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Teen Sues MySpace Over Sexual Assault
kaufmanmoore writes "A 14-year old is suing myspace for $30 million claiming the site failed to protect her from a 19-year old she met through the site. The suit claims that MySpace doesn't verify a user's identity or age and doesn't do enough to protect users."
I'm afraid it's a little more complicated than that. Unlike 10-15 years ago, at least half of people with Internet access would probably fall into your definition of "complete moron" (and remember that you're probably a complete moron about at least one thing). At some point, "something" will have to be done because "bad guys" tend to learn/adapt faster than "complete morons". Should the solution be to make sites responsible (I hope not)? Have an "Internet license" (with a test required like for a driver's license? I've no idea what form it will have and I hope it won't do more damage than it causes, but eventually things will have to change. I guess teens in the ~12-16 range are especially vulnerable because:
1) You can't monitor everything they do on the Internet anymore
2) There's still a lot of things they don't know (but should)
3) They think they know enough
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If she found the same info in the lonley hearts in the newspaper would she sue that paper? Of course not as they would take her to the cleaners by exposing her on the front page (well the british papers would). What about if you met someone in a nighyclub and same thing happened...
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I like the assumption that it was the guy who lied about his age... Nowhere in TFA does it mention which side gave the bogus info. Was he a pedo claming to be 15, or was she being a typical teenage girl claiming to be older than she is?
I think perhaps that "expectation" doesn't mean what you think it means. "Expect" is simply a stronger form of "hope" - you "hope" for something when you'd like it, but you're not convinced it'll happen. You "expect" something when you're pretty certain it'll happen or know that it will.
:) (Unless he is similarly mistaken about what the word means, in which case go ahead, rip him a new one)
Neither hoping for something nor expecting it means that the thing is in any way obliged to happen. That is, in this case, the 19 year old can *expect* the girl to put out after the things he's done, but she is in no way *obliged* to do so.
Change "expectation" in your post for "obligation" and you're spot on.
So, calm down, deep breaths, he didn't mean what you thought he meant
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It is funny you mention the phrase "afterschool special" and relate an anecdote about a high school peer. She was 14 and he was 19. Guess what? The same thing can and does happen at any high school in the United States. Freshman date Seniors because Freshman girls like the clout dating an upperclassman holds and Seniors date Freshman because they are naive and easy. This was happening decades before MySpace. Now, when Suzy Q comes home smelling of beer, cigarettes and cheap sex, she can blame MySpace. Now, parents no longer have to blame themselves, they can blame a corporation. Now, instead of teaching a valuable life lesson to their child, they teach their child to blame others for their problems and sue people.
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He was 19 years old. He told her, instead, that he was a high school senior. High school seniors are usually around 18 years old. So the 14-year-old girl went out with a guy she thought was around 18, but it turned out he was actually 19.
If only she had known ahead of time... Damn you MySpace! Damn you!
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Why ?
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The vast majority of messages I see here, or at least the ones I see modded up to +5, are more along the lines of a-priori being sure that:
1) the girl alone is to blame for getting raped (as is usually the argument in this kind of a situation: a lot of guys seem to be _very_ quick to join in the chorus that there must have been something the woman said, or wore, or just being at the guy's house, or just being in a park alone, or whatever, that _clearly_ absolves the guy of any fault and makes rape entirely the woman's fault.)
2) the girl surely said "yes" and only she or her mother lied about it afterwards
3) (or maybe 2.a.) that for that matter the girl should have known that if she goes to a guy's house she's _expected_ to put out, so that is obviously "yes" enough for any guy, and obviously her fault if she acts surprised if the guy goes ahead and rapes her
4) She obviously lied about her age, probably even had a faked ID at that, and certainly any 14 year old looks just like a 19 year old. (Wonder why the paedophiles don't just go for 19 year olds, then, if they supposedly look the same as a child anyway?)
And several variations of the above. Complete with the usual blanket generalizations (e.g., surely if the guy had a car, the girl wanted to fuck him) that obviously justify the blanket conclusion that in any imaginable case one of the above applies.
Not saying that that couldn't have been the case, but the way they're passed for definitive truth before even knowing what happened there, is... strange.
And at any rate, far from being biased against the guy, I see only a lot of people who are _certain_ that it was the girl that's guilty before even making her case.
Frankly, all that's missing so far, to make the edifice of preconception complete, is the standard Slashdot blanket generalization "there are no women online, and any 14 year olds are male FBI agents." Presumably noone has yet figured how to make that fit a rape case, what with having to be present in court and go through a medical examination or whatnot. Kinda hard to fool all those that you're a 14 year old girl if you were a 40 year old guy. Still, I'm surprised that noone at least tried posting that. Kinda feels like not Slashdot without that being posted half a dozen times in a topic about people meeting online.
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