8-24-2010 Connecticut:
MILFORD -- Michael Marcus calls the experience "Internet hell." Marcus, 65, has been accused in online blogs, petitions to public officials and letters to the Connecticut Post of serving prison time for sexually assaulting a child. He had sex with an underage girl and even with his own dog, the allegations said.
None of it is true, according to law enforcement officials. Marcus said Milford police and the FBI's computer crimes unit are now investigating the source of those allegations. He has had mixed success in getting the fake postings removed from websites.
The owner of Phone Geeks, a telecommunications equipment company here, Marcus said that he believes a distant relative is behind the Web-based attacks. A family dispute was the likely trigger, he said.
Since June 23 the tormentor has created a Facebook page, a blog titled "Michael N. Marcus: Tracking the Convicted Pedophile," and an online petition at Change.org seeking to have Marcus put on the state's sex offender registry. There have been comments posted on other websites and message boards, including Yahoo and SheWrites, a social networking site, urging people to contact Gov. M. Jodi Rell and urge her to have Marcus listed as a pedophile.
The postings accusing Marcus of sex abuse drew comments that ranged from concern and fear to anger. One poster suggested that Marcus be castrated. Another made anti-Semitic and other hateful remarks. When a few posters suggested that Marcus should be killed for his crime, his accuser opened an account at Photobucket, uploaded photos of Marcus' Milford home and a Google map showing how to find it.
The Facebook page, created using the name "Kevin Phillips," quickly added friends, though Marcus suspects most of them were other pseudonyms created by the same man. "You can get a lot of clip art photos to use as member photos, but I noticed that all of his `friends' made the same spelling errors and used my middle initial without the period.
"When I did see some profiles of real people who had responded, I contacted them and they all `defriended' this person," Marcus said.
"It's just so blatant, and the things that are being said are just incredible," Marcus said. "He claimed that I had put a photo of `half-naked children" on the home page of one of my websites. They were wearing rather modest bathing suits and their mother was 5 feet away. He said I violated my dog with a vibrating dildo."
No arrest record
The petition to the governor claimed that Marcus had served four years in a California prison for sexually assaulting a young boy, and that he bragged in a self-published book about having sex with a 15-year-old girl.
Rell forwarded the petition, which she received in late June, to the Department of Public Safety for follow-up, said Adam Liegeot, the governor's spokesman.
Lt. J. Paul Vance, the state police spokesman, said this week Marcus has done nothing that warrants registering as a sex offender. "He is not required to register in Connecticut, and he was not required to register in California," Vance said.
Marcus has no arrest record in Milford, said Officer Jeff Nielsen, the department spokesman. "We are investigating a complaint filed by this individual, but given that it is ongoing we'll have no comment," Nielsen said.
Marcus is not listed on the California registry, despite claims by the blogger that he is. Individual criminal histories are not releasable, according to an official in the California attorney general's office.
"We depend on the First Amendment, but sometimes it can also bite us in the ass," Marcus said. "I've had no luck at all in dealing with Google, which owns Blogspot and Blogger. They basically are telling me that it would take a court order to get them to remove it."
The photos of his home and the book's dust jacket were removed after Marcus complained that they violated copyright laws. A Google spokeswoman on Wednesday cited the