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AOL Monitor Accused of Luring 15-Year-Old for Sex
Amy's Robot writes "According to the AP, an Internet chat room monitor hired by AOL to keep children safe from sexual predators seduced a California girl online and was about to meet her for sex when he was found out by a co-worker, a lawsuit charges. The incident happened 2 years ago, but has become public this week because the lawsuit was just filed by the girl, now 19. She accuses AOL of failing to supervise the employee and of falsely advertising that its online service was safe for children. Who's watching the watchers?"
This might not be the only case, we might see a lot of me-toos lawsuits soon.
And to watch the watchers, the outcome may have already suggested a solution - some sort of peer reviews, his co-worker did find out his activity right?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
In other news, people who arrive at the stark realization that they're going to be losers on welfare and in debt for the rest of their lives are suing corporations with deep pockets instead of getting real jobs.
She was fifteen, she'd had the talk about the birds and the bees. I find it hard to believe that people are seduced into sex, and this was only considered seducing after he had been talking to her for two years. Most teenagers don't know eachother for two days and they get it on like jack rabbits. If anything I applaud his patience.
What's the age of consent in California? In Pennsylvania, if they had sex after she turned 16, they'd be in the clear, if I understand my age of consent laws correctly (85% sure).
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
The way I see it: the girl strings along the guy for two years, promises to meet, changes her mind and two years later slaps the guy with this!
Could someone clarify who the aggressor is again?
Was this girl chained to the computer and forced to make herself available for chat and respond?
Sure, parents should be responsible.
But if AOL specifically went out of their way to make chat rooms that were SAFE for young children, by actively having people monitor them and keep them acceptable, tha'ts a selling feature to parents.
It's like if you sent your kid to daycare, and he was mistrated.. would you say to that parent "You should have been there, how dare you trust your kid to some daycare?"
At some point, AOL WAS responsible for this.
First of all she was 17, in many, many, countries this is exceeding the age of consent so its either saying that american girls are typically more innocent then the rest of the world, or the people running the show in your country are a bunch of prudes.
Secondly the guy isn't a pedophile because she isn't exactly prepubescent. There is nothing wrong with being attracted to girls who have gone through puberty no matter what their age, its a biological thing.
Regardless the best job for a pedophile would be in the clergy or as a scout master or something, many more people are wary to meet someone off the internet these days, and besides why put in all the effort when you could just have the parents bring their kids to you.
The AOL kid chat rooms were specifically advertised as being monitored and safe. This one was not.
As a parent, you cannot, indeed should not, be by your teenagers side 24/7.
Regardless of your obscure views of paedophiles this guy was employed to protect her from people like himself. He is a fraud. Parents use AOL because they advertise the child protection angle. OK, I think that AOL is rubbish but this guy was abusing his position in order to get payed a salary to do what he was getting paid to prevent.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Well, aside from the technicaliites of the law, even if he didn't committ a crime (I think age of consent varies by state) this is pretty sketchy. This guy's job was to protect kids from being propositioned for sex - it's pretty sleazy to use that position to monitor chatrooms until the girls become "barely legal" and then go for it...
Why is there no "Didn't read the article" moderation option? It seems like it would be so useful in many circumstances.
http://notanumber.net/
Bahahaha, yeah, kids will stop having sex and stop getting pregnant if you make it illegal. Good one! I haven't a laugh like that in awhile.
Urban Detail
Regardless of your obscure views of paedophiles this guy was employed to protect her from people like himself.
It seems to me that the guy's behavior was improper, given that he had a professional relationship with the young woman. On the other hand, I think the term "paedophile" should be reserved for those who are sexually attracted to people who are below the age of sexual maturity, not merely below the age of consent in a particular locale.
"And yes, it's very easy for a 12 year old to become pregnate and even come full term to give birth."
Of course it is, and the question becomes if evolution has made 12 yearolds sexual beings at the age of 12, why is the age of concent 18?
Perhaps instead of rallying against nature people should accept the obvisous: children are sexual beings and to deny reality leads to sexually repressed future adults, or current adults being jailed among other problems.
Let me get this straight:
She meets this guy online.
She chats with the guy online.
She gives the guy her phone number.
She talks to the guy on the phone.
They have increasingly explicit conversations.
She claims emotional distress.
Distress from what exactly? Her escapades with this dufus, or the fact that her parents divorced and she has trouble making friends (as stated in the article)?
I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that a girl age 15 - 17 doesn't know what she's doing -- especially when she is old enough to drive and obviously smart enough to sue a company like AOL 2 years later.
