) Beware of cyber stalkers

There was a time when predators had to stalk their victims.  Whether it was with a bag of candy to entice a young child, a request to help find a lost puppy, or the promise of a modeling job, the predator was required to step out into the community to identify his next potential victim.  But not anymore.  The Internet and the advent of diary-like blog sites, or “spaces,” make it easy for children and adults alike to post their electronic diaries.  Potentially 750 million readers could read these daily journal entries.  Federal authorities believe that at least 500,000 to 750,000 predators are “on-line” on a daily basis, constantly combing through these blog sites, crawling around in Internet chat rooms and on-line dating services, pretending to be someone and something they’re not.  Internet predators sometimes attempt to pass themselves off as a peer of a child they meet on the net.  Both adults and children may post deeply personal information on their blog or space site that was once reserved for the little personal diary with a lock and key, the one they hid under their mattress.  Now millions have a key to your diary, and you’ve given it to them.

Taylor Behl was a typical teenager, in her case graduating from high school and heading off to college in a new town.  She maintained a personal webspace on one of the well-known sites used by teenagers.  In addition to posting her picture on her “space,” she also wrote about her likes and dislikes and her various interests and activities.  By doing so, she opened the door to her mind and her heart to anyone who wanted to enter, making herself vulnerable to any predator who took the time to read her entries.  One such reader was Ben Fawley, a man she met on-line and someone now charged with her murder.  Taylor was killed only two weeks into her freshman year of college, perhaps because she trusted too much or gave up too much personal information in her blog site.  Behl’s alleged murderer says she died during rough sex.  But it appears that her believed assailant would never have had the chance to put his hands on her had she not revealed so much about herself in her blog.  I write about Taylor, as I followed the investigation concerning her disappearance and the finding of her body in a shallow grave some 70 miles from her dorm room.  So much lost potential. 

But Taylor is not by far the only person who came into contact with her murderer, rapist, or assailant via the Internet.  Kacie Rene Woody was thirteen when she met an on-line predator from California in an Internet chat room.  Authorities believe 47-year-old David Fuller tricked Woody into believing that he was also a young teenager in order to get personal information from her that led him to her rural Arkansas residence.  It was there, just one month after their initial “meeting” on the Internet, that Fuller kidnapped Woody from her home.  I say “kidnapped” because it appeared that young Kacie valiantly fought for her life before she was carried away by her assailant, someone who left her shoes and her broken eye glasses behind.  Police and FBI Agents identified Fuller through his Internet messages, and traced him to a commercial storage unit.  As officers opened the door to the unit they heard a shot, one fired by Fuller as he committed suicide rather than be arrested.  Woody, who had been sexually assaulted, was already dead from a gunshot wound.  Fuller’s activities led authorities to believe that Kacie might not have been his first Internet victim, noting that victims of predators can run into the hundreds.

The list of Internet victims is much longer and even more gruesome, including both children and adults who first met their attacker via the Internet.  Every time I think I’ve seen the depth of human behavior, the worst example of depravity possible, some predator crawls out of the slime and shows me something even worse.  I guess I’ve grown partially numb to such monstrous and sociopathic behavior over the years, but I still know that we can save some of these potential victims if they became more educated and savvy concerning risks in life—in this case, the Internet.

The FBI believes that at least one in five children get sexual solicitations while on-line, usually by an adult posing as a child or teenager.  The predator weaves a psychological web to entice his victim to provide more and more personally identifying information, usually including photos, telephone numbers, school activities, and even a home address.  As parents we wonder how our children can be so naïve, while our children wonder why we can be so paranoid and so out of touch with the times. 

There was a time when children had a baseball glove in one hand and a tennis racket in the other.  Now young people have an iPod and a computer mouse.  Their world is self-contained and they, like the many Internet predators surfing the net, need not leave the relative safety of their bedrooms to talk to people across the world via the Internet.  High school and college can be tough for anyone, especially those not in the “in” groups, but the Internet and blog sites allow you to reach out to the world without actually meeting face to face, something I believe to be a serious threat to some.  You can tell a lot from meeting someone in person.  You can tell how he or she responds, how they dress, look at you, and is he really the 17-year-old boy he says he is when replying to your blog.  You have no history of this person, other than what they’ve written you.  We know that upwards of 50% of people lie on their resumes.  Shouldn’t we expect the same percentage from their anonymous blog site entries?  There are over 18 million teenagers on line at any one time.  At least 25% are on blog and “space” sites.  As these millions of children and millions more adults navigate the highways and byways of the Internet, they need to be aware of the back roads and rest stops that can pose a threat to any who enter.  The physical world and the cyber world are wonderful places to visit and all should seize the opportunity for travel.  But know where you’re going at all times.          

