Justice Department Plans No Charges Over Calvin Klein Ads

The Justice Department has decided not to prosecute fashion designer Calvin Klein in connection with a series of jeans ads showing young models in suggestive poses.

The department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section “independently verified that minors were not used as models in the particular photographs that raised questions,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Kevin V. Di Gregory wrote Klein’s lawyer on Wednesday.

Some of the photographs were deemed offensive by a broad spectrum of observers, including a conservative media critic Donald Wildmon and President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But because minors weren’t used in those photos deemed questionable, they do not violate federal child pornography statutes, Di Gregory wrote.

Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern said several minors were used in the ad campaign, but the photographs of them did not display the “genital and pubic areas” as federal law requires in order to prove the exploitation of children for sexual purposes.