And where are the parents in all this? Didn't they teach their kid responsibility and give her the power to say "no?" Why was it even possible for this girl to virtually hang out and chat with this guy for two years and plan a get-together without them being involved or in the know? Did they themselves coerce her into suing AOL?
This doesn't add up.
AOL's parent controls are not a substitute for proper parenting.
AOL monitor. Seriously, don't they do background checks for this type of job. I understand not doing them for most jobs, but this type of job, you would think it would be par for the course. But I guess if he doesn't have a record and she was only 17 at the time and if he was like 21-24 its not that bad (illegal, but not like he was 45). But what is really sad is that she is the one sueing. She made the decision to meet someone from a chat room and now is sueing because she was allowed to meet the guy. Sounds like sueing for dollars more than anything. Isn't America great...
I don't feel a lot of sympathy for the sort of guy who takes advantage of a professional relationship to seduce somebody who is (at least initially) underage, inexperienced, and in emotional turmoil. And it would not surprise me if, with a little time to reflect upon what happened, the young woman felt that his behavior toward her was unethical. Regardless of whether it would have been legal or illegal for him to have sex with her in that state, it seems like AOL has an obligation to supervise the activities of its chat room monitors and make sure that they are in accord with company policies and the representations that AOL has made to customers.
Yeah, but it's such bullshit. If a 17 year-old girl consents to having sex after having known someone since she was 15 then that's her own decision and can't in all honesty be considered illegal (assuming, of course, that the age of consent has now been passed).
If it is, then where do you want to draw the line? If a guy first has contact with a girl when she's 15 then she consents to having sex with him when she's 19 does that then still count as wrong? How about if she consents to having sex when she's 21? 30? 40? Are you just going to pick an arbitrary number?
The girl was below the age of consent at 15. If the guy had asked her to have sex with him then then that would have been wrong. But for a 17 year-old to agree to do something of her own free will - when the law recognises that she's free to do it - and then raise a hue and cry about it is plainly ridiculous.
If I were a judge and this came to my court I'd ask the girl one simple question: "when he first asked you to have sex with him or made any sexual overtures towards you, how old were you and did he know your true age at that time?". If the girl said she was past the age of consent (especially if she was a year or more past it) then I'd throw her case out in a heartbeat.
Girls meet older guys all the time. When they first meet is irrelevant. It's when they get down to business that matters. And, in this case, that didn't even happen, did it?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This is a case of AOL failing to provide an advertised service.
Also, this term refers only to those exclusively attracted to adolescents. The way you state it would classify pretty much the entire adult population of Earth as mentally ill, which is (While I personally am prepared to accept it) pretty much a contradiction in terms.
There is nothing wrong with being attracted to girls who have gone through puberty no matter what their age, its a biological thing.
This reminds me... a friend of mine (with a degree in biology) is fond of pointing out that there are excellent evolutionary reasons to be attracted to the youngest post-puberty potential mates...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
"America Online spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company fired the monitor and contacted authorities after learning of the situation in April 2003. The man, who was 23 when he met the girl online, has not been charged with a crime."
This is not a criminal case, it's a lawsuit.
It isn't really that easy, you can't watch your children 24/7, especially not if you want them to have some integrity of their own, which is reasonable at 15-17 years age.
One way for the parents to act would be only allowing the children to access only "safe" sites wouldn't it? Like that AOL service claimed to be. It'slike if a parent bought a game for children and it contained harsh violence and strong sex references. Would that be the parents fault?
It seems the Slashdot crowd is very fast on judging parents, but have you really thought this through? Maybe you should try to imagine how it would be to have a child n your own? Would you be that perfect parent that you expect everyone else to be?
They were preparing to meet on the girl's 17th birthday when one of the monitor's co-workers became suspicious and prevented the encounter.
Read: "a male coworker, pissed off that he wasn't getting any 17-year-old action (or any at all, probably; he DOES work for AOL), decided to ruin things for everyone on the theory that 'if I'm not having sex, he doesn't get to have it either'".
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Normally I would completely agree with you, however in this instance, AOL were advertising the service as being safe for kids. Much like a day-care centre where you drop your kids off with adults you believe are there to ensure your children won't come to any harm; AOL advertised this service as being a place where your kids could safely chat on the internet.
If a day care centre did not perform adequate checks on their employees, and then employed a known pedophile who then attempted to molest children at the centre, the centre would rightly be sued for negligence - precisely because they've advertised the service as safe for children. AOL's case is no different; they've advertised the service as safe for kids.
