Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Yet another case of the parents not watching what their children are doing. But, if this means AOL gets hammered in the courts, I suppose I'm for it, as a loyal slashdotter.......... All jokes aside, parents should be supervising thier children's wherabouts and doings, rather than the big brotherish leanings that this implies should be implemented--it is evident that not even the watchers can be trusted. Who do you trust with your children, yourself or some stranger that is hired by AOL or other isp for close to min wage to watch for this shit?
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...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
It's hard to find a halfway attractive girl, under 18, not living in a third world country, who doesn't have a picture like this on a website somewhere : 15 Year Olds Don't be surprised to see more of this.
The most effective approach I've seen to this is to define the ability to consent in terms of the age (and therefore 'power') difference. That is, a fourteen year old can consent to having sex with a fifteen year old, but not with an eighteen year old.
However, this approach makes particularly liberal people uncomfortable since they don't like the idea that you can legally have sex with some people but not with others (where the others can legally have sex with some people). It also makes particularly conservative people uncomfortable since they don't like the idea that their fourteen year old daughter can legally have sex.
Since it isn't getting picked up by either the liberals or the conservatives, I can't see the US adopting it. But that's politics for you...
In Texas, if she (or he) is a student in a public school, it is illegal for any employee of the school to have sex with the student regardless of the student's age.
So you could conceivably see a 22 year old teacher going to prison for having concensual sex with a 20 year old.
The age of consent has nothing to do with it. The expectation based on AOL advertising was that minors would be protected from predators. The fact that a rape victim is 16 does not automatically mean that the victim in fact consented, or that a possible lapse in promised security did not in fact provide the means for the rape.
And they absolutely can be liable. If a firm offers a service, they cannot then state the service does not in fact exist, or is of no value. That is bait and switch. I cannot, for instance, open a store, say that a product is available, and then not have the product available. Even the cheapest of stores guarantees product availability for at least on day. Under your logic, I can claim to provide DSL speed, but only offer analog telephone modem lines. All I have to do is send a note with the shipped package saying that all service is analog modem. The standards of product offers and prices have been set for quite a while. If a firm is going to offer something, they better provide it. Even an disclaimer is often not enough.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'd have to agree with mboverload. Most fifteen year olds have minds of their own. They are able to be held responsible for killing someone, so why is it someone elses fault when she decides to sleep with someone she met over the net?
Thats why MSN Chat is no longer available.
MSN chat is still around. You have to subscribe to a Microsoft service in order to gain access to MSN chat, or join up one of the free channels if they are still around. I seem to remember CA, usually Canada or Centra Australia depending on the hour, was free. If you pay for hotmail, have an dialup/dsl account, or use webtv (if that's even still supported), you could access MSN chat. Prior subscribers, and those who created a @MSN.com hotmail account also seemed to have access to the chat rooms freely.
MSN Chat in communities is as always free.
A shame that a few bad apples have spoiled it for the rest of us
Was that the actual reason they closed their door to everyone who wasn't willing to give out their credit card? You could be right. A CC would help track down real pedos, well except those who steal them from overseas. But I doubt MSN chat had the monopoly on bad apples.
But it is somewhat sad the fact that they put so much in the way of resources tward IRC style chat to all but abandon it. MS Comic Chat 2.5 for example was ultra spiffy in the fact that you could choose a persona and expressions and have your chats in a comic strip style. This software was standard on win98se boxes IIRC. They also had a Virtual Chat where you could construct 3d worlds and interact with the environment. This wasn't as practical as MS Comic Chat. All of these were abandoned when they switched to passport logins, but with some tweaking one could get standard IRC software into MSN chat, very useful as the whole MSN Chat universe was filled with spam.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
If the 12 year old's parents don't have a the insight to tell their sex-crazed 12 year-old that protection should be used, then they can deal with an extra addition to their family. Of course, they then will get their 12 year old to file with the IRS, get an Earned-Income-Credit form (remember, the 12 year old makes no income to support her child, regardless of dependant claims by her folks), and bilk around $2500 per kid they pop out. The law should state that unless the minor is legally emancipated from the parents, the parents should take legal custody of any child produced by said minor until either a) said minor files for legal emancipation or b) said minor becomes a legal adult. Of course, clauses will be added for special cases.