The threat is not just to children though.  Adult women and men have become victims of someone they met on the Internet.  A 70-year-old Canadian woman was dubbed “the Internet black widow.”  Allegedly she would identify a man via the Internet, eventually marry him, and then poison her new husband to gain access to his money.  She had a 15-year history of fraud and impersonations, including feeding one husband a lethal dose of prescription drugs and them running over him with her car.  In another case in the western U.S., a 26-year-old man used Internet chat rooms in an attempt to set up a mass suicide on Valentine’s Day across the U.S. and Canada.  At least 25 women had “signed up” to take part in this suicide.  Some of these women talked about taking the life of their children first.  Why Valentine’s Day?  Some people believe that should have a significant other, especially on February 14^th.  They allow their low sense of self worth and self esteem to make them vulnerable to a stronger, perhaps charismatic person, someone like, for example, the Rev. Jim Jones.  Jones founded The Peoples Temple, initially an interracial mission for the sick, homeless, and jobless.  In 1977 Jones moved his flock from California to Guyana, where on November 18, 1978 the group of 638 adults and 276 children committed a mass suicide when all “willingly” partook of a fruit drink laced with cyanide and sedatives.  Following the leader can be fatal.

The bottom line is that thousands of predators and potential stalkers are on-line daily.  Many will lie about who they are, how old they are, and what they want from you.  What many want is to develop a level of rapport that will allow them emotional intimacy and ultimately physical contact with their new “victim.”  What they need to develop this relationship is information.  Unfortunately, if someone has a nefarious purpose in developing this relationship, he or she can find all the information they need to get inside of your head from your blog or “space” musings.  And it’s not just creeps that are trolling the Internet blog sites to read your postings; it’s your college, your parents, and your future employer.  What you say about yourself and the pictures you post are there for life, floating in cyberspace waiting to be read and, worse, used against you. 

Here’s what you need to do.  Think of anything that you write or post on a blog as you would a large tattoo on your forehead.  What do you want people to read about, or see about you six months or six years from now?  Many later try to remove the physical tattoos that they got on some late night spur of the moment, but there are few “take backs” on both your blog and “space” postings.  Like Kacie Woody, should you give a potential assailant just enough information to track you down, or consent to meet the wrong person, your mistake may be fatal.  Visitors to blog and “space” sites have grown by the tens of thousands in just the past year.  Although you could meet the man or woman of your dreams via a blog or Internet dating site (my oldest son did), you could also meet the person of your nightmares.  For all I wish pleasant dreams, but be careful and please, be safe when traveling in cyberspace.  Accidents can prove to be fatal.  

Ah, the Internet; quite possibly the greatest invention of our time. The list of benefits society now enjoys because of this miraculous invention is endless. If given the choice, would any of us willingly return to those pre-Internet days when "checking my mail" required walking to the mailbox and "surfing" required waves and a surfboard?

Unfortunately, because it is available to everyone - both good and bad, criminals have found a way to exploit the beneficial aspects of the Internet. For instance, child predators use the anonymity of the Internet to prey on unsuspecting children. Terrorists use the Internet to communicate with members of their cells. Hackers use information obtained from corporate databases to steal identities and ruin credit. We hear stories about such criminal activity on the news and take preventative steps in order to minimize the potential harm to ourselves and our families. However, unless you are a parent intimately "in the know", a relatively recent (and quite deadly) phenomenon called "cyberbullying" may have escaped your radar. Taking steps now to determine whether your child is susceptible to this disturbing trend may help you and your family avoid problems later on.

Most of us know what bullying means. We've seen the movies... My Bodyguard, Back to the Future, or Mean Girls. In the past, bullying for boys usually meant physical intimidation. For girls, it meant being rejected by the "popular" group of girls or being called nicknames based on physical characteristics (i.e. "fatty", "four eyes", or just plain "ugly"). However as society has evolved, so has the level of creativity and cruelty used by bullies to make life unbearable for those they target.

