Teen, Mom Sue Myspace

Teen, mom sue MySpace.com for $30 million

Suit filed in TravisCounty claims popular Internet site fails to protects children from adult sexual predators.

By Claire Osborn,
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, June 20, 2006

A 14-year-old TravisCounty girl who said she was sexually assaulted by a Buda man she met on MySpace.com sued the popular social networking site Monday for $30 million, claiming that it fails to protect minors from adult sexual predators.

The lawsuit claims that the Web site does not require users to verify their age and calls the security measures aimed at preventing strangers from contacting users younger than 16 "utterly ineffective."

"MySpace is more concerned about making money than protecting children online," said Adam Loewy, who is representing the girl and her mother in the lawsuit against MySpace, parent company News Corp. and Pete Solis, the 19-year-old accused of sexually assaulting the girl.

Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer for MySpace.com, said in a written statement: "We take aggressive measures to protect our members. We encourage everyone on the Internet to engage in smart web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world."

Founded in 2003, MySpace has more than 80 million registered users worldwide and is the world's third most-viewed Web site, according to the lawsuit.

Loewy said the lawsuit is the first of its kind in the nation against MySpace.

Solis contacted the girl through her MySpace Web site in April, telling her that he was a high school senior who played on the football team, according to the lawsuit.

In May, after a series of e-mails and phone calls, he picked her up at school, took her out to eat and to a movie, then drove her to an apartment complex parking lot in South Austin, where he sexually assaulted her, police said. He was arrested May 19.

The lawsuit includes news reports of other assault cases in which girls were contacted through MySpace. They include a 22-year-old Wisconsin man charged with six counts of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a 27-year-old Connecticut man accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.

MySpace says on a "Tips for Parents" page that users must be 14 or older. The Web site does nothing to verify the age of the user, such as requiring a driver's license or credit card number, Loewy said.

To create an account, a MySpace user must list a name, an e-mail address, sex, country and date of birth.

"None of this has to be true," the lawsuit said.

Attorneys general from five states, including Texas, have asked MySpace.com to provide more security, the lawsuit said. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sent a letter to the MySpace.com chief executive officer May 22, asking him to require users to verify their age and identity with a credit card or verified e-mail account.

Lauren Gelman, associate director of the Center for Internet and Society at StanfordLawSchool, said she does not think MySpace is legally responsible for what happens away from its site.

"If you interact on MySpace, you are safe, but if a 13-year-old or 14-year-old goes out in person and meets someone she doesn't know, that is always an unsafe endeavor," Gelman said. "We need to teach our kids to be wary of strangers."

Loewy said he was confident about the lawsuit, which he said seeks damages worth 1 percent of the company's estimated worth.

"We feel that 1 percent of that is the bare minimum that they should compensate the girl for their failure to protect her online when they knew sexual predators were on that site," he said.

Talk of Austin

Do you think online communities do enough to protect minors from predators? Post your comment.

Comments

By John

June 20, 200612:23 AM | Link to this

This goes beyond just the parents failing to take responsibility, this is an example of a group of people who use the legal system for profit. It occurs in workman’s comp, ADA, schools, whatever, people sue just for the purpose of making a buck off of it. The sad thing is it affects everyone else. Been to a school playground lately? No swings, climbing areas, kids cannot run in playground anymore, kids need “training” to use playground toys!!! When’s the insanity going to stop?

By Elaine

June 20, 200612:19 AM | Link to this

I spent a great deal of time on MySpace when my daughter started using it. After the first three hours, I had enough information on 30 underage children to report them to the police. I had names, locations, associated peers….and a myriad of pictures showing drug and alcohol useage, sexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality. In three hours! I reported them all to MySpace and told them I was going to check the sites of those 30 kids in 48 hours and if their webpages or pictures were still up, I was contacting the police.

Perhaps parents should monitor more. But I definitely know that MySpace should be monitoring more. It is their website. And there is virtual, literal proof that crimes are being committed…right under their cybernose. The mother in the lawsuit is right about one thing. The fact that no verification is taking place makes MySpace so-called checks moot and irrelevant.

June 20, 200612:17 AM | Link to this

Do you think Myspace could counter sue the mom for negligence? What was this kid doing on the internet unsupervised?

