Pornography Sting Ends in Assault

An Extension School art student was the subject of a police sting operation at a Cambridge photography lab after taking nude photographs of her son.

The photographer, Toni Marie Angeli, became enraged when police confronted her with the pictures. She swore at a police officer and then threw a lamp at a Zona Photographic Laboratories employee, according to Cambridge police.

She was charged with assault and battery, malicious destruction of property and disorderly conduct, and will be tried at Cambridge District Court on January 24.

Angeli took the pictures of her son at Fresh Pond and the Cambridge apartment that she shares with her husband, the boy's father.

"I should be able to take pictures of my kid," Angeli said. "I feel that mothers and parents should be able to photograph their children."

"I think that the beauty of nudity in children is its lack of sexuality," Angeli added. "The only time I'll stop taking pictures of him with his penis is when he decides to put his underwear on."

Jill Riley, spokesperson for the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office, said in a telephone interview that, based on the photographs, no charges were filed against Angeli because there was no "lascivious intent," meaning that her photos "did not have any lewd connotations."

Riley said the District Attorney's office determined through a "reasonable" investigation that Angeli "was not going to sell [the photos] into any pornography distribution."

In a telephone interview yesterday, Rowena J. Otremba, an owner of the lab, said the Cambridge Police Department child pornography expert and the official from the district attorney's office who viewed the pictures had "agreed that the pictures were a little bit 'on-the-line.'"

Confronted with allegations of censorship, Otremba said, "Our intent was never to censor this person. It was to protect the child. If she wants to bring the pictures back to us to print, I would gladly print them."

The pictures taken for Angeli's "Innocence in Nudity" project include photographs in which her son is urinating and at least three in which his penis is visible.

This story was written using Associated Press wire dispatches.