Pandora’s Blog

What a great, yet obviously disgusting and tragic, follow-up to yesterday’s post. This story surfaced last week from Marietta, GA:

Cobb County police say an Atlanta man sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl he met on MySpace.com.

Police say 22-year-old Nehemiah Musa Wells was arrested Wednesday after the girl’s father found him hiding in her bedroom.

The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office says Wells was charged Thursday evening with aggravated sexual battery, child molestation and sexual battery.

Cobb police spokeswoman Officer Cassie Reece says Wells started the relationship with the girl on the social-networking Web site last fall.

The arrest warrant says Wells first met the girl at her home on November first and engaged in sexual intercourse with the girl without her consent at the time.

Reece said she did not know whether Wells has an attorney.

See, the thing is, that obviously the girl consented to a meeting. It is unknown whether the guy lied about his age (in reference to the much-talked about study that says perverts don’t masquerade as teens online; rather, they are honest and prefer grooming – yet everyone seems to interpret this as “oh, well, if no one is hiding then the Internet is safe”). But clearly this is a huge issue of parents not paying attention to their young Internet user’s activity online. Big mistake.

Parents need to be monitoring their child’s online activity. To be honest, I read stories like this almost weekly, but I chose not to post them here, because it’s all the same story. Parents not paying attention to child, who is consequently befriending an older person they met online (often MySpace) and then having sex with them – either voluntary or involuntary. But if people are going to interpret the recent study as claiming ‘if no one is hiding or posing as a teen, social networks must be safe,’ then I am going to throw up a few reminders. They are not safe, and part of the problem is the young users who want to take risks. Parents, please monitor your child’s Internet and computer activity. Use monitoring software to identify Internet predators that may be talking to your kids (not to mention cyberbullying).

For less than the cost of a family dinner at a restaurant, you can get peace of mind throughout the teenage years with PC Pandora 5.0.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 12:51 PM and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.