By josh

June 20, 200612:14 AM | Link to this

I agree with Ed, the girl is probably lying about being assaulted, but the parents should feel dumb about not teaching the girl to not talk to strangers, they are not gonna win, but they might get a nice settlement

By Mike

June 20, 200612:05 AM | Link to this

Wonder how old the girl said she was and why weren’t the parents aware that their daughter was going out with someone that she met online. They might as well sue the auto maker for making the car that the guy showed up in to take her out. It’s a bad thing like for something like this to happen but I think people need to take responsibility for their own actions.

By S Smith

June 20, 200612:02 AM | Link to this

Regardless of the mom, this girl was really stupid and is lucky she’s still alive. Most troubling is that there’s always some cheesy lawyer salivating over deep pockets. It’s almost a guarantee that MySpace will settle out of court. However, there needs to be accountability. The State should place this girl on weekend road work detail for 4 years for her illegal activities, sending a strong message to all underagers that this is no joke!

By Amanda

June 20, 200612:01 AM | Link to this

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a long time. If you didn’t raise your kid right, don’t go blaming someone else. It’s no one’s job to raise your kid.

By Jay Platinum

June 20, 200612:01 AM | Link to this

I hope she wins a judgment against New Corp held MySpace.com and makes them pay up. It’s high time that big corporations are held accountable. Especially, when they are too successful and in the news too often. Perhaps, this can lead to a class action against MySpace.com. Down with Murdoch and long live homegrown American media. Remember the Ports Deal!!! Just like remember the Alamo.

By ELI

June 19, 200611:59 PM | Link to this

The world is going to hell in a handbag.I feel it is MySpaces’ duty to protect underage people from preditors. Go all the way law suit!

Everything started going downhill for young people back when elementary schools said that their teachers did not have to eat with the students at lunchtime, and the schools had to go out and get volunteers (however, I do believe they pay them $5.50 /hr. now) to sit with the kids at noon. It was the teachers responsibility to take care of the kids at noon.

By Rich

June 19, 200611:55 PM | Link to this

If this girl met someone at the mall, could she sue the mall? Or a theatre? Or a sports stadium?

If this girl is stupid enough to meet someone randomly she met on the internet, and her mother is too unconcerned about her where she let her go ahead and meet some random guy then why is it the fault of the website where they happen to meet?

Could you sue Yahoo or MSN chat for meeting someone on there who assaulted you?

This is the ‘deep pockets’ form of lawsuits that disgusts me.

By austinights

June 19, 200611:50 PM | Link to this

Sux that she was sexually assaulted, but where is the parental responsibility. With as much knowledge out there for parents and a 14 year old to know better about such things…..just how much protection can we have as a society? Maybe we do need to put a chip in all the kids brains these days. They do call them the Y generation, so Y not? People need to start waking up. We don’t have enough milk cartons to continue having stupid things happen that are purely parental preventable.

By Ron

June 19, 200611:47 PM | Link to this

It’s hard to see how Myspace COULD protect people from their own stupidity or ignorance… they provide a means for people to communicate, much like the phone company provides service — why isn’t she suing the phone company that put the calls through? Or the ISP that delivered her emails? I’m sorry she was assaulted… that’s absolutely wrong… but Myspace isn’t responsible… she won’t win the lawsuit.

By Allen

June 19, 200611:47 PM | Link to this

And the tally so far, two comments for this and…the rest of the world??? against. I have children (5 of them) and i try really hard to instill them with something two of the readers don’t have for themselves COMMON SENSE! Look, if you teach the kids right, you have a better chance of them doing right. You don’t blame myspace because the kids were did a very stupid thing, blame yourself because you didn’t teach them to be careful. Or, are they just trying to retire at the girl”s expense?

By Ed

June 19, 200611:45 PM | Link to this

My guess is that the girl had consensual sex with the 19 year old, her Mom found out, and the girl told her that she was ‘assaulted’.

I’m not wanting to let the 19 year old off the hook, since it sounds like statutory rape, to me, but I bet it was consensual, not an ‘assault’.

By Lee

June 19, 200611:43 PM | Link to this

What a ripoff !! What happened to the parent’s responsibility? Someone’s always ready to make money off of someone else. Get the attorney to get a life and the mother be more responsible.

By S young

June 19, 200611:42 PM | Link to this

The attorney bringing this law suit and the parents should be COUNTERSUED for bringing such a nuisance suit to the courts. it is clearly an attempt to gouge some money to avoid court costs of fighting this ridiculous suit. McDonalds gets sued for making people fat. This is even dumber.

By Inspector Detector

June 19, 200611:40 PM | Link to this

A mother and daughter want $30 million from myspace for being morons? Sounds like that family has more problems than just a sexual assault.

