MySpace Sued by Families of Children Abused by Adults Met on the Site

January 22, 2007

  • January 22, 2007 at 7:45 am
    Heather says:
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    Granted, today\’s challanges for parental control are truly awesome, but I do know bright sucessful young people who were raised with no T.V. It depends on the child. My daughter has had a sight on My Space for at least 3yrs if not more, I have one and all her friends and cousins. They use it to share pictures, comments, art and to share with one another. They do not respond to people they do not know and we have had the talk many times, even at the age of 24. In this world it is dangerous to respond to people you don\’t know – parents have to drive that home. Take the computer away. Oh yeah – there is money to be made here, huh?

  • January 22, 2007 at 11:07 am
    ? says:
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    These stories are always awful, but I can\’t help but think maybe there should be better controls at home as well as on the individual sites. I think MySpace does have a responsibility to provide safety mechanisms for its users, but there\’s only so much they can do. I don\’t have any children, so I\’m not any source of how to parent, but if we\’re not going to get rid of this internet thing, it seems a lot of responsibility is going to fall on the parents. Definitely sad for the children, but I don\’t think suing websites is the answer.

  • January 22, 2007 at 11:49 am
    Jane says:
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    AZUW – I don\’t think there is suddenly a rash increase of predators. Some of our politicians and the media are having a grand time generating \”politics of fear\” and \”media hype\”. I got into studying the issue and what I learned is that the true numbers are not increasing. It is how the numbers are counted. The FBI is counting every communication between two people that is sexually suggestive, as solicitation. That includes two teenage girls talking to each other online about what they do with their boyfriends.

    The \”predators\” are in majority – males looking to meet females for what is really just that old normal birds and bees/boy meets girl or vice versa stuff. When I went checking myspace out as a parent, I saw teenage girls all over the place lying about their age – well I guess we did that too when I was one. Except now, it really works well to feed the irrational hysteria that is going on when an older male falls into the teenage girls trap.

    I might also add that the internet is a place where people can present themselves to be anything and anybody. And so many are doing exactly that. It is not for purposes of preying on others. It rather is like superegos expressing inner fantansies and playing out roles. They are having fun and as teenagers have always loved to do, freaking out the establishment in their process.

    I would bet those FBI guys are having a heck of a lot more fun too playing sex police rather than going after real criminals.

  • January 23, 2007 at 12:12 pm
    Jane says:
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    I\’ve got to add one more thing. Media is really driving hysteria over pedophiles – they are everywhere, everywhere after our children!! Oh John Walsh of America\’s Most Wanted is so heart rendering about how his son was killed by a pedophile! Except truth be told – they never found the killer of his son. Nor did they find enough pieces of the boys body to know whether he was sexually assaulted or not.

    First, pedophiles are adults who have sexual preference for children – and that means children under the age of 12 and an adult over the age of 21. They are actually very rare and they do not kill. Killing is more for the psychopaths who kill all ages of people. When sex involves a teenager and someone older, it is not pedophilia.

    All most all pedophilia involves family or very close friends and is between two, rarely repeated with others.

    Most often what is going on with these teenagers we hear about is statutory rape which means violation of age of consent laws. That is to say, the teenager wanted to do it but the other person was past the legal age limit (3 years older in my state of Texas) and thus, is charged with sexual assault.

  • January 22, 2007 at 1:34 am
    Dr. Goat Strips says:
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    Yes pedophiles are horrible individuals and there is no excuse for what they do, but for these parents to blame Myspace.com for what happend to thier daughters is just outrageous. Perhaps if you kept a better eye on what sites they are surfing and who they are meeting with. Underaged children aren\’t even supposed to be on the site per the webmaster you must be 18+ to have a profile!!!! Nobody seems to want to take responsiblity for thier actions…WATCH YOUR KIDS MORE DILIGENTLY AND YOU WON\’T HAVE THESE PROBLEMS!!!!!

  • January 22, 2007 at 1:42 am
    Voice of Experience says:
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    As a parent of a 21 yr old girl, I have had experience with her internet usage as a teen. As most teens go, she saw that any rules I set were made to be broken. I finally had to install a net nanny software to monitor her usage after I got up one night at 2:00 and saw she had gotten out of bed and was on the computer IM her \”boyfriend\” in NY. (We live in IA). We even moved the computer into the kitchen of our home so we could monitor her usage, but she found ways to hide what she was doing. (Supposedly working on homework but hiding her IM\’s in the background).

    I took every opportunity to share with her that the people she was talking to could be lying about who they were. I myself had a couple of horror stories with women I met online in the early days of AOL chat rooms, so I knew what I was talking about.

    Luckily everything turned out okay, but I know how easy it is for a kid to get tied into a person that shows an interest in them. Most teens have such low esteem that it only takes someone to focus on them to get them to \”fall in love\” with them.

  • January 22, 2007 at 1:53 am
    Concerned Parent says:
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    Its not necessarily bad parenting. Its uninformed parenting. Many parents don\’t realize how easy it is for pedophiles to get in touch with their children. It used to be that all parents needed to worry about were the people in their town. \”Never talk or go with strangers\” was sufficient. Parents are now up against the world. Many parents also can\’t navigate the internet as well as their children.

    If communication does not come easily in a family, the parents are completely ignorant as to the activities of their child.

    There is no way to completely make the internet safe. If a person wants to harm another, they will find a way. The only feasable way to protect ones children is to learn how to use the internet as well as the kids do and keep communication lines open in the home.

    Its not going to get any easier as technology improves and the use of it becomes more essential.

  • January 22, 2007 at 1:59 am
    getreal says:
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    OK they have access at school, they can access from their PSP or nintendo anywhere there is WIFI and now from their cell phones so unless you expect parents to handcuff themselves to thier child 24/7 the providers of theses services should take some responsiblity. Hey movies are rated r and the theater is supposed to enforce it not the parents you have to be 21 to buy beer and th store enforces it not the parents get off the soap box and face reality

  • January 22, 2007 at 2:05 am
    The hardest job ever... says:
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    Raising a kid in the internet age has to be one of the scariest things… but I see this as our litagious society once again attempting to shun the burden of responsibility off of the individuals involved and onto an institution in an effort to obtain a settlement (money).

  • January 22, 2007 at 2:18 am
    Compman says:
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    I don\’t see how anybody can think the website is at all responsible. They have no way of knowing when a 45 yr old sets up an account claiming to be 18. Myspace didn\’t set up the \”date\” for these kids. They did it on their own. Myspace didn\’t tell them to meet these people face to face. And I would assume that Myspace probably has warnings that it is not good to meet strangers alone. All this is is another litigation lottery for people who won\’t take any personal responsibility for their or their kids actions. Sadly, there will be some liberal jury out there that sees it differently and will award millions of dollars for ignorance and bad parenting. Maybe we can get the assemblywoman from CA that is trying to outlaw spanking to add an amendment to her bill that if a parent allows their teenager to meet with a pedophile, the parent goes to jail!!



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