The reason age-of-consent laws exist is to draw a line from whether the kid is able to make a responsible judgement call of whether they can consent to having sex or not. Whether the girl was seduced or not is irrelevant ("seduced" would most likely be a term the lawyer came up with here).
This does not negate the fact that there are people out there who take advantage of young teenagers. Teenagers who are underage should be protected from these people (even if they are only 23 years old). I find it extraordinarily disturbing how little respect there is here on Slashdot for this concept.
The fact that the news item was placed under "Your Rights Online" scares me too. Is the suggestion here that I do have a right to chat to someone knowing they are underage, start talking explicitly to them (both on the phone and online), and expect to meet up with them after saying the right things? If so, I'm insulted and disgusted at the suggestion.
Sure, teenagers out there are having sex. And I think society in general deems it relatively acceptable for this to occur (an example: here in Australia, if you are under the legal age of consent, there won't be a problem if you have sex with someone who is within 2 years of your own age). The problem is with people who are older, who know better than their young victims, and take advantage of that.
We need to take these issues more seriously. Kids out there do get taken advantage of. And people out there do get away with it. I would happily give up some of my rights to anonynimity on the 'net if it were certain to clear up some of the insidious behaviour that goes on.
This isn't as bad as when an underage girl gets into a club or bar with a fake ID and gets picked up by some 21+ guy then screws him. She either regrets it or her parents find out, and the guy is a child molester, even if he asked for ID. There's been several cases like that in the past, I feel sorry for the dude. Stupid bullshit paradigms in the US.
-Woad
Having been in the same position as the "victim" here, I'm inclined to agree with your sentiment.
That is, I've dated older men online (years and years ago) when I was around that age. Indeed, I met my fiance when I was around 14 and he was about 19. He is probably the oldest person I've ever been involved with, but it was extremely awkward when we were dating for the first few years, especially when he turned 20 and I was still under the AOC in my state (and still in high school, though not for long).
It's unfair to call the younger one in this relationship a "victim" and especially unfair to call the older one a "pedophile" or even a sexual predator when all signs seem to point to the opposite; a consenting and apparently rather close relationship.
That said, AOL still dropped the ball here. At the very least, this will hopefully force them to tighten their belts a bit to prevent something truly tragic from taking place (if it hasn't already).
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
No its because MSN chat sucked an no one used it. They just shut it down saying it was to stop pedophiles for good PR value.
I seem to remember a 60 Minutes episode on how a young girl, not sure how young, was convienced to leave home, and caught a flight from America to Greece. Most notable hearing the MSN chat / messenger sounds in the background which made me wonder if this did happen on MSN chat or if they just used that as a generic example. You could be correct that this was a PR move, as well as a move to lower their user base to a more manageable level.
MSN chat far from sucked, and many people used it, from hundrads of thousands to millions depending on the hour. It was for the most part identical to IRC except the client by default had full Unicode support. Fonts and colors where supported, as well as each user's name linked to a profile. And the software was far more likely to work on a user's machine than those Java chat programs.
The only reason it sucked was the fact that the people, for the most part, were so freaking paranoid. You couldn't join a chat, visit the loo, and come back without being kicked/banned 24hr for fear you were some evil program trying to get at their bank account. When you point out their mistake, no one knew how to unban as the default client didn't support it. Any speaking of software other than the official MSN client, even a trivial Trivia game would label you a hacker and get you permibanned.
More funny, the default client banned you based on info that was stored in your registry, which you could change at will either with regedit or editing the source of the room you were in, change the numbers, and poof. Worse yet, they went though much bother and effort associating names with accounts, yet allowed you to change your name once logged in. And when you create a room, you are given a key that is stored in your registry somewhere. There were two levels, gold owner and red operator (msn had a different term). Unless you saved this key, it might change and poof no one can get admin access in a room anymore.
