Police: Teen raped by man met on MySpace:
Everything that I tried writing about this article sounded like I was casting aspersions where I did not want them to be cast. Instead, I’ll just give you select quotes from the article.
Monday morning, a 13-year-old Suffolk County girl climbed out her bathroom window and into the Jeep of a 20-year-old man she met on MySpace. He took her to his Bayport home and raped her, police said.
It was the end result of a 6-week online romance that the girl’s parents knew nothing about, even though police say her father did “everything in his power” to monitor her activity on the Internet.
“He was doing what any good parent would do,” Det. Sgt. Thomas Groneman, of Suffolk’s Third Squad said this Tuesday afternoon.
Despite those efforts, however, the girl managed to gain regular access to a laptop computer that either wasn’t password protected, like the desktop computer in her home, or whose password she had somehow learned.
For six weeks, she communicated with Zachary Rapoza, the self-titled “Bayport Kid,” according to his Myspace profile. On his Web page, he says he is a 2006 graduate of Bayport-Blue Point High School who played on the track and football teams. A profile picture shows him sitting in a chair with a blue football jersey, baseball cap and sunglasses.
Suffolk police say Rapoza and the girl made an arrangement during her week of spring break to pick her up Monday morning at 8 a.m. in front of her home. Groneman said a relative saw her sneak out the bathroom window and then contacted her father, who was at his work.
The father contacted her friends and visited places where he thought she might be. When he was unsuccessful, he called police.
A short time later, his daughter contacted him.
At that point, she was with Rapoza on a Long Island Rail Road train heading to Jamaica, Queens. Her father told her to get off of the train at the next possible stop — which happened to be Pinelawn.
The two were waiting at the train station when police arrived. They were then taken to the Third Precinct for questioning.
Rapoza was charged with second-degree rape, unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a minor. He is expected to be arraigned Tuesday.
Rapoza has multiple MySpace accounts. I believe that this one is Rapoza’s main MySpace.
Is it me, or does this sound more like statutory rape than it does a full-on sexual assault? Still, when you’re 20 you don’t need to be picking up 13-year-olds that climb out of windows.
In case you were wondering, the age of consent in the Empire State is 17.
