Teen Learns Hard Lesson About Internet Safety
This is a good article about the potential dangers of a young person communicating with someone online. The full article gives some really good tips for parents to keep their children safe while online. The full article can be found at Trib.com.
What happened to a 15-year-old Cheyenne girl and her parents is the stuff of nightmares for modern families. Bringing one person to justice for his alleged abuse of the teen could take a sexual predator off the Internet, but unfortunately there are many adults out there ready to take his place.
More public awareness of these crimes, however, could make parents more knowledgeable about how to prevent their children from communicating with people on the Internet who would exploit them. Many parents walk a fine line between wanting to control their children’s computer use and not wanting to totally invade their privacy. But as this story demonstrates, that line can easily be blurred and used by an adult who wants to take advantage of a youngster.
Gabriel Simmons, a 29-year-old man from Iowa, has been charged with four felonies: production of child pornography, online enticement of a child and two counts of interstate shipment of child pornography. He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges last week in federal court in Cheyenne.
Prosecutors are taking the case very seriously: if convicted, Simmons could face a sentence of up to life in prison and fines of up to $1 million.
The 15-year-old girl contacted police in the capital city in July, and told them she had been communicating for up to a year with a person she believed to be an employee of a modeling agency. She said she sent the person explicit pictures and videos of herself in exchange for promised money and a modeling contract, neither of which ever materialized.
She told investigators that when she told the person she didn’t want to send any more materials, the person threatened to send to her family and school the pictures and videos she had already sent.
A federal agent with the Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force filed a sworn statement that he used a federal search warrant to obtain information from the Internet service provider about the e-mail account where the girl had sent the materials. He concluded that Simmons held the account and solicited and received the explicit images.
Read the full article for basic Internet safety tips for parents to take into consideration.