What MSN chat needed was to limit the ability to change your name to a registered one. Also, different software for managing chat rooms that would allow you to define a owner password, define a operator password, and store ban lists. There were 3rd party programs to do this, and there was always a plugin for mirc, but every few months MSN would change something that didn't allow 3rd party clients to connect. But as far as design and layout I considered MSN to be far more useable than most IRC solutions.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
This guy "lures" this girl for two years? I don't know, he doesn't sound like a sexual predator to me. She's young, sure. But she was 17 when they were *going to meet* (read: they didn't.)
So if I meet a girl online, then find out that she's 15 years old, and say "Hey, maybe in a couple years we could meet each other" - I'm suddenly a potential rapist? This guy was only 23 when he met her, it's not like he was a 40 year old guy. I've known of plenty of guys in their mid 20's going out with girls at 18 or 19 years old.
Sounds like another finger-in-the-chille to me.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
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?
I suggest watching the movie "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind", to alleviate your delusions of ubiquitous ethics.
You can't take the sky from me...
Pardon my bluntness, but, WHERE ARE THE FSCKING PARENTS?
Frankly, I would love to see the day where a parent who sues ANYONE because some stranger a thousand miles away they've never met fails to protect their child from [WHATEVER] finds their butt drawn up on charges of child endangerment. It's YOUR FSCKING KID. YOU protect it, damn it!
I just turned 27 years old. My girlfriend is 18. We started dating a month prior to her 18th birthday. We started having sex two months prior to that. It's not a pattern with me. I've dated people my own age and older. It used to really bother me, the entire age difference. From the moment I realized there was an attraction, I made it known immediately that her age was something that I was not likely to be able to overcome. I had initially dismissed the idea out right that anything would ever come of it, but I find that people and time can wear you down, and I'm glad. Six months have passed and I don't even think about age anymore. It doesn't bother me in the least. In retrospect, the only reason it ever did is because American society has the flawed notion that it is somehow wrong for a 26 year old man to find a 17 year old girl attractive. I like the way you said that, I've often thought of it in those terms. It's not that I was attracted to someone below the age of "maturity", it's that I was attracted to maturity below the age of consent. I guess this is as good a first post as any.
Sex should not = pregnancy (not with the amount of birthcontrol available), and the reason why children are more prone to this is that they are kept ignorant.
Just a safety tip, don't give kids birth control pills until after their done with their hormonal imbalances. Birth control pills are a strong form of hormone, and if the body is still finding it's natural balance point it can get set wrong.
Condoms are great. Mutual masterbation and other alternatives are great. But the pill shouldn't be used in early teen years. When they go to college, give them one of those monthly dispensers and remind them that when it runs out it's time to pay the bills.
And basically nothing protects against herpes. If you're in New York City, your kids should not be having sex. Hell, you should not be having sex. Find someone from the 'burbs where the numbers aren't 1 in 10.
I just turned 27 years old. My girlfriend is 18. We started dating a month prior to her 18th birthday. We started having sex two months prior to that.
It's not a pattern with me. I've dated people my own age and older.
It used to really bother me, the entire age difference. From the moment I realized there was an attraction, I made it known immediately that her age was something that I was not likely to be able to overcome. I had initially dismissed the idea out right that anything would ever come of it, but I find that people and time can wear you down, and I'm glad.
Six months have passed and I don't even think about age anymore. It doesn't bother me in the least. In retrospect, the only reason it ever did is because American society has the flawed notion that it is somehow wrong for a 26 year old man to find a 17 year old girl attractive.
I like the way you said that, I've often thought of it in those terms. It's not that I was attracted to someone below the age of "maturity", it's that I was attracted to maturity below the age of consent.
I guess this is as good a first post as any.
(forgive me for being redundant but I messed up trying to back out of a submit that I meant to preview--I looked for a way to delete/edit to no avail)
and also why I get into fights with certain kinds of women. (hopefully that's not a Troll Alert... I'll try to be intelligent about this.)
Sex, ah, our society's favorite, misunderstood topic. I will venture to say that the things that drive sex AND seduction and make it hot seem to be... where you are "getting what you're not supposed to normally be getting or what you feel like you wouldn't have been able to get, but did." It's an achievement, in other words. Which fuels passion, which fuels (hopefully) genuine love.
