Detective sues teen's lawyer in Virginia sexting case WASHINGTON - The lead detective in a high-profile sexting case is suing a northern Virginia attorney for criticizing a police search warrant that sought pictures of a 17-year-old boy's erect penis to compare to a video the boy was accused of sending to his 15-year-old girlfriend. Detective David Abbott of the Manassas City Police Department filed a defamation lawsuit against attorney Jessica Foster on Oct. 16. Foster represented the 17-year-old Manassas City teen charged with distributing child pornography for allegedly texting a sexually explicit video of himself to his girlfriend. The lawsuit claims comments Foster made to The Washington Post in July caused Abbott intense public scrutiny, embarrassment, and shame, and hurt his reputation as a police officer. As a result of her comments, Abbott said he received death threats and hundreds of emails that included pornographic or threatening material, The Washington Post reported Friday. Foster told The Post in a July 9 article that Abbott told her that after obtaining photos of her 17-year-old client's erect penis, he would "use special software to compare pictures of this penis to this penis." Who does this? Foster told The Post at the time. It's just crazy. Abbott's lawsuit alleges that not only did Foster defame him by calling the investigation crazy, but that she misstated what he told her about the case. "Foster's statement provides that Abbott, himself, would obtain the photos and use `special software to compare pictures of this penis to this penis,"' according to the lawsuit. This statement implies that Abbott conceived of the idea, that he desired to obtain the photographs, that he would take actual photographs, and that he would personally execute the comparison. Foster's attorneys said in a court filing that her comments aren't defamatory, and are constitutionally protected free speech. The 17-year-old's case went to trial in Prince William juvenile court in August. A judge ruled there was sufficient evidence to convict the teen based on the location of his phone when the sexually explicit video was sent to his girlfriend and the messages that the pair exchanged. Judge George DePolo placed the teen on probation for a year and said he would consider dismissing the case in 2015 if the teen stayed out of trouble, and off social media, for a year. The case attracted national attention in part because Abbott obtained two separate search warrants seeking to take photos of the teen's genitalia. Foster said in July that when she asked how authorities planned to accomplish that, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Claiborne Richardson told her: "We just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures that we need." A review of the search warrants showed that Abbott actually crossed out a line that requested "a photograph of the suspect's erect penis." But then a second search warrant for the same material was obtained on July 1. Before the second warrant could be executed, the July 9 story appeared and the prosecution decided against following through with it.