Cyberbullying replaces, or even augments, the live, in-person bullying of yesteryear. With cyberbullying, the torment does not stop when the bell rings. With the advent of the Internet, bullies can now torment, threaten, harass, humiliate, and embarrass their classmates at night, and on the weekends too. E-mail, instant messaging ("IM") and online communities such as Myspace and Facebook allow bullies easy access to both the victim and their target audience. Where before rumors and hate were spread by passing notes or creating "slam" books, bullies can now deliver daily doses of humiliation by simply posting a message on their personal web page or sending an e-mail about the victim to everyone in the class.

As the method of delivery has advanced, so has the viciousness of the material. Although boys still contend with rumors that they are "gay" and girls are accused of being "easy", some clever cyberbullies have invented phantom on-line love interests and carried on fake relationships with the victim in order to either devastate the teen with a nasty break-up down the road or to publish embarrassing things that victim thought they were sharing solely with a new on-line "friend."

"Kids will be kids", you say? "Bullying is a part of childhood"; "makes the victim stronger"; "toughens him up"? I would agree that many victims of bullying are able to rise above the fray and may not suffer any long-term emotional effects. But, sadly, not all children are equipped to handle such abuse. Children that are already contending with emotional issues such as depression or poor self-image could actually harm themselves in the face of persistent bullying.

I would also note that well-adjusted, happy, normal children generally do not get their kicks from tormenting other people. If my kid were a bully, would I be alarmed enough to consult a mental-health professional? You betcha! But I am an attorney, not a psychologist, and I leave it up to you to decide whether your bully needs help. I am confident, however, that bullying carries with it educational, legal and financial consequences that are too serious to be ignored. Could your bully live with being responsible for the suicide of another human being? Could he deal with less dramatic consequences, such as expulsion or jail time? Can you afford to defend against a lawsuit brought by the victim or her family? Keep these questions in mind as you read the following real-life examples.

Thirteen-year-old Megan Meier¹ of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, was, by all accounts, a sweet, loving young lady. Megan's parents vigilantly monitored Megan's Internet use, going so far as refusing to give Megan access to her own Myspace account unless one of them was there to input the secret password. Shortly before her fourteenth birthday, a cute boy name "Josh" sent Megan an electronic request to be added as a "friend" to her Myspace account. For the next six weeks, Megan and Josh exchanged on-line correspondence and Megan began to have a more rosy outlook on life as there was now a cute boy who thought she was pretty; Megan had suffered for years with weight issues and depression. Suddenly, and inexplicably, Megan received a message from Josh ending their on-line "relationship" because he had heard that she was not nice to her friends. Josh had also shared some of the private content of their prior conversations with other classmates on Myspace which led those classmates to launch an online attack against her, calling her vicious names. Later that evening, Megan's mother found her hanging by a belt in her bedroom closet; she died the next day.

Sadly, Megan's story gets much worse. Weeks later it would be revealed that "Josh" was an imaginary persona, allegedly created by the mother of one of Megan's former friends. The mother, the former friend, an eighteen-year-old employee of the mother, and several other of Megan's classmates all took turns pretending to be "Josh", writing messages and causing Megan to reveal personal and private information to an audience that she believed was a cute boy that liked her.

Eerily similar is the story of thirteen-year-old Ryan Halligan² of Essex Junction, Vermont. Ryan had struggled during his early years in school and had self-esteem issues as a result. Beginning in the fifth grade, he was bullied by another boy in school. The bullying persisted until seventh grade when Ryan was able to fend for himself during a physical altercation with the bully. After that, Ryan and the bully became "friends" and Ryan revealed potentially embarrassing confidences to the boy. The boy then revealed these stories to classmates via the Internet, starting rumors about Ryan's sexual orientation.

Later that summer, Ryan began chatting on-line with one of the most popular girls in school. Like Megan Meier, he felt comfortable enough with the girl to discuss topics that he would not necessarily want others to know about. When the school year began, Ryan approached the girl only to be rejected in front of her friends. She informed Ryan that the on-line relationship had been a joke and that she had shared the contents of their chats with her friends. Unable to deal with the humiliation, Ryan committed suicide.

Besides the obvious moral issues surrounding the culpability of the cyberbullies in the above cases, what legal redress is available to the victims and/or their families?

