Category: Social Media Crime

Michigan teenager involved in Web romance charged with being a runaway:

She’s not being criminally charged, but this article clarifies some things regarding Katherine Lester…

DETROIT — Authorities have filed a runaway juvenile petition against a Michigan teenager who flew to the Middle East to be with a man she met on the MySpace.com social networking Internet site.

The paperwork was filed Monday in Tuscola County Family Court by the county sheriff and prosecutor against Katherine Lester of Gilford, said Kyle Jaskula, the court administrator.

At a hearing on Monday, Judge W. Wallace Kent Jr. ordered Lester to give up her passport and undergo counseling. He did not rule on the validity of the petition, and further hearings have not been scheduled.

If the judge finds that Lester is a runaway, she could be placed under court supervision until she turns 18. Such supervision usually means she would be monitored by a probation officer and made to undergo counseling, Jaskula said.

The petition is not a criminal offense, Jaskula said Tuesday.

So it’s like being on parole but without having committed any crimes. And for those of you who are whining that it’s not fair, then she should have thought of that before she ran away.

Think about it for a second. If they had succeeded in getting married, do you know what kind of international incident this would have caused? She should be thankful that she was stopped before they did.

And here’s some advice from Ol’ Uncle Trench to the teenagers who are supporting them. 99.999% of the time, the guy or girl you date at 16 will NOT be the person you spend the rest of your life with.

Get over it.

Tuscola County teen’s family trying to keep her home:

Remember when I posted the article that said Katherine Lester’s parents could use the courts to prevent her from running away again? It seems that’s what they’re doing…

TUSCOLA COUNTY (WJRT) – (06/19/06)–The family of a Tuscola County teen is making an attempt to keep her home. Katherine Lester, 16, of Gilford, recently flew to Jordan where United States authorities caught up with her.

Lester was on her way to Israel to meet a man she met on MySpace.com. A runaway petition has been filed in Tuscola County that could put limits on any of her future travel plans.

If granted, the court system will intervene to help the family deal with this Internet and international love story.

The runaway petition was submitted to the probate court and requested by the Akron-Fairgrove junior’s family in the hope of trying to keep her home.

“At this point, of course, the young lady leaving the country in the way that she did, obviously there’s tremendous concerns of her not following the reasonable and really legitimate commands of her parents,” said Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark Reene.

MySpace.com is a social networking Internet site. Her family found out about her plans and FBI agents in Amman, Jordan, persuaded her to return home.

But the family worries she may try this again, and Reene says the probate court could help in trying to keep her in the county.

“The probate court can do a variety of things,” Reene said.

“One thing is counseling. It can provide certain things that the girl has to do at different times to keep track of her and be sure — again, help her — evaluate all the considerations in her life at this point.

While Lester turns 17 on Wednesday, the parents have legal supervision until she turns 18.

“But the family probate court can still intervene up until she turns 18 in an effort to keep her on the right path, provide her with counseling and intervene again to hopefully ensure her safety,” Reene said.

While the probate court judge did not sign the runaway petition this morning, that is expected, which would mean Lester and her family will be back in court soon.

Can you blame them?

Parents may need court to rein in MySpace teen:

I found this to be an interesting article from the Detroit Free Press about what recourse Katherine Lester’s parents could have taken in keeping her from running away again…

Technically, Katherine Lester’s parents can prohibit her from reuniting with a Middle Eastern man she met on an Internet site. She is, after all, 16, a minor, and according to Michigan law, still under the care of her parents.

But realistically, there may be little they can do to keep her home, short of having a court declare the teen incorrigible, legal experts say.

But Lester turns 17 next week. Experts say that should she decide to leave home again, police may not want to look for a runaway at that age, particularly if her parents and authorities know where she is.

“I’ve had cases where kids that age get up and walk out, and yes, the police will take a missing persons report. But will they treat it like a 9-year-old who disappears off the street? No, they won’t,” said Bloomfield Hills attorney Leslie Logan, who specializes in family and probate law.

Attorney Diana Bare of Ortonville said the circumstances surrounding the case might make it more likely that law enforcement and the courts would be aggressive in trying to keep Lester in the country, but ultimately, her parents would have to seek help from the courts.

“I really think the danger in which this girl has put herself makes it a different kind of case,” she said. ” … The fact that she met him on the Internet, that he surreptitiously moved to get her out of the country, without her parents knowing, it just smacks of criminality.”

Michigan law allows children as young as 16 to wed with parental permission.

It also allows 16-year-olds to become what’s known as emancipated minors, freeing them from parental control.

But that takes a court order and there is no such order in the Lester case, at least not yet.

If the Lester family decided to try to control the girl with the court’s help, they would have to ask that a judge find her incorrigible — meaning she refuses to obey her parents — which would allow them to place her in a secure juvenile facility until she turns 18.

The measures may seem a bit drastic, but isn’t what she did drastic at best?

West Bank family upset by Michigan teen’s no-show:

The creepy keeps getting creepier…

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) Relatives of a West Bank man whose 16-year-old American girlfriend flew to the Mideast to marry him after they met on the Internet are distraught that she has returned home, and say they still hope to bring the couple together.

