SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - At what point does a seemingly innocent picture of childhood turn into porn? A lot of parents are asking that question after hearing about two cases in Utah and Arizona where parents have become the subjects of investigations because of the photos they took of their children.

In the Utah case, a West Jordan mom took some pictures of her 5-year old daughter changing into her Halloween costume and then showing off. Mom, who asked that we not reveal her identity, said, "She was posing and being silly. She was dressed up in an Ariel wig with lipstick on."

She took the photos on a memory card to Wal-Mart for prints. A Wal-Mart employee saw the pictures and called police. Police ended up getting a search warrant for the family home. " All of a sudden you have 12 people in your house going through everything you own," Mom said. "It was demeaning and degrading. It was horrible. It was like a witch hunt."

Sgt. Drew Sanders, a spokesman for the West Jordan Police Department would not say if it was one photo or a series of photos that triggered the search warrant. Nor would he specifically describe their concerns. Instead Sgt. Sanders said, "If you were to be able to see these photographs, you would know right away."

"You saw the photographs?" I asked.

He replied, "I have."

"Shocking?"

"Yes."

Sgt. Sanders said their investigation is ongoing. "I don't want anyone to think we're picking on them. We're just trying to get to the facts and the truth."

He also praised the Wal-Mart employee for doing the right thing. In Utah, doing the right thing is required. Utah has a mandatory reporting law when it comes to suspected cases of child abuse or exploitation.

The Arizona case involved Anthony and Lisa Demaree. The couple from Peoria, Arizona have been fighting authorities for more than a year over nude bathtub photos of their young daughters. At one point their three girls were taken away from them and placed in foster homes. It took a month to get them back and another 7 months to get a court to drop the child welfare case against them. When the Demaree family announced in September of this year they were filing a civil rights lawsuit, Lisa Demaree observed, "We now realize how much control the state has and they can pull any one of your children out of your home right now."

Such a warning alarms many parents who have at one time or another taken innocent nude or partially nude pictures of their children. They wonder if they should search through their dusty photo albums and shred any similar photos they might find.

"I wouldn't," said University of Utah Law Professor Wayne McCormack. "I just wouldn't take them out and do anything else with them either."

Professor McCormack, who is an expert in constitutional law, explained the definition of child pornography in the Utah code contains two keys: Distribution and intent. Assuming the photo does not contain any sexual act -- either real or simulated -- he said a photo kept in a family scrapbook should not be seen as pornographic. He said a compelling case could be made that the intent of the photo was to capture a childhood moment and not for sexual arousal. "You can infer that intent from a lot of things: The way the photograph is posed, the way it is handled afterwards," He said. "You see something posted on the internet, you think it's different than in the privacy of your own photo album. Context matters a lot with this kind of a problem."

Civil rights attorney Alyson Carter agrees with the professor's assessment, "Just because it is a nude photo of a child doesn't make it child pornography -- and that's the U. S. Supreme Court."

And yet, if a photo comes to the attention of police and prosecutors, it could takes months of anguish and thousands of dollars to prove your innocence. So her advice: "Look through (your photos) with an objective eye and say is there anything in here that might cause someone concern." And if it might, she recommends getting rid of it.

Sgt Sanders gave this guideline: "Would you be willing to show those to your neighbors? If you would, then probably no problem."

But the painful warning from the West Jordan mother goes beyond that. She said, "Beware of what you take ... to be printed. No matter how innocent you think it may be ... somebody might say this is sexually exploiting a child and you may be put through the same hell that we went through."