I just feel like the mechanism of seduction is the same all around, whether disparate ages or different sexes (or not), because if the person wasn't receptive to the seduction in the first place, then it wouldn't work. So you (typically) take this slightly immature man (like I myself am- I matured quite late physically/emotionally/sexually) and this woman who (even for her age) happened to mature early, and all of a sudden you have something illegal, even if these two genuinely love each other. The thing is, there are two kinds of seduction. There's predatory a.k.a. serial seduction, and seduction "for keeps". If the latter, and there is love, who cares? who can judge honestly?
Anything done out of love cannot be that wrong. (If on the other hand they were both like "We just wanted some amazing fucking and that's it"... well, then, that lass is undoubtedly quite a handful... and the laws again fail to apply properly)
Interestingly, I don't think that this would be too bad.
The problem in Natural Language Processing applications is generally the availability of training data with which to train systems. AOL is a large corporate interest. They also have a vested interest in monitoring their chat rooms, as they advertise their babysitting as part of the service.
AOL could invest significantly in having linguists tag chat transcripts. Perhaps they could create semantic frames for various types of romantic interractions (flirting, scheduling dates, net-sex, raging pedophiles praying on children, whatever).
Anyway, there isn't a whole lot of variety in chat transcripts, so the sparse data problems that ordinarily plague NLP applications can be somewhat avoided. It takes very little to identify someone saying A/S/L, and then someone replying. It takes only slighty more to notice that the one is 40 years older. Data mining records for such numeric disparities would be a simple exercise, and information extraction patterns to analyze this sort of data would be simple to produce, especially for such a trivial task.
While many states do have separation laws, they also usually have absolute lines under which almost any sexual activity involving another person is illegal, particularly if one of the pair is above that line. Generally speaking, anything done with a child under the age of 13 or 14 (depending on state) is [insert act] with a child, and "with a child" is a REALLY bad phrase to have on your record.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
If the incident happened two years ago and she's 19 now, how could she have been 15 like the title of the article suggests?? :)
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
In the article it says " They Agreed to meet." If it was her that suggested they meet, this lawsuit will go nowhere. If he suggested it, there might be trouble for AOL. It will be interesting to see how they try to prove this, if there isn't an original e-mail lying around in someone's inbox. Welcome to he said, she said, the legal version
-Khyras
I agree with a lot of you say, it is a very good post.
"Well that and a.) Shit happens, b.) No birth control is 100% effective, c.) There's no reliable way to ensure that everybody participates."
And the solution is to pretend children are not sexual and will not engage in sex for 5-8 years after puberty? Let's do better.
"Problem two is that if I were a parent, I wouldn't want somebody arbitrarily making these decisions without me."
How about allowing the children to make the decisions for themselves. Allow for laws that permit children to ask for birth control from their doctor without parental consent.
= Additional Thoughts =
The sodomy laws were just repealed in 2003 (in the United States), so Puritanism is still out there but it seems to be on the decline. But in rejecting Puritanism society seems to be going towards some sort of cheap commercial view of sex. This is also probably wrong.
Indeed, a lot of the problem has to do with societal attitudes, especially with respect to society to the victims as well. What if the so called victim thought the relationship was rewarding? His or her choice is to either believe they were victimized and are damaged goods or say they enjoyed the relationship and turn the pity of society into disgust and persecution, or be brainwashed into thinking it was evil.
What you are describing is the failure of modern society to put a decent system of ideals and values into today's people.
If I am to put it in different words, why should anyone need to do the things you describe? the only reason would be if he/she feels empty inside, and all these actions are to fill that void.
Society fails to give the proper messages to young people. All that it matters to them is what matters to us grownups: money, power and fame. Are they suckers not to want that? from every corner of society, today's youth is bombarded with the same bad message.
Another issue is that of the legal age to have sex. Let's stop the hypocricy. A young adolescent should be entitled to having sex. He/she will do it anyway, so what's the point of hiding it? by suppressing it, the dangers of young pregnancy, diseases and HIV could be minimized; and the most important message would be that of responsibility concerning sexual behaviour.
