Photos on social networking sites come back to bite defendants

Photos on social networking sites come back to bite defendants

By Eric Tucker

The Associated Press

updated 1:37 p.m. ET, Fri., July. 18, 2008

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.

Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.

Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.

Just a reminder. I am not saying that I agree that prosecuters and police and employers are right to use info taken from social networking sites to make decisions about individuals, but it seems they do. So we all might want to be a little careful.--don't be a jackass and post it online.

I recall in my second year one of the students in one of my review sections totally disappeared for half the semester. I emailed him repeatedly to tell him his absenses could cause him to get an F. Nothing. Then he shows up in the last two weeks of class. I tell the professor about it, and she says "fail him. The absence policy is clearly stated in the syllabus." He shows up to appeal, and says he has lupus and had gone back to his parents' house because he got sick in the middle of the semester. So the prof checks him out little on Facebook. Not surprising, his page is full of pictures of him drunk and frat parties and posted throughout the semester. And what's worse, he even bosts about how good he is about lying to profs and getting around paper deadlines and missed classes--his recommendation: "claim to have a chronich disease." So he failed the class.

And now for something completely different

The world can make a saving throw.

Fears of Internet predators unfounded, study finds

WASHINGTON — A lot of parental worries about Internet sex predators are unjustified, according to new research by a leading center that studies crimes against children.

"There's been some overreaction to the new technology, especially when it comes to the danger that strangers represent," said Janis Wolak, a sociologist at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

"Actually, Internet-related sex crimes are a pretty small proportion of sex crimes that adolescents suffer," Wolak added, based on three nationwide surveys conducted by the center.

Two of the surveys contacted 3,000 Internet users aged 10-17 in 2000 and again in 2005. The third sums up findings from 612 interviews with investigators at a nationally representative sample of agencies that deal with Internet sex crimes involving children.

In an article titled "Online 'Predators' and Their Victims," which appears Tuesday in American Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association, Wolak and co-researchers examined several fears that they concluded are myths:

• Internet predators are driving up child sex crime rates.

Finding: Sex assaults on teens fell 52 percent from 1993 to 2005, according to the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey, the best measure of U.S. crime trends. "The Internet may not be as risky as a lot of other things that parents do without concern, such as driving kids to the mall and leaving them there for two hours," Wolak said.

• Internet predators are pedophiles.

Finding: Internet predators don't hit on the prepubescent children whom pedophiles target. They target adolescents, who have more access to computers, more privacy and more interest in sex and romance, Wolak's team determined from interviews with investigators.

• Internet predators represent a new dimension of child sexual abuse.

Finding: The means of communication is new, according to Wolak, but most Internet-linked offenses are essentially statutory rape: nonforcible sex crimes against minors too young to consent to sexual relationships with adults.

• Internet predators trick or abduct their victims.

Finding: Most victims meet online offenders face-to-face and go to those meetings expecting to engage in sex. Nearly three-quarters have sex with partners they met on the Internet more than once.

• Internet predators meet their victims by posing online as other teens.

Finding: Only 5 percent of predators did that, according to the survey of investigators.

• Online interactions with strangers are risky.

Finding: Many teens interact online all the time with people they don't know. What's risky, according to Wolak, is giving out names, phone numbers and pictures to strangers and talking online with them about sex.

• Internet predators go after any child.

Finding: Usually their targets are adolescent girls or adolescent boys of uncertain sexual orientation, according to Wolak. Youths with histories of sexual abuse, sexual orientation concerns and patterns of off- and online risk-taking are especially at risk.

ON THE WEB

For more research by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes against Children Research Center, go to www.unh.edu/ccrc/

For tips for parents, go to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at www.missingkids.com

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

Just some interesting results from a recent study. Not to diminish the dangers of internet predators at all, but some of these results should probably make people think a bit. It's not the internet that leads to more child sex abuse; more likely it's poor parenting.