Authorities in St. Charles County, Missouri will not be filing any charges against those behind the ‘Megan Had It Coming’ blog.
For those of you just joining us, let me recap. In the wake of the controversy surrounding the much-publicized suicide of Megan Meier, someone posted a fake blog pretending to be Lori Drew saying that Megan got what she deserved. I deemed it a fake as soon as I laid eyes on it.
Now let’s get to the aforementioned authorities…
St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas said Tuesday that the sheriff’s department investigated those who posed as Lori Drew on the Internet. Because the bloggers were from outside of Missouri and had not sent messages to either family involved in the case, and the difficulty of legally proving the identity and actions of people behind their Internet addresses, charges are not being pursued in the impersonation case, Banas said.
Banas said he did not have the names of those allegedly involved in the online impersonation of Drew. The St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department referred questions to Banas’ office.
Heaven forfend if the pranksters’ names ever get out. Then karma will be raking in all the ‘lulz’.
32-year-old Benjamin Dennis of Corning, California was arrested for trying to solicit sex from a 13-year-old over the internet. Except that the 13-year-old was actually an investigator from the Tehama County district attorney’s office.
This is an article from PC Mag that says a study from the University of New Hampshire’s Internet Solution for Kids, Inc. claims that sexual predators aren’t as prevalent on MySpace and Facebook as the media says they are.
“Between June and October 2007, we conducted over 400 interviews with police about Internet-related sex crimes … and we have yet to find cases of sex offenders stalking and abducting minors on the basis of information posted on social networking sites,” report authors said.
I would have to say that stalking and abducting through the internet, in general, isn’t as prevalent as one might think, but grooming, on the other hand, is probably the preferred tactic of sexual predators.
Grooming is a way for the sexual predators to gain the trust of their underage victims and to make them think that their sexual ‘relationship’ is normal.
I would prefer to see a study that gives the numbers on how many predators are grooming children over MySpace rather than abducting.
Still, parents should keep a close eye on their children’s internet behavior. Predators are usually one step ahead of the police when it comes to technology.
It seems that at least one sex offender couldn’t stop from being on MySpace.
Former New York Catholic high school teacher Matthew Glasser has violated his probation. He avoided a prison sentence for his charges of having sex with a 16-year-old student.
He violated his probation by failing to find a home that isn’t in one of the zones that sex offenders can’t live in.
However, he also failed to stop using his MySpace even though the court ordered him offline.
Hey Attorney General Cuomo, how’s that legislation designed to keep sex offenders off of MySpace working?
That’s 34-year-old David Nack of Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. He’s been charged with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in 2005. Wisconsin’s age of consent is 18.
According to the Wisconsin Dells Police Department, the girl said she met Nack after he replied to her profile on MySpace (an online social networking Web site) and that she drove to meet him Nov. 2, 2005, to have sex. They met at a Walgreens store before going to his downtown Wisconsin Dells apartment, according to a criminal complaint.
The two smoked marijuana and Nack showed a pornographic movie on a television, the complaint states. Nack took pictures of the girl before they had sex, according to the complaint, and stopped when she began to cry and told him to stop.
Nack told police the girl changed into a short skirt and let him take pictures of her.
I don’t know about you, but where I come from if a woman says stop, and you keep going that’s called rape.
Nack is being charged with child exploitation, sexual intercourse with a child, child enticement, and delivering marijuana to a minor.
It’s a little ironic that Nack has on his MySpace “Remember: karma is a bitch and it will come back to later in the game.”
23-year-old Anthony McGrew has been arrested for sexually abusing two underage girls, one of which he met on MySpace.
The Story County Sheriff’s Office says 23-year-old Anthony McGrew of Melbourne met one of the girls on MySpace.
They met in person two weeks later. That’s when authorities say McGrew sexually abused the 14-year-old Nevada girl. “At 23 years old, you’d know the difference as far as what’s appropriate and what’s not as far as a 14-year-old,” says Lt. Dru Toresdahl.
The next time they agreed to meet, the girl brought a friend. Authorities say both were sexually abused. The Sheriff’s office was contacted by the girl’s parent, who found a note she had written a friend.
So what kind of excuse do you think the enablers will make this time?
A. She said she was 16.
B. Anthony’s a nice guy and would never do anything like this
C. The victims are sluts
D. It’s ok to have sex with 14-year-olds
E. All of the above.
State legislators in Illinois are trying to pass a law that would require sites like MySpace and Facebook to get written parental permission before kids would be allowed on the site.
This may be the stupidest proposed legislation yet.
Is the state going to verify each and every written permission that they receive to make sure the signatures are authentic? Because you know, no kid would ever just have someone sign as their parents.
Let’s throw some reactionary quotes from politicians in order to enrage the unenlightened.
