Two Cyberbullying Arrests
These stories are a bit older – I was saving them for a busy day when I needed to post something without much time to search. They are both in the same category: they are both stories that involve an actual arrest for cyberbullying!
That is a huge step! Think about it…
I will let them speak for themselves… but the commentary I need to make is thus:
It is a sad state of affairs when we need laws to discourage bullying behavior. If parents had been doing their jobs, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten this far. But here we are. And now these arrests are reactive to a situation that should have never been. Parents need to step up. Not only do you need to know if your child is a bully, you need to be proactive and know if they are being a bully on line. If they are – you need to stop it.
“But how will I ever know” you ask…? Simple – PC Pandora computer monitoring software will let you see everything your child does online. It’ll let you see where they go and how they interact on the web.
Yada yada… Check out the stories below and have a great weekend.
Teen charged in cyber-bullying case
Posted By Maria CantonA 17-year-old boy who police say sent a text message threatening to kill another teenager faces a criminal charge of uttering a death threat, an act experts are calling a classic case of cyber-bullying.
The Grey Highlands teen was charged Tuesday evening by the Grey County OPP after an investigation revealed a 15-year-old received a cellphone-to-cellphone text message threatening his life earlier that same day.
“What happens is kids will be going back and forth insulting each other either by e-mail, instant message or text message and then it escalates into something like this and one of the kids will get really scared and finally tell someone,” said Louise, a bullying expert and counsellor who works for the Kids Help Phone, a 24-hour-a-day national service. She asked that her last name not be used for confidentiality reasons.
According to Grey County OPP Const. Steve Starr, the police investigation found that the 15-year-old, also from Grey Highlands, had received several “aggressive” messages via MSN instant messaging a month earlier from the same 17-year-old, but none were of a criminal nature. That electronic activity was not reported to the police.
“It is a criminal offence to communicate a threat of death or injury to a person, whether person-to-person or by other means, including text messages or other forms of electronic messaging,” said Starr.
“If the recipient of the message genuinely believes the threat is made with the intent to carry it through, that’s when we get involved.”
Starr said this is the first text messaging incident that he can recall in which charges have been laid.
Cyber-bullying has grown as a means of threatening, intimidating or harassing others over the past several years. It can take many forms, including posting private or embarrassing photos of someone, developing websites to rate people’s appearance, creating hateful blogs about someone, stealing electronic passwords, or spreading lies.
The Kids Help Phone website (www.kidshelpphone.ca) has devoted an entire section to cyber-bullying and now takes online questions from users, something Louise says is a testament to how prevalent electronic communication is for kids and teens today.
“If you’re being bullied in any way, including cyber-bullying, you should tell your parents first and then tell the police — in a lot of cases the parents don’t even know it’s happening,” she said, adding cyber-bullying is one of the only forms of bullying that leaves a trail for police to investigate.
The 17-year-old was charged and released and is now forbidden by a court order to possess a cellphone or any other electronic communication devices. He is scheduled to appear in Youth Justice Court in Owen Sound on Feb. 17.
“Cyber bully” arrest made in Garfield County, Colorado
By Mike McKibbin, Citizen TelegramParachute, Colo. —In what could be the first case of its kind in Garfield County, sheriff’s deputies issued a summons to a 19-year-old Parachute-area man for allegedly harassing a juvenile female on the Internet.
Such “cyber bullying” crimes were the subject of a public presentation by Rifle police on Wednesday, Jan. 28.
In the sheriff’s department case, Joshua David Smith was summonsed and released on Jan. 20 for harassment with the use of a communication device or computer, a misdemeanor. Smith allegedly left a “very ugly, disturbing” message on the victim’s page of a social networking site, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Tanny McGinnis.
“It’s not like they had a relationship or had chatted,” she said.
McGinnis would not release many details due to the victim’s age.
As Rifle police officer Kirk Wilson wrote in his “Cop’s Beat” column in the Jan. 22 Citizen Telegram, there are two types of cyber bullying: A “direct attack,” where the cyberbully directly contacts the victim to threaten or harass them, and an “attack by proxy,” where the cyberbully gets others to help harass and threaten the victim.
Wilson wrote that the second method is the most dangerous, as a group of juveniles will gang up on an individual victim, which often causes kids to skip school, not participate in social activities or go out in public. In extreme cases, it has lead to suicide.
McGinnis said part of the reason cyber-related crimes have increased is because youngsters believe they are safe if they’re on the Internet.
“Even if you’re not on one of those sites, you can be a victim,” she said.
McGinnis said she came across a photo of herself in a bathing suit that had been taken at a lake, complete with her name.
“I worried about that,” she said. “It just goes to show you that you’re not completely safe.”
McGinnis said when people post messages on social network sites, “everyone that’s on the site can read them, not just the people you’ve invited.”
“It’s almost like they think they’re getting to know someone and it develops into maybe some type of cyber-stalking case,” she said. “There’s a lot more risks to those sites than people think.”
McGinnis said the best thing parents can do to protect their children from cyber bullying is to know where they go on the Internet.
“People think that because we live in a small, rural Garfield County community, where the crime rate is low, this won’t happen,” McGinnis said. “But the minute you plug that jack into the wall, you open yourself up to everyone, even the worst people in the world. It’s as if you’ve unlocked a door.”
