Great article on cyberbullying and how parents can attempt to catch up with technology in order to protect their children. For the full article visit Yahoo News.
Ninth grade was supposed to be a fresh start for Marie’s son: new school, new children. Yet by last October, he had become withdrawn. Marie prodded. And prodded again. Finally, he told her.
“The kids say I’m saying all these nasty things about them on Facebook,” he said. “They don’t believe me when I tell them I’m not on Facebook.”
But apparently, he was.
Marie, a medical technologist and single mother who lives in Newburyport, Mass., searched Facebook. There she found what seemed to be her son’s page: his name, a photo of him grinning while running — and, on his public wall, sneering comments about teenagers he scarcely knew.
Someone had forged his identity online and was bullying others in his name.
Students began to shun him. Furious and frightened, Marie contacted school officials. After expressing their concern, they told her they could do nothing. It was an off-campus matter.
But Marie was determined to find out who was making her son miserable and to get them to stop. In choosing that course, she would become a target herself. When she and her son learned who was behind the scheme, they would both feel the sharp sting of betrayal. Undeterred, she would insist that the culprits be punished.
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.
Various agencies participated in California’s largest sex offender sweep. For the full story visit 10news.com.
Law enforcement conducted the largest sex offender sweep in California’s history, resulting in many arrests, including dozens in San Diego County.
Dozens of convicted San Diego sex offenders who were found to be in violation of their parole conditions are now headed back to prison as a result of the initiative.
The massive, week-long effort under the direction of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was all part of “Operation Safe Playgrounds,” designed to deter crimes against children.
Authorities said the latest GPS technology can get within feet of sex offenders who are wearing special anklets around their legs. 10News’ Preston Phillips accompanied agents as they tracked one man all over San Diego and finally found him at a downtown train station.
“I can put a guy in a hotel with GPS. This is going to tell me what room he’s in,” said Marvin Cooper, state parole GPS coordinator.
It’s state-of-the-art crime-fighting technology with pinpoint accuracy down to the inch.
Maritza Rodriguez, state parole administrator, said, “The truth is that this is a population honestly of monsters, and trying to community supervise monsters is a difficult task.”
However, it’s a task that Rodriguez lives for — so much so that she mobilized the largest sex offender takedown to ever hit the state, stretching from the California-Oregon border all the way to San Diego’s border with Mexico.
Within the first hour of the 4-day, 150-agency operation, there were numerous arrests.
Authorities arrest a man at Naval Base Coronado and are charging him with possession of child pornography. For the full story and more details visit 10News.com.
A Navy man was arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography, authorities said Tuesday.
Joseph Valencia Gonzales II, 36, was taken into custody at Naval Base Coronado Monday afternoon, according to the FBI.
At the time of his arrest, the San Diego resident was allegedly sitting in his truck in outside a fast food restaurant on the base, using the business’s wireless Internet service to view and download child pornography via a laptop computer that contained at least 45 sexually explicit photos and videos of minors.
By Mike Stobbe, The Associated Press, Published November 9, 2010
A new study shows that hyper-texting teens are more likely to engage in sexual activity and other risky behaviors such as drinking and drugs. For the full story on the study visit 10News.com.
Teens who text 120 times a day or more – and there seems to be a lot of them – are more likely to have had sex or used alcohol and drugs than kids who don’t send as many messages, according to provocative new research.
The study’s authors aren’t suggesting that “hyper-texting” leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but say it’s startling to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and that kind of risky behavior.
The study concludes that a significant number of teens are very susceptible to peer pressure and also have permissive or absent parents, said Dr. Scott Frank, the study’s lead author.
“If parents are monitoring their kids’ texting and social networking, they’re probably monitoring other activities as well,” said Frank, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Frank was scheduled to present the study Tuesday at a meeting of the American Public Health Association in Denver.
The study was done at 20 public high schools in the Cleveland area last year, and is based on confidential paper surveys of more than 4,200 students.
It found that about one in five students were hyper-texters and about one in nine are hyper-networkers – those who spend three or more hours a day on Facebook and other social networking websites.
About one in 25 fall into both categories.
Hyper-texting and hyper-networking were more common among girls, minorities, kids whose parents have less education and students from a single-mother household, the study found.
Frank’s study is billed as one of the first studies to look at texting and social networking and whether they are linked to actual sexual intercourse or to other risky behaviors.
SAN DIEGO, Oct 12, 2010 (KSWB-TV – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX)
Chula Vista Police Detective David Oyos, who also a part of San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, facilitated a cybercrime seminar for parents and students. For the full story visit TMC News.