By Christopher

June 19, 200611:37 PM | Link to this

Good grief—This girl can do no wrong in the eyes of her mother. I have a feeling she’s just like every other ridiculous girl on Myspace- posting half naked, way-too-up close pictures of herself for the whole world to see. This time Mom caught her and found somebody else to blame.

By Greg Barton

June 19, 200611:36 PM | Link to this

Anybody else had enough of dirtbag lawyers and stinking robes ?

Why has not a judge thrown this case out ?

By Jennifer

June 19, 200611:35 PM | Link to this

I think this mother should be arrested for child abuse and neglect. Not only did she alone allow this to happen to her child, she is refusing to take responsibility for her actions, thus teaching her daughter that you can always find someone else to blame for your mistakes. The man who did this was dead wrong and should be prosecuted, certainly. But let’s put the blame where it belongs, first and foremost with the woman who let her 14-year-old daughter have unlimited access to a computer.

By jessamine

June 19, 200611:33 PM | Link to this

the first mistake was the parent letting the child use MySpace. if you pay attention to the internet you should know that it’s not the place for a 14 year old. the only way to protect children online is to monitor all their activity. i would never have believed i would have stooped to this, but i check history and cookies on a regular basis and require my children to give me their logins & passwords—i don’t read email—we discuss anything suspect. we also discuss why i do what i do.

By Jennifer

June 19, 200611:29 PM | Link to this

Just another example of why I think you should have to take a test before you are allowed to have kids.

By Stephen Gravis

June 19, 200611:24 PM | Link to this

Where were the parents?

By yo

June 19, 200611:22 PM | Link to this

Let’s hope Myspace fights this and does NOT settle this lawsuit. It would set a terrible precedence and trigger more frivolous lawsuits.

By Bruce

June 19, 200611:20 PM | Link to this

They might as well sue the computer manufacturer and the internet service provider too because without those two, none of this would have happened.

By janie

June 19, 200611:16 PM | Link to this

Looks like we have another case of a parent not taking responsibility for their child; so what else is new. When children are using the internet they should be supervised as with any other potentially harmful activity. I don’t believe it it the responsiility of myspace to parent your kids. If you don’t want them in harms way then keep them off the internet. I never had a problem monitoring my now adult children’s internet activities.

By Rebecca

June 19, 200611:08 PM | Link to this

The last time I checked, parents were the ones who were responsible for protecting their children. I would venture to guess that the computer the girl used to go online was in her bedroom rather than in a family place out in the open. I would also venture to guess that the girl was communicating with many different “friends” on MySpace and her parents probably didn’t know more than half of them.

Parents need to understand that it is their job to be “nosy”—know their childrens’ friends.

By DK

June 19, 200611:06 PM | Link to this

The mom should be ashamed and held accountable for negligant parenting My should sue for wrongful lawsuit any attorney who represents the mom should be disbared. and any judge who accepts a case agianst myspace should be removed from the bench

By annoyed

June 19, 200611:05 PM | Link to this

This is yet another example of bad parenting. As an educator, I see this all the time (parents often blame me, the teacher, for their child’s actions). My own children aren’t allowed to be on the computer without me watching over them. Why in the world would you let your child meet someone in person after meeting them online? There are too many lazy parents. More ignorant people are reproducing… and sueing people. Parents need to take responsibility for their actions… or lack thereof.

By ACB

June 19, 200611:05 PM | Link to this

I do not allow my child to post any personal information on any website. I do not allow my child to make “friends” with unknown persons on the Internet. She is allowed to email and IM her real, live friends. We have discussed the dangers of becoming friendly with unknown persons online.

By plainsmen

June 19, 200611:04 PM | Link to this

Myspace should counter sue the mom for the whole 30 million. I think a jury, based on these posts, would find in their favor easily. Obviously more evidence of the mother’s negligence versus Myspace’s.

By anon

June 19, 200611:03 PM | Link to this

Mommy is trolling for $$$.

Didn’t another mommy try this on Michael Jackson (put her child out as lawsuit bait).

By plainsmen

June 19, 200611:02 PM | Link to this

By lynn

June 19, 200611:00 PM | Link to this

This is a case of someone trying to get something for nothing. The internet is here to stay. You can chat with anyone, but you have to be smart enough to know people don’t always tell the truth. I have four children with myspace profiles. They all know people do tell lies and normally do not chat with people they do not know. The parents should have taught this girl about strangers. The girl was old enough to know better. Myspace is not a bad thing unless you make it bad.