MySpace In Multi-count Sex Assault Probe

Something is going to have to be done to find a solution to children becoming vuolnerable through the MySpace service. I understand that the first line of responsibility is with parents. However, with wireless devices, Internet compatible cell phones and so forth - no parent is going to be able to police the behavior effectively. And children will put themselves at risk knowingly, or not.

Police are investigating whether as many as seven teenage girls have been sexually assaulted by men they met through the popular Web site MySpace.com.

The girls, ages 12 to 16, are from Middletown and say they were fondled or had consensual sex with men who turned out to be older than they claimed. None of the incidents appeared to be violent, said Middletown Police Sgt. Bill McKenna.

He said it was difficult to determine the exact number of victims because some girls have been reluctant to disclose that they met their assailants online.

Comments

[beautifulatrocities]

Why are girls this young meeting ANYONE they met over the Internet?? Where are their parents?

[Bill]

Geez to think way back in October because of Taylor Behl, I called my Congressman, local pastors, Michael Reagan's talk show, local private schools, and every parent I could about myspace and even put a blog on my blog, scribbles-n-bits.blogspot.com, concerning holding myspace.com accountable. If I put a swimming pool in my backyard and build a 10 ft fence, I am still responsible if some kid climbs over and gets injured or killed. It's called creating a nuisance. The folks at myspace need to come up with controls. They and the thousand other similar sites out there shoulder some of the burden. Parents of course shoulder the greatest portion of the burden but kids have pretty much open access through our govt schools, libraries, etc.

And watching the news, one must have reservations about the people at the schools (I say this being a fifth generation educator).

Kids today are less naive in some aspects, more naive in others. And they are all less mature than their counterparts of part generations. Lack of responsibility to gain maturity.

Bill

[teresa]

Myspace in coming up more and more these days but we can't blame them. When AOL first came out, I could not believe as soon as I signed in people were IM me. The chat rooms were awful then. Even it the child cannot get on myspace at home does not mean they cannot do it at a friends house.

[Phoenix]

Part of the problem are the adult dating sites like LoveMatch.com....or something like that. There are tons of those sites designed to help adults meet potential mates. Some advertise on TV showing happy couples who exclaim happily that they would never have been this happy if they'd not met through such-and-such site. Kids see it and think, 'why not?'. If it's good enough for them, it's fine for me.

[Chris]

Ya know what? I think its the kid's fault.I mean really,come on.How F*ing stupid are all of you? Myspace has nothing to do with some young girl going over to a strangers house and oops she gets sexually assaulted.I guess its so easy for you lazy stupid people to blame everything but the kids and the stupid ass parents who produced them.Seriously,you all need to grow the hell up.

[Christy]

I just wanted to say that I do have a myspace account. I use it to find old friends and make new ones. Granted I am almost 30 years old and do not go out with people I meet off the internet. But Myspace does take precautions. They block profiles of people under the age of 16. Young people will lie about their age and that is how people will see their profile. I think parents just need to monitor their children more and what they are doing on the internet. I know that my children are not allowed to chat or do play on any web sites that are not childrens web sites. So it is not only the preditor who is lieing it is the young ladies also. They think that it can't happen to them. Little do they know that it can happen to ANYBODY!!

[Keith]

I have never heard of Myspace.com until a couple weeks ago from some younger adults in my office. Amazed at some of the news that has come out about sexual preditors, I investigated further into this website. I found that my 16 year old daughter was on this acting as a "dating" 19 year old for about one month now. I do not have a home computer...so after further investigating found that there are several classes that my daughter attends at school that allow the kids to go on the internet unsupervised. During this unsupervised time the kids are e-mailing each other from accounts that they've created while at school, and of course Myspace. It has since been taken care of at a parent level, but I would have never known that my child was doing this without investigating myself.