Historically, bullying has been a largely school-oriented phenomenon. Since the bullying typically occurred during school, or at least on school grounds, school administrators were able to take action against aggressors under anti-bullying provisions built into school policies. But can a school district exert control over a student for cyberbullying, which typically occurs at home, after school? The short answer is, yes. As a result of the suicides of students such as Megan and Ryan, as well as other well-documented instances of extreme cyberbullying, many local and state authorities have authorized school systems to punish those responsible. Although the bullying does not occur during what we would typically think of as a school-related activity, jurisdiction stems from the fact that the bullying at home has a substantial impact on the victim during school, especially if the victim feels threatened.

As for criminal penalties, the law is still catching up to technology with regard to online harassment and injury. President Bush recently signed a law that would make it illegal to annoy someone over the Internet anonymously³; annoying someone using your real name appears to be ok under this law. The law also has not been tested for constitutionality under the First Amendment.

In the Megan Meier case, the local authorities claimed they could not bring criminal charges under prevailing law. However, half-way across the country, the citizens of Los Angeles are willing to step up and take a stand against Megan Meier's tormenters. A grand jury has recently begun investigating whether the mother allegedly responsible for creating "Josh's" phony online persona is criminally liable under federal wiretap and cyber fraud statutes.⁴ Whether the grand jury will hand down an indictment remains to be seen. Also taking a stand is Megan's home town of Dardenne Prairie. Aldermen in that town recently passed a law making it a crime to cyberbully. Harassing someone over the Internet subjects the bully to a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500 and 90 days in jail. Further, an adult communicating with a minor in such a way that would cause a "reasonable parent to fear for the child's well-being" is also now a crime.⁵

Not to be outdone, however, is the civil litigation system where financial consequences for cyberbullying are now serious enough to make even the most lenient parent of a bully sit up and take notice. In addition to liability against the cyberbully himself on theories such as defamation, invasion of privacy, disclosure of private information and intentional infliction of emotional distress, parents could now being held accountable for their child's cyberbullying if they failed to properly supervise the child's online activity.

Although a relatively recent phenomenon, lawsuits for cyberbullying have garnered the attention of the popular press due to the often sensational details of a particular case. For example, a Canadian boy sued the fathers of three former classmates for $350,000 after they obtained a copy of a video the boy made for a class project and posted it on the Internet. The video depicted the boy using a golf club as a light saber; he was dubbed the "Starwars Kid" and suffered world-wide ridicule. The suit settled out of court. More recently, a Kentucky girl sued several classmates claiming that they made her life a living hell, prompting her to consider suicide. The suit alleges that the bullies, all former friends of the victim, made bizarre sexual and drug-related claims about her online.⁶

What can you do to protect yourself and your family from the consequences of cyberbullying? First, get involved with your child's online activities. Require that all passwords be divulged to you and make it a policy to audit regularly. If your child has an online web page, such as with MySpace, visit it often to see what he or she is posting. This goes for parents of both the bullies and the victims. Next, talk to other parents about what is going on in your child's "online" life. You would be surprised how much other parents could tell you about your own child. Finally, if your child is bullying someone, make sure he knows the potential educational, criminal or financial consequences of such behavior.

If you discover that your child is a victim of bullying, consider having her see a counselor to ensure that there are no issues that would cause her to crack under the pressure. Although most kids are able to live through the ordeal, there are some kids such as Megan and Ryan who may have underlying issues that need to be addressed. Finally, if your child is being ridiculed for an issue that could improve with the proper attention (i.e., weight or scholastic ability) do not delay in getting her help.

Back in the 1970s, many school districts became enamored with the idea that if you raised children's self-esteem they would do better in school. Although this so-called "self-esteem movement" proved to be ill conceived, many people still believe the canard that high self-esteem is the root of all achievement. Since that time many researchers have studied the topic of self-esteem, and the findings have been pretty consistent: high self-esteem for the sake of personal validation, meaning self-esteem that is not based on actual personal achievement or positive behavior, is not necessarily a healthy thing.

Dr. Jean Twenge recently published the book "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - And More Miserable than Ever Before," in which she documents the failures of the self-esteem movement in schools. Her research makes clear that phony self-esteem can be a very self-destructive thing. Her conclusion is that self-control is a much more accurate predictor of success than self-esteem.

