Ten adolescent boys aged 13 to 15 were arrested in Laval, Quebec today for distribution of child pornography after girls had sent them naked and or sexually suggestive pictures of themselves.

The girls sent pictures using an app called SnapChat which deletes a picture within moments after it was sent. However, a simple method can be used to capture the image once it is received. Several of the boys saved these captured images and shared them.

Police say that the girls were either “tricked or coerced” into sending the pictures.

“Some of the girls thought that they were okay by sending these pictures by using an app called SnapChat because the picture will appear for only a few seconds… and then it disappears,” Nathalie Laurin of Laval Police told CTV News today.

In an inflammatory video accompanying the news report by CTV police said the boys used the “trust of their girlfriends” to send them pictures and even “sent naked pictures of themselves in order to get their girlfriends” to send them naked pictures in return.

The police did not explain how by simply asking to have a picture sent to them or by reciprocating with sending a naked picture of themselves constituted coercion or manipulation.

The girls who have received the naked pictures of the boys have not been charged with any wrong doing.

Dozens of officers and a specialized unit involving 20 investigators, have been assigned to the case after officials from a Laval high school reported the incident last month.

A staff member noticed a boy looking at explicit pictures of a girl on his phone. That boy was sent to the principal’s office and his parents were notified, of a pending arrest. At that point authorities learned several boys had access to the same or similar photographs, and that they had been shared with fellow students at two other schools.

The boys are expected to face charges of production, possession and distribution of child pornography.