2-5-2009 National:
A judge in Waukesha County, Wis., told the suspect standing before her that she had never seen a complaint as "horrific" as the one filed against him.
As the District Attorney's Office outlined the charges against the New Berlin Eisenhower High School student, Anthony Stancl, 18, stood silently, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and chains.
He is charged with 12 felonies after he allegedly posed as a girl online to trick male classmates into sending him nude pictures of themselves.
According to a criminal complaint, he then allegedly blackmailed some of them into committing sexual acts.
Stancl is charged with five counts of child enticement, two counts of second degree sexual assault, two counts of third degree sexual assault, possession of child pornography, the repeated sexual assault of the same child, and making a bomb threat.
"Mr. Stancl used the Internet to first communicate with people on Facebook, pretending to be a female," said Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel. "After some conversations with these individuals, he would eventually coax them into providing him with nude photographs of themselves in exchange for what they thought was nude photographs of the girl they were talking with.
"It wasn't a girl, it was Anthony Stancl."
He allegedly exchanged pictures with at least 31 teenage boys, and Stancl then tried to blackmail or extort half of them into meeting him for sex acts.
"They were coerced into acts they didn't wish to be involved in," Schlimel said. "Stancl told them that if they didn't, he would show the pictures to all of their friends.
"All told, there were approximately 300 photographs of known New Berlin high school students.
There were over 600 other movies that were commercially produced -- child pornography videos --that had been downloaded off the Internet."
Stancl has no prior criminal record, and investigators believe he was working alone.
His alleged victims range in age from 13 to 19, and it's believed that additional victims have not yet come forward.
They are encouraged to contact the New Berlin Police Department. ..News Source.. by NBCChicago.com
February 5, 2009
Sexually Assaulted on Facebook
Perpetuating the Myth of Sexual Predators and Social Networking
2-5-2009 National:
A couple of state attorneys general are "appalled" that 90,000 registered sex offenders had MySpace pages before MySpace booted them off the site. Never mind that a task force created by the state attorneys general recently concluded that the online sexual solicitation of children isn't a significant problem (sensationalized television shows like "To Catch a Predator" notwithstanding).
The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online sexual predators and found that children and teenagers were unlikely to be propositioned by adults online.
Among those who disagreed with this reality because it contradicted his practice of fear-mongering was Connecticut's AG Richard Blumenthal, who complained that the report "downplayed the predator threat." Blumenthal failed to appreciate the difference between "downplaying" a threat and recognizing that the threat isn't significant. [more ...]
Read the rest of this post over at TalkLeft, don't miss the last sentence.
November 25, 2008
New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development
11-25-2008 National:
Results from the most extensive U.S. study on teens and their use of digital media show that America’s youth are developing important social and technical skills online – often in ways adults do not understand or value.
“It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online,” said Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the report’s lead author. “There are myths about kids spending time online – that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age.”
Released here today at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting, the study was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s $50-million digital media and learning initiative, which is exploring how digital media are changing how young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.
Together with the late Peter Lyman of the University of California, Berkeley, and Michael Carter of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, Ito led a team of 28 researchers and collaborators at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley. Over three years, they interviewed over 800 young people and their parents, both one-on-one and in focus groups; spent over 5000 hours observing teens on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and other networked communities; and conducted diary studies to document how, and to what end, young people engage with digital media.
The researchers identified two distinctive categories of teen engagement with digital media: friendship-driven and interest-driven. While friendship-driven participation centered on “hanging out” with existing friends, interest-driven participation involved accessing online information and communities that may not be present in the local peer group. Significant findings include –
There is a generation gap in how youth and adults view the value of online activity.
Adults tend to be in the dark about what youth are doing online, and often view online activity as risky or an unproductive distraction.
Youth understand the social value of online activity and are generally highly motivated to participate.
Youth are navigating complex social and technical worlds by participating online.
Young people are learning basic social and technical skills that they need to fully participate in contemporary society.
The social worlds that youth are negotiating have new kinds of dynamics, as online socializing is permanent, public, involves managing elaborate networks of friends and acquaintances, and is always on.
Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online.
The Internet provides new kinds of public spaces for youth to interact and receive feedback from one another.
Young people respect each other’s authority online and are more motivated to learn from each other than from adults.
Most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet.
Most youth use the Internet socially, but other learning opportunities exist.
Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share their interests, making it possible to pursue interests that might not be popular or valued with their local peer groups.
“Geeked-out” learning opportunities are abundant – subjects like astronomy, creative writing, and foreign languages.
“This study creates a baseline for our understanding of how young people are participating with digital media and what that means for their learning,” said Connie Yowell, Ph.D., Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation. “It concludes that learning today is becoming increasingly peer-based and networked, and this is important to consider as we begin to re-imagine education in the 21st century.”
Ito and her team of researchers found that participation in the digital age means more than being able to access serious online information and culture. Youth using new media often learn from their peers, and notions of expertise and authority are being redefined.
“Online spaces provide unprecedented opportunities for kids to expand their social worlds and engage in public life, whether that is connecting with peers over MySpace or Facebook, or publishing videos on YouTube,” said Ito. “Kids learn on the Internet in a self-directed way, by looking around for information they are interested in, or connecting with others who can help them. This is a big departure from how they are asked to learn in most schools, where the teacher is the expert and there is a fixed set of content to master.”
The research demonstrates that, although many young people are developing a broad range of sophisticated new literacy and technical skills, they are also facing new challenges in how to manage their visibility and social relationships online. Online media, messages, and profiles that young people post can travel beyond expected audiences and are often difficult to eradicate after the fact. The research suggests that this rapid pace of change presents challenges for both adults and kids as they struggle to keep up with technology and related social changes.
“Most parents knew very little about what their kids did online, and struggled to give real guidance and help,” said Ito. In some cases, however, the researchers found that parents and their children came together around gaming or shared digital media projects, where both kids and adults brought expertise to the table.
More information about the study and the MacArthur Foundation’s digital media and learning initiative can be found online at digitallearning.macfound.org. Ito’s research findings, among the first from the initiative, are part of an effort to inject grounded. ..News Source.. by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
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