(Massachusetts, Aug. 14 2002)
A 15-year-old Massachusetts girl was kidnapped, held captive,
tortured and raped by a New York couple she met in an
Internet chat room, police say.
James Warren, 41, and Beth
Loschin, 46, held the girl for a week in their Long Island,
N.Y. home, where they repeatedly assaulted her sexually and
beat her, police said. "During the assault, the victim was
physically injured and subjected to humiliating and
dehumanizing acts.
Police say Warren and Loschin
convinced the high school sophomore to meet them Aug. 3 at the
Wrentham, Mass., outlet mall where she worked. The girl had
told them in an online chat room that she wanted to run
away from home, and they offered to help. But it didn't take
long for her to realize she had made a mistake.
"After about an hour, she
knew she was in over her head," police said. "The teen was
handcuffed and bound with rope much of the time." She also
told investigators the suspects kept her blindfolded and
locked in a closet.
(Monroe-WTNH, June 19, 2002)
A 27-year-old man was arrested at his Wallingford home on
charges he raped a 16-year-old girl he met on the Internet.
Monday night Monroe police
arrested a Wallingford man because a teenaged girl from Monroe
says he raped her. Police say the two never would have met if
not for an internet chat room.
Somewhere in suburban Monroe
a 16-year-old girl met 27-year-old Carlos Decarvalho in a
chat room.
Washington Post, Sunday,
January 6, 2002
The Pittsburgh teenager who
vanished from her home on New Year's Day and was discovered
Friday in a Herndon town house was quietly reunited with her
family yesterday at Manassas Regional Airport, then flown back
to Pennsylvania in good condition, her family said.
Scott W. Tyree, a computer
programmer, the man accused of driving her from Pittsburgh to
Northern Virginia and then chaining her to his bed ...
They apparantly met online
and corresponded for several weeks before she dissappeared.
Software to Protect your
Kids
An easy solution to these
problems is the inexpensive blocking software readily
available today. This
content
filtering software allows parents of all computer skill
levels to control which sites are visited on the Internet.
With some additional
Internet monitoring software, you can even read IM
messages and e-mail. Some software takes photos of the
computer screen and e-mails them to your computer
periodically. This allows you to protect your kids while
you're at work.
As "Internet Kidnapping,"
cases become more public, more parents will take an active
interest in keeping their kids safe online. By monitoring
their children, parents can make the Internet a safe place for
kids to learn about the world.
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