Of course, whether AOL have or have not failed in this duty is for the courts to decide.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
Where I'm from (not Slovakia.. although its a great place for hosting a webpage) the age of consent is generally 16, it can vary from state to state and depends on other things like the sex of your partner (and that rule is rarely enforced, if ever) or their age sometimes its a bit less sometimes its a bit more but in general 16. Charges are almost unheard of because in general people believe that if some teenager is having sex with another teenager then who are we to judge. They get given condoms and are told how to use them so we don't care if they go at it.
I seriously doubt everyone but religous prudes believe that these laws stop people having sex. It perhaps makes them regret it later when their girlfriends crazy parents come along and press charges but it doesn't stop shit.
I can tell you right now that as soon as children start going through puberty they are going to be interested in sex. The reason girls used to get married so young (ie. 12) not 50 years ago is because before birth control they got pregnant and it was the socialy accepted norm that she was to be married. These days teenagers are having sex at the same age as they always did, its just that with propper birthcontrol use they don't have to worry as much about kids.
Don't even get me started about contributing members of society, as soon as you start paying taxes (15 in your country IIRC) you should have the right to get a leg up.
To summerize, those laws do nothing to stop people from having sex and those who believe they do are fooling themselves. If anything they would stop girls telling their mothers that the condom broke and they need a morning after pill.
See, aiming a gun that-a-way and shooting is the easy part. Technically you could even get a monkey to kill people, or just release a bunch of rabid pitbulls and hope they gore someone.
/. You don't get to be fashionable and popular in college by being the guy/gal who actually learns stuff. You get to be fashionable and popular by fitting in with the rebel-without-a-clue gang. You get to be _really_ popular if you up the ante: whatever idiocy someone else did, by jove, show everyone that you can do it twice as idiotic.
The thing, however, is about responsibility and making the right judgment call.
E.g., when you stand guard for _hours_ with an assault rifle and live ammo, you're trusted to be responsible enough to _not_ start shooting at cars on the nearby highway because you're bored. E.g., when you're taught how to lob a grenade, and yes at some point you'll get to use live ones, you're trusted to be responsible enough to not lob it at your platoon mates or shove it down your own pants. Etc.
But you know why that works, while college is an exercise in proving you're more stupid than the others? Consequences.
Sorry, 18-19 year olds are _not_ brain-dead. They _are_ perfectly capable of cause-effect judgment.
However, like all humans at all ages, they choose the course of action that offers the best (short time) effect.
In the army you _know_ that you'll be up shit creek without a paddle if you do something stupid.
In college it's exactly the other way around: the way to gain prestige and peer recognition is to do all those sorts of stupid things. Think of it as the RL equivalent of karma whoring on
So it's not that you're more stupid at 19 than you are at 29. In both cases you just pick the course of action that promises the most rewards, and the least perceived short-term risks. It's just that at 19 and in college the whole rewards and negative consequences scale is turned on its head. So the perfectly logical course of action to take in that situation, seems bloody stupid when viewed from another context.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Safe" and "Supervised" are not the same thing and your analogy is stretching a bit :)
If I leave a child at a day-care centre, I have every reason to believe that my child will not come to physical harm because day-care centres are not normally staffed by child-molestors or chainsaw juggling instructors. A better analogy, perhaps, is a playground.
If a parent takes a child to a playground, and then leave them unsupervised at the playground, then the parent is being negligent and has no good reason to sue the local council. If, on the other hand, the parent takes the child to a playground and pays someone to babysit - ie. supervise - their child, and that supervisor - either through negligence or through willful misconduct - allows the child to come to harm then it is the supervisor who is at fault and not the parent, as the parent has had a guarantee from the supervisor that they as a responsible adult will not allow the child to come to harm.
This extends further: if, instead of employing a supervisor directly, the parent takes their child to a supervised playground where the playground owner specifies that by paying an entrance fee the playground will ensure that the children are properly supervised, the parent has acted properly and has ensured that their child will not be tempted to go to the back of the car of some pervert offering the kids sweets.
And this is the point: AOL are not offering chainsaw juggling lessons: they're offering a supervised playground. An unsupervised internet chat room is no more directly dangerous to a child's health than an unsupervised playground. It's only when the pervert in the car is allowed to approach the kids that the playground becomes a dangerous place; and it's only when the chat room is improperly supervised - EITHER by the parent OR by the delegated supervisor - that they become dangerous.
In this instance, allegedly, it went further than the trusted playground supervisor failing to prevent a child approaching the car offering sweets, it was the supervisor himself who offered the sweets from the back of a car.
And the same applies with baby-sitters.
A parent does not always have to be present for them to reasonably believe that their children are being properly supervised.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.