor who keeps one that another minor sent. A first violation is a noncriminal violation handled by citation: eight hours of community service, a $60 civil penalty, or a cyber-safety program. The statute has its own safe harbor for a minor who receives an image without asking for it: no violation if the minor “took reasonable steps to report the photograph or video to the minor’s legal guardian or to a school or law enforcement official” and did not send it to anyone else. The same section says it does not prevent prosecution under other laws when the image shows sexual conduct, so the safe harbor is a reason to report, not a reason to relax.

What federal law says

Federal law still uses the term “child pornography.” It reaches the same conduct, with its own penalties and its own civil remedies.

Possession

18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(5) makes it a crime to knowingly possess, or knowingly access with intent to view, child pornography. The definition in 18 U.S.C. 2256(8) covers a real minor, a computer-generated image “indistinguishable from” a real minor, and an image “created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.” The only defense for possession is for a person with fewer than three images who promptly destroys them or reports to law enforcement without keeping a copy.

18 U.S.C. 2252A, 2256

The TAKE IT DOWN Act

Since May 19, 2025, 47 U.S.C. 223(h) makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish an intimate image, or a “digital forgery,” of a minor “with intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade the minor” or to arouse anyone. The penalty is up to three years. Threatening to publish a digital forgery of a minor carries up to 30 months. Reporting the image to police, or seeking help about an unsolicited image, is expressly excepted.

47 U.S.C. 223(h)

A civil claim for the child

18 U.S.C. 2255 lets “any person who, while a minor, was a victim” of listed offenses, including possession and distribution under 2252A, sue in federal court and recover actual damages “or liquidated damages in the amount of $150,000,” plus costs and attorney’s fees, with punitive damages at the court’s discretion. The statute says there is “no time limit for the filing of a complaint.”

18 U.S.C. 2255

Who brings it for a minor

The federal intimate-image civil statute, 15 U.S.C. 6851, says that for “an individual who is under 18 years of age,” a legal guardian, “another family member, or any other person appointed as suitable by the court, may assume the identifiable individual’s rights,” and the defendant can never be that representative.

15 U.S.C. 6851(b)(1)(B)

These claims are brought by lawyers who handle federal child-exploitation civil cases and who work with law enforcement on the evidence.

Can a parent sue in Florida, and when

Florida’s revenge porn statute, section 784.049, contains no age language at all. Its civil subsection says “an aggrieved person may initiate a civil action,” and the statute does not define who is aggrieved when the person depicted is a child. No Florida appellate court has decided a civil case under that subsection yet.

Procedure is clearer than the statute. Under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.210(b), a minor with a guardian sues through the guardian, and a minor without one “may sue by next friend or by a guardian ad litem.” A parent is the usual next friend.

The deadline is where parents get caught. Florida pauses a limitations period for a minor only “during any period of time in which a parent, guardian, or guardian ad litem does not exist” or has an interest adverse to the child, and even then the action “must be begun within 7 years after the act.” A child with a parent who can sue gets no pause. The clock runs the same as it would for an adult.

If a claim settles for the child, a parent may settle up to $15,000 without a bond; above $15,000 net, a court must appoint a guardian of the property, and any settlement after a lawsuit is filed needs the court’s approval.

The honest summary. The criminal statutes are the strongest tools a parent has, and they are enforced by people who can lawfully hold the evidence. The civil claims exist, and they are real, but they run on a clock that does not wait for the child to grow up.

Who to call

Every resource on this list is free and is run by a government agency or a national nonprofit.

Reporting inside the app

Report the post inside the app as well, so the platform starts its own removal. Each link below opens the platform’s help center home page, which is the page least likely to move. Platforms change their reporting pages often; if a link does not land where you expect, search that help center for “report nude image.”

Questions parents ask

Answers come from the statutes and the agencies’ own pages. Where the law does not answer, we say so.

Florida’s statute makes knowingly possessing an image of a minor engaged in sexual conduct a second-degree felony, with no exception for parents, and federal law has no parent exception either. Write down the URL, the account name, the date and the time, then tell the police what you saw. Florida law protects a person who reports and hands the image to an officer.

Florida’s sexting statute, section 847.0141, treats a minor’s first violation as a noncriminal violation handled by citation, with eight hours of community service, a $60 civil penalty, or a cyber-safety program. A minor who received an image without asking for it and reports it to a parent, the school, or police, without sending it on, does not violate the section at all. The section does not prevent prosecution under other laws if the image shows sexual conduct, which is one more reason to report rather than delete.

Yes, under both Florida and federal law. An image altered or generated to portray a real, identifiable minor in sexual conduct is child sexual abuse material under Florida’s section 827.071, and “child pornography” under 18 U.S.C. 2256(8)(C). A generated image of a fictitious person who looks under 18 is covered by Florida’s section 827.072. Publishing a “digital forgery” of a minor online to humiliate or harass them is also a federal offense under 47 U.S.C. 223(h), with up to three years in prison.

Do not pay, and do not delete the messages. Call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or report at tips.fbi.gov, and call local police. In Florida a malicious threat to expose a secret in order to extort money is second-degree felony extortion under section 836.05, and demanding new images from a child is “inducing” a sexual performance under section 827.071(2), a first-degree felony with a 15-year minimum for an adult offender. The FBI’s own warning: do not pay a for-profit company that offers to make it go away.

Yes. Under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.210(b) a minor sues through a guardian or “by next friend,” and the federal intimate-image statute, 15 U.S.C. 6851, expressly lets a legal guardian or another family member assume a minor’s rights. The federal civil remedy for child-exploitation offenses, 18 U.S.C. 2255, provides $150,000 in liquidated damages and has no filing deadline. Florida’s own revenge porn statute says “an aggrieved person” may sue and does not say who that is for a child. Our firm does not bring these cases because the evidence is the image; this page tells you they exist.

Not in Florida, if the child has a parent or guardian able to sue. Section 95.051 pauses the deadline for a minor only while no parent, guardian, or guardian ad litem exists or one has an interest adverse to the child, and never beyond seven years from the act. The federal 2255 claim is the exception: the statute says there is no time limit.

Take It Down’s pages say the service is for people who have images of themselves taken when they were under 18, that the image never leaves the device, and that an adult can use it for an image from when they were a minor. The pages do not say whether a parent may submit on a child’s behalf. Sit with your child and run it together, and report the image to the CyberTipline as well.

Because the evidence is the image, and possessing it is a crime with no exception for lawyers under Florida’s section 827.071 or federal law. A firm cannot receive, review, or store it. The people who can are police, the FBI, and NCMEC, and that is where the case has to start.

If the person in the images is an adult

Our main page covers Florida and federal law for adults, what to do tonight, and how we take those cases.

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