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I am filing for divorce from my husband, and I had several photos printed which showed where he left bruises on our daughter's bottom. These photos were requested by my lawyer (through documented emails). I sent them to Walmart, who turned my photos over to the police. Now my husband is threatening me with child pornography charges. Will I really be in legal trouble for printing photos for evidence against him?

Can I be in trouble for not reporting the alleged abuse to Department of Family and Children Services?

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Will you be in legal trouble for child pornography? No.

The legal definition of child pornography generally requires things such as "sexually explicit conduct" or "lewd and lascivious display". Mere nudity does not rise to this standard; photographic documentation of suspected physical abuse comes nowhere near it.

Will you get in trouble for not reporting the suspected abuse? Almost certainly not. People with certain jobs are "mandatory reporters" of suspected abuse, but it's very hard to become a mandatory reporter without being aware of it (and even mandatory reporters generally aren't required to report members of their immediate family).

I'm not surprised that Walmart reported the photos to the police. For various reasons, commercial photo processors are utterly paranoid about child pornography, and will report anything that might even remotely indicate the potential for such.

(Strongly related: Is it legal to take naked non-abusive pictures of my child?)

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