Last week, Katherine Lester slipped out of her mother’s house in Gilford, Mich., and boarded a flight to Israel, where the mother of her prospective groom was waiting to pick her up and take her to Jericho.

But U.S. authorities, who had tracked her down through the popular MySpace.com Web site where she had met 20-year-old Abdullah Jinzawi, intercepted her at an Amman, Jordan, stopover on Friday, seized her passport and forced her to go home. She has been in seclusion since returning late Friday.

The wedding is off at least for now.

Sana Jinzawi, Abdullah’s mother, said her son is heartbroken and insisted the two are in love.

“She was going to sign a marriage contract as soon as she got here,” she said, adding that she told Katherine to “bring a pink dress for the engagement party and a white dress for the wedding.”

“She wanted to convert to Islam and wear the head covering and live with us and adopt our culture,” she said.

Jericho, a dusty backwater of 17,000 people, is a place of relative calm in the strife-torn West Bank, where Israelis and Palestinians frequently clash.

Abdullah Jinzawi, who works in his father’s business, delivering goods to minimarkets, is no longer giving interviews. But in a phone interview with WNEM-TV in Saginaw, Mich., on Saturday, he said he met Katherine on the social networking hub seven months ago, that he was a wealthy businessman and that he wanted to marry her. He said he sent her the money for the flight.

“I love her, and no one can pull me away from her,” he told the station. “She’s only mine, you know, and I do love her a lot.” He said he still plans to marry her, once she is old enough.

Sana Jinzawi, who holds an Israeli identity card, said she traveled to Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv to greet the would-be bride last week.

“When she didn’t arrive it was a sad day for us. All kinds of thoughts went through our heads and we asked the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, and they told us she went back to the U.S. from Jordan,” she said.

The mother said her family was taken aback by all the attention the case has received and is afraid the FBI would become involved. They insist they did not want to hurt the girl and had no idea she acted without her parents’ consent.

Hopefully, when she gets older, Katherine Lester will realize just how big the mistake she almost made was.

Still doesn’t change the fact that this whole story gives me the jibblies.

Girl, 16, in hiding after attempted rendezvous in Israel:

Details from the press conference held by Katherine Lester’s family…

Lester’s mother, Shawn, and sister, Mary, appeared with attorney Renee Wood at a press conference. At one point, Shawn Lester began to cry, but did not speak to the media. Wood acknowledged that Katherine Lester is doing well and appeared “jovial” upon her return to the United States, but said Shawn Lester hasn’t been alone with her daughter since her return. Katherine is in hiding after creating a global stir by traveling to meet a man who calls himself Abdullah Psycho.

“The family (is) so traumatized that it’s hard for them to speak about it,” Wood said. “Shawn loves her very much, but she cannot support her actions. She doesn’t know why this happened.

The 16-year-old persuaded her parents to get her a passport, saying she needed it for a trip to Canada. Instead, she left home in a taxi June 4. Later, it was revealed she stayed in hotels in Bay City and New York.

I wonder if she was staying at nice hotels or Uncle Dave’s Roach Hut. What reasonable hotel would let a 16-year-old stay by herself? Fake ID, maybe?

FBI wants to hear call to man who wooed Mich. teen:

This is an article about the Michigan girl, Katherine Lester, who ran away from home to meet a man she met on MySpace in Jordan…

The FBI is interested in getting a copy of a phone interview a Saginaw TV station did with a man it says was planning to rendezvous in Israel with a teenager from rural Michigan’s Thumb.

“We’d be interested in seeing the interview,” FBI special agent Terry Booth said Sunday.

He would not say if authorities had interviewed the man, who refers to himself as Abdullah Psycho on his MySpace.com page. Nor would Booth comment on any aspect of the investigation to determine “if any federal violations occurred” when Katherine Lester, 16, of Gilford Township traveled to meet a man, thought to be 25, whom she met through the popular Web site.

Lester’s escapade launched an international search that involved local police, the FBI and agents in Amman, Jordan, and Tel Aviv.

CBS affiliate WNEM TV-5 in Saginaw first broadcast its interview with Abdullah on its 10 p.m. news Saturday.

In the interview, the man professed his love for Lester, whom agents intercepted in Amman on Thursday and persuaded to return home. She returned to Bishop Airport in Flint on Friday.

“I love her. She’s mine, only mine,” the man said in the interview.

His artistic, goth-style My-Space page shows a photo of him with his head down and face hidden. The site says: “I give you my heart, Kath” and includes a photo of Lester, who’s listed as a friend on his page.

Initially, the man was described as 25, but WNEM producer Allison Marple said he told a reporter he was 20 and from a wealthy family, which is how he had the means to send Lester the airfare to Israel.

He hasn’t been charged with any crime yet, but here is his MySpace.

I’m not afraid to say that this is one creepy story. Let’s forget the part where the girl runs away to Jordan of all places, but expecting this girl to run away to Jordan on a whim is just damn creepy.

I also have some apologies to make. In the last entry I did on this, I made some comments chiding the parents. At the time, I was not aware that the girl ran away after the parents realized the Canada trip was a ruse. I apologize for my assumptions.