In an effort to silence some of the negative buzz MySpace has been receiving lately, Reuters reports that MySpace has teamed up with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and will begin the MySpace AMBER Alert program. This will notify MySpace users in designated areas when a child has been abducted.
This is good news. Hopefully Facebook, as the #2 social networking site, will adapt something like this as well.
Randall S. Shesto II, the lead singer of a crappy metal band called “Nailwounds” on MySpace, was charged with felony sexual assault for “allegedly” having sex with a 15-year-old girl.
“This isn’t some type of relationship,” DeCecco said of Shesto’s case. “He located a child that appeared to be somewhat vulnerable on the Internet, hooked up with her and then met her up here specifically for sex — I mean, there’s no talk of marriage or love — that makes a difference to us. It shows the exploitive nature.”
Capt. Dave Adams of the sheriff’s department said the department has investigated about 10 cases of underage sex involving the Internet in the last year or two.
“We’re finding more and more cases where MySpace or a chat (Web site) facilitates it, partly or totally,” he said.
Read the full article, mugshot picture and all.
Parents are still trying to figure out what this “My Space” thing is.
If you have a child, he or she has probably been on MySpace. Kim Reyes of Milwaukee heard her kids talk about MySpace so she and a group of parents went online to see what all the fuss was about.
“We had one parent, who went on MySpace and looked and saw a child they knew, and she wasn’t the age she said she was, and there was some pretty provocative photos on there,” said Reyes.
“This is even in your own home now, that kids can get into a lot of trouble. They don’t even need to leave the house anymore, they just have to crank into the computer.”
View the full article here.
Sick. Just sick.
Two Portland men, one a registered sex offender, have been charged with raping a 14-year-old Aloha girl they pursued over the Web site MySpace. Jover Mabaet and Dennis Keomoungkhoune, both 21, met the girl in person last year and then contacted her through the Web site.
In the fall, the girl’s father found the men in bed with the girl, chased them away and called the sheriff’s office. On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted the men on charges of rape, burglary and using a child in display of sexually explicit conduct.
Visit the full story here.
This is an older article, but the contents are more true now than they were 11 months ago when MSNBC first posted the article. Since that time, MySpace has gone from 40 million to 135 million users, and is still growing.
From the article: “A month ago, police in Connecticut arrested a 21-year-old man, accusing him of raping a 14-year-old girl he found on MySpace. On Long Island, investigators say another man found the work address of a 16-year-old girl on one of the Web sites last fall, lured her to a parking lot, and sexually assaulted her.”
View the full story here.
From the AP: “Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.”
“In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,” said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer.
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