Students and their parents attended a cybercrime seminar organized San Diego Police Association Tuesday evening to learn how to stay safe online.
Cathy Baker and her daughter Madison went to Challenger Middle School Tuesday for the cyber-bullying lessons.
“I’ve never seen it personally but I’ve overheard other people talking about it in class say ‘So and so did this, or so and so said that,” the 7th grader Madison Baker said.
Cathy Baker said the family has dealt with cybercrimes in the past. Madison’s older sister had a run-in online with a sexual predator.
“It’s very scary when the FBI calls you from New Mexico to tell you that your 13-year-old has been talking to someone who shouldn’t even be online,” Baker said.
Chula Vista police Det. David Oyos lead the seminar at Challenger Middle School on Tuesday evening.
The Gastonia Police Department’s ICAC made their first arrest since joining the national task force to fight against child pornography. Wsoctv.com has the full story.
GASTONIA, N.C. — Robert Kiser, who is accused of downloading child pornography, hung his head in court Tuesday afternoon. He said little as a judge decided to keep his bond at $150,000.
Kiser, 38, faces 15 counts of second-degree exploitation of a minor (distributing child pornography).
The Gastonia Police Department said the quiet first appearance was big for them, as it is the first arrest on Internet child pornography charges since the department joined a national task force to crack down on the growing problem.
Police said they joined the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force after noticing an increase in the number of Internet child pornography crimes.
By Debbi Baker, Sign On San Diego, Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 8:20 a.m.
After San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children found more than 2,400 images of child pornography, an Oceanside man who fled to Kentucky is taken into custody. Sign On San Diego has the full story.
OCEANSIDE — A registered sex offender from Oceanside who fled California after being accused of having thousands of images of child pornography on his computer has been arrested in Kentucky, authorities said Tuesday.
Agents with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, including San Diego police officers and U.S. marshals, tracked Michael Galyen, 50, to his parent’s home in Berea, Ky., said Deputy U.S. Marshal Omar Castillo.
Galyen was taken into custody Thursday without incident when he came outside to get the mail, Castillo said.
Authorities were alerted about Galyen in September 2009 after the social networking site MySpace reported that images of possible child pornography were uploaded to an account registered to him, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court.
Investigators found that Galyen had uploaded at least six photos of a girl approximately 11 to 13 years old engaged in lewd poses, the complaint said.
Thanks to the hard work of San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children and the US Marshals Service a fugitive sex offender is behind bars.
Former Duval guidance counselor, Nassau principal had a video of a rape on his computer. The Florida Times Union has the full story.
A federal jury has determined a former Duval County guidance counselor and Nassau County principal is guilty of storing child pornography — including a video of a girl being raped and pictures he’d taken of a 5-year-old — on his home computer.
Robert Allan Cowan, 48, was convicted on seven charges after the panel of nine women and three men deliberated for two hours Thursday in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville.
Cowan was fired from his job at Fort Caroline Middle School after his August 2009 arrest. He had been a career educator who took a guidance counselor post at the school after having been a principal at Yulee Primary School and an assistant principal at Arlington Middle School.
Cowan continues to face child-molestation charges in state court that stem from the same investigation. A day care worker reported Cowan to authorities based on suspicious statements a 5-year-old had made about him.
This is a good article describing a new trend of Child Predators.
By Charles Wilson, The Associated Press, Published Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 2:51 PM
http://news.yahoo.com
INDIANAPOLIS — The nightmare began with a party: three teenagers with a webcam, visiting an Internet chat room and yielding to requests to flash their breasts.
A week later, one of the girls, a 17-year-old from Indiana, started getting threatening e-mails. A stranger said he had captured her image on the webcam and would post the pictures to her MySpace friends unless she posed for more explicit pictures and videos for him. At least twice, the teen did what her blackmailer demanded. Finally, police and federal authorities became involved and indicted a 19-year-old Maryland man in June on charges of sexual exploitation.
One federal affidavit includes a special term for the crime: “sextortion.”
Federal prosecutors and child-safety advocates say they’re seeing an increase in such cases of online-sexual extortion. They say teens who text nude cellphone photos of themselves or show off their bodies on the Internet are being contacted by pornographers who threaten to expose their behavior to friends and family unless they pose for more explicit porn, creating a cycle of exploitation.
The cases have prompted law-enforcement officials and advocates to caution teens. Privacy is nonexistent on the Internet, and once indiscretions appear online, they are virtually impossible to take back.
Teens can be more vulnerable to blackmail because they’re easy to intimidate and embarrassed to seek help. And the extortionists are often willing to make good on their threats, said Steve DeBrota, an assistant U.S. attorney in Indianapolis who has been involved in sextortion investigations.