People will become useful citizens only when they are trusted and feel responsible. If they feel that their life is not in their hands, they will be irresponsible and act like that girl.
Did anyone else notice the lawsuit was filed on April 1st ?
Is this likely to be a spoof ?
I completely agree with you.
But I personally believe that violent, destructive behavior that results from a collapse of a society's value system is sort of a natural feedback loop.
It shouldn't be shocking that despite the fact all truly human virtues have been extinguished in our decadent society (creativity, honor, loyalty, bravey, etc), what remains is this incessant respect for life, no matter what the quantity or quality.
Perhaps this destructive instinct is nature's way of restoring balance, and in a world of 6 billion people and a rapidly declining ecosystem, this can be a good thing.
Yes, I think it shouldn't be surprising at all the gods of war have become ignored.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
If you are 15 and stupid enough to meet someone from the net to have sex...you're an idiot.
Of course in most place in the world you'd be allowed to have sex if you were 15.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
are you seriously telling me that you do not "know anything about" your children's teachers, coaches or babysitters? damn that's a scary admission to make.
How much do you know about your children's teachers/coaches?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
A couple key terms here:
Seduce
Age of Consent
Seduction implies deceit. That's why there are laws against it. (Kinda like laws against writing bad checks.)
When you start fooling around with these, you're gambling with your life. Best case is some cheap thrills. Worst case is some angry relatives removing your anatomy. Somewhere in between is arrest, jail, STD, abortion consequences, paternity suit, broken relationships, other psych issues.
As a teacher in foreign countries, I've been in situations when I could have, but I didn't. Partly because what the girl wants and what she'd get are completely different. But mostly for my own reputation and career. I like my career and my freedom.
Bottom line is: I'm old enough to know that jumping in the sack with a teen - even of legal age - is going to cause too much trouble from too many directions to be worth the fun. (That's where the business about age of consent and intelligent adult come in.)
P.S. I'll bet most of you horny pseudo-geniuses will change your tune after you have a teenage daughter.
Sorry. I've been in army when I was 18. And I can tell you, 18 year old in the army with live ammo and grenades are no more resopnsible than 18 year old in college. They do stupid things. And they get up the shit creek without paddle. On regular basis. Occasionaly, somebody gets hurt or even killed. Army is not as organized as it may seem on the surface. And once you send those 18 years old to some far away country, and they blow up a bus full of high school kids, nobody cares back home. And they don't get up shit creek without paddle. After all they were fighting for their country. There are reasons army prefers 18 years old over 38 years old. And responsibility is not one of them. Frankly, if the army could get away with recruiting 16 or 14 years old kids, they would do it.
"Television censored after massive complaints about inappropriate content?"
"Where are the parents" indeed. You see with your examples the "fixes" the parents are trying to implement effect not only the kids they're trying to protect but *every* consumer. Some of which don't want or need parental protection.
So if it does take a village to raise a child, [A point I will not dispute because I don't have a child.] great, organize your village parenting as needed. I'm all for the PTA, and the Boy Scouts and even parent warnings on video games/CDs. These organizations presume you have a kid and their services apply *only* to people involved with kids. In fact, anything which helps parents but *does not* impede non-parents, is fine by me.
I am of the opinion child rearing should begin and end in the family's home and not extend into mine.
The greatest hindrance to success is a well-rationalized excuse
You know, there's a reason why soldiers do not have access to live ammo as they wish when not on duty. There's also a reason why soldiers are not allowed to take their M16 (or AK-47, depending in what army they are) with them when going to the town (to get drunk).
I've been in army. I've been at university. The only difference is, in the army there's always somebody who supervises (and brainwashes) those kids. That's the reason you get less bullshit in the army. Responsibility has nothing to do with it.
BTW, your numbers are wildly exegerated. In my experience, you have about 1 in 100 kids doing something really stupid and dangerous in the army, and about 1 in 100 kids doing something really stupid and dangerous in the college/university.