Cross and Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow acknowledged the proposed laws are aggressive and that lawmakers could face some obstacles in getting them passed. Some judges might feel some of the proposals could violate freedom of speech, Glasgow said.
But they also said it would be worth the fight.
“This is an area that is constantly evolving,” said Glasgow, calling the Internet a “portal to hell” where children are concerned. “We have to very aggressively push the legislative envelope.”
This isn’t pushing the legislative envelope, it’s legislatively crashing and burning.
The government wasn’t designed to be parents to everyone.
This is a great article from the Philadelphia Inquirer about how MySpace’s ‘pact’ with the Attorneys General is pretty much useless. Who says so? Why, Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett says so.
That’s because the safety barriers it prescribes depend largely on MySpace subscribers’ truthfully reporting their ages when creating online profiles. And it offers no reliable means of identifying or policing the suspected millions who do not.
“I’ve been arguing this point for more than a year now,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, who considers the agreement more blueprint than panacea. “Age verification has been the number-one issue for us from the very beginning.”
Until that nut is cracked, no set of guidelines can keep 12-year-olds from registering their virtual selves as adults, or stop 60-year-old creeps from masquerading online as high school cheerleaders.
Yet none of the Attorneys General have come up with a realistic way on how to verify age on the internet.
The article also, at the very end, prescribes to common sense.
But police say the best security of all is a vigilant parent – one who knows a child’s passwords, monitors his online friends and activities, and keeps the computer in a public area of the home. Some even buy spyware that can record their kids’ online conversations and Web visits.
“A lot of parents don’t want to do that because they don’t want to invade their kids’ privacy,” said Montgomery County Detective Ray Kuter, an Internet-crime expert. “I say, ‘You are the parent. You need to decide what to do.’ “
“Parents,” Kuter said, “are the best monitoring program we know of.”
The police know this, why don’t the Attorneys General?
Every time I make a post about Facebook vigilantism, I hear the song “Ghost Riders in The Sky” by The Outlaws in my head.
Anyway, Facebook Vigilantes have struck again. This time, the vigilantism has crept over our northern border and is now taking place in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
At Lewis & Clark College, in Portland, Oregon, a male student who I won’t name was accused of a sexual assault against a female student.
Before even law enforcement caught wind of it, a Facebook group targeting him was made. It was later removed.
According to the Information Week article, the alleged victim went to the local media and as of the time of IW’s article had still not reported it to police.
Even to her own admission, the victim admits she initiated the encounter but then changed her mind.
Let’s just for a second say that her story is true. Personally, I’m not buying it, but let’s just say it is. By going public with the alleged aggressor’s name not only on Facebook but also in the media, she’s probably ruined any chance of him being prosecuted.
Let the law do its job, people. When you pull stunts like this, justice doesn’t get served, it gets turned away at the door.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about Kevin Ray Underwood. He’s the slimeball from Purcell, Oklahoma, who is accused of killing 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin so he could consume her flesh. That’s right folks. Kevin the Cannibal. It’s not the Hannibal Lecters you have to worry about, it’s the guy next door.
Anyway, a judge has made a decision on whether or not Underwood’s confession will be heard in court, but the decision has been sealed. It’s more than likely we won’t know the judge’s decision until the trial starts on the 19th.
Prosecutors say that Underwood freely confessed to the murder and gave permission to police to search his house after he asked for an attorney.
“When a defendant requests an attorney, you don’t have to get them one,” she said. “All that has to be done is to cease interrogation, and that was done.”
That quote was from Assistant District Attorney Susan Caswell.
The defense argues that…
While agents were not required to stop Underwood from talking about the crime after he asked for a lawyer, it does not mean that the testimony can be allowed in court.
Defense attorneys argued that the environment surrounding Underwood was designed to break his will, citing these reasons:
•Not securing Underwood in a holding cell;
•Delays getting booked into jail and being arraigned;
•Asking Underwood to sign a search waiver after he asked for a lawyer.
Defense lawyers argue that when someone invokes their constitutional rights, that means officers can’t question them any further and they can’t ask the suspect for permission to search their house.
Excuse me while I rant for just a moment.
How in the hell do these criminal defense attorneys sleep at night? This isn’t ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ we’re talking about. Underwood admits that he murdered a 10-year-old red-headed girl with freckles and glasses so he could cannibalize her corpse. Her body was found in his apartment. In my opinion, some criminals are beyond defense, and Underwood is one of them. As far as I’m concerned, he should be fed to a pack of wild dogs for what he did. Yet, these attorneys want to weasel their way to an acquittal, knowing full well what he’s guilty of. Maybe selling your soul makes it so you don’t require sleep. Maybe criminal defense attorneys like this are nothing more than the undead. The fact that this scumbag has even the slightest chance of being released scares me more than any vampire or zombie movie.
Anyway, the trial will take place in Norman, Oklahoma due to a change of venue request. I hope the change of scenery doesn’t help his case at all.
