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19 Jan 2007
Social networking site MySpace and its parent company News Corp are being sued by four families after their teenaged daughters were sexually assaulted by adults using the website.
The four separate cases, filed by families in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York and South Carolina, are seeking millions of dollars in damages.
The cases include a 14 year-old New York girl who was raped by two men; a 15 year-old girl from Texas who was drugged and assaulted; and a 15 year-old Pennsylvania girl and two sisters aged 14 and 15 from South Carolina.
MySpace introduced its Zephyr monitoring software yesterday, which lets parents see what age, name and location their children are displaying online at the site.
However, the site warns the children that their information has been shared and does not allow the parents to read their child's email.
MySpace appointed a security chief in 2006 and has partnered with police forces to try to make the site safer for teens.
Jason Itkin, a lawyer acting for the New York girl's family, said that, despite the efforts, MySpace had waited too long to bring in meaningful security measures.
In a separate incident yesterday, two guards at a juvenile detention centre were sacked for trying to chat to teenagers using MySpace.
John Stone and Anthony Berrios from the Medina Juvenile Detention Center set up an account using the name '2wildandcrazyguys' in a bid to target high school girls in the area who had been in juvenile detention.
The alarm was raised by a girl who informed her teacher, and both men were fired following an internal investigation.
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Parental Responsibility
How many more stories like this are we going to have to read before parents take responsibility for what their MINOR children are doing online.
Posted by: Ultan 11 Apr 2007
Parents Must Supervise if they love their children
Far from suing MySpace, the parents of these children should be in Court for not properly supervising their children. Do they care for them so little that they do not ensure they control who they meet. Before any Politically Correct People reply that parents cannot supervise their children, do they not accept that the real parents who care, most certainly make sure their kids do not get into dangerous situations?
Posted by: Mike 22 Jan 2007
Parents
While I think any site open to ALL age groups needs better security, I however feel that these days, parents seem to let go of the leash and then sue after the fact. I can't put a price on my children, I make sure they stay active by means of chores, schoolwork, (oldest boy has a part time job) and spend time with them. I get tired of hearing how both parents have to work. One of us will always be there. Do we suffer financially? Oh yeah. But it's worth it if my kids don't go through something like this. Take back good paying jobs, men and women alike stop thinking your gender makes you "special" that a career is more important. Having children is the most single important job and career a man\woman can have. I am not saying this is the case here but I would wonder how these young girls were allowed to go so far as to meet or chat with adults. I monitor my kids all the time, when they are 18 or out of the house, then they can make these choices. Until then, it's my job to make sure I know what they do, where they go, and who with. As well, you don't need "Quality time" Quality is such a cheap word, it means nothing. Quality time is simply always taking time to talk to them, get involved and be strong when you need to. As with a certain other case where people let their children stay at a grown man's mansion, what the hell is wrong with the parents? Let this happen and then sue for $$$. What a nice lesson to teach our youth. If something bad happens, money will make it better. I sincerely regret this happened to these girls and is terrible but I think had these girls been raised with common sense, this may have been prevented.
Posted by: Paul 19 Jan 2007