If I understand the law regarding distribution of child porno, he could be living with a 16 or 17 y/o legally , shared an intimate picture of her and go to federal prison for 25 years. Not saying that happened, just a comment on the absurdity of our legal system.
In that case, he shared a picture of said girl to random people on the internet, which doesn’t make his story much better. I hope for his sake and that it’s something along those lines and just poor judgement from a college kid. But as much as I often try to find “maybe” in these cases, truly hoping for the best, I don’t see a scenario where he didn’t make some serious mistakes that will cost him.
Probably his biggest error, again assuming he meant no harm initially, was not immediately getting in front of it with his parents to try and explain his mistake. The fact that people apparently(according to his words) alerted him to the issue, followed by the site itself alerting him of the problem, and he never tried to do damage control, will probably be a huge sticking point. It’s not “sorry for the misstep”. It’s “sorry, I got caught”. Unlike most of our normal hiccups, there’s just no angle that he isn’t absolutely dead in the water. Sucks because he’s not even 21 and his life is, for all intents and purposes, is likely over.