A recent article in the Harvard Mental Health Letter (June 2007) also suggests that encouraging self-esteem as a primary goal is not healthy and could in fact remove any incentives to improve behavior. If you are supposed to feel good about yourself just because you exist, why study hard, work hard, treat others well, or take any actions to earn these feelings? While it is certainly beneficial to encourage young people to feel good about real accomplishments, encouraging self-esteem for its own sake is not healthy.

If you have watched the early auditions on American Idol you have surely marveled at how confident some of the worst performers are. Even when the judges look on with horror and give them three thumbs down, they declare that they are very talented and no one is going to crush their dreams. You can just imagine this person's mother praising their tone-deaf child for fear the truth would destroy them. The consequence is that they are now learning the truth by being humiliated in front of millions of television viewers. While this is an extreme example, many teens whose self-esteem is based on nothing more than talk are in for similar disappointments as they move into adulthood.

Many schools during the self-esteem movement of the 70s stopped correcting children's spelling for fear that it would stifle their creativity or make them feel bad about school. These children often ended up being needlessly terrible spellers as adults. While students should have been focusing more on reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, teachers had them create "Why I'm Special" treatises to show their parents. Scores on standardized tests dropped, but at least the kids felt good about themselves!

Some educators have gone so overboard that they have stopped announcing honor rolls for fear it would make the kids not on the honor roll feel bad about themselves. This removes a strong incentive in schools: if you study hard, pay attention in class, and do your assignments, you might just make honor roll. In a way, by creating a false idea that everyone is the "same," you could be encouraging mediocrity rather than accomplishment. Healthy competition is what creates change and inspires new inventions. Would PCs have improved as much as they have if it weren't for the competition of Apple computers?

You might ask, what is so wrong with encouraging kids to feel good about themselves? You are not preparing a child for the real world if you are handing him awards just for being "the one and only you." Many of these youngsters will experience severe disappointment when they discover their employer does not recognize they are "special" just for showing up to work.

In the mid-1990s, Roy F. Baumeister, Joseph Boden, and Laura Smart published a report with the subtitle, "The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem." What these researchers found was that contrary to the belief that criminals and violent offenders have low self-esteem, they actually have inordinately high self-esteem. Their research and the research of others on violent youth gangs found that that these teens had very high opinions of themselves, and they found no evidence that they were simply compensating for private feelings of self-doubt or low self-esteem.

They discovered that violent youths really seem to believe they are superior to others.

Baumeister et al. concluded, "In our view, the benefits of favorable self-opinions accrue primarily to the self, and they are if anything a burden and potential problem to everyone else."

Other researchers have also found that self-esteem for its own sake has little or no value. They have found "D" students do not necessarily think less highly of themselves than "A" students. They have found that people with high self-esteem who perform poorly in school often blame their failures on others. Bullies often have very over-inflated self-esteem, believing themselves to be superior to their classmates.

Dr. Nicholas Elmer of the London School of Economics found that high self-esteem tended to predict risky behaviors such as drunk driving. He found no evidence that low self-esteem contributed to juvenile delinquency.

When self-esteem is not based on personal drive, accomplishments, or positive behavior it resembles narcissism more than actual esteem. Narcissism is an excessive form of self-love that leads to a sense of entitlement and selfish world view. The narcissist expects adulation and reward regardless of his or her behavior.

Many questionable feel-good practices have proliferated in schools due to the mistaken notion that raising self-esteem for its own sake is a worthy goal. One practice is to give everyone a trophy, not just the winners. However, true, healthy self-esteem based on one's behavior and accomplishments cannot be crushed by not winning a Little League trophy. Baumeister's research showed that self-esteem does not move up and down with every event in one's life. The idea that we must protect our children's fragile egos from life's ups and downs as if they are esteem-crushing events is simply mistaken.

One of the most persistent legacies of the self-esteem movement is grade inflation. Although more students get As these days, SAT scores continue to decline. Everyone expects to get an A if they turn in their work, regardless of the work's intrinsic value. Parents often harass teachers who do not give their child the "A" they believe they deserve. These children are often ill-prepared for real life as they discover college professors and bosses base rewards on performance and merit, not on just being "the one and only you."

Baumeister's research indicated that "praise should be tied to performance and that the people we should worry about are those whose superior sense of self is not grounded in reality." So the next time your child is acting up and not working hard, don't praise them as a way to encourage them to feel good about themselves so they will try harder, give them a reality check and let them know they will be praised when they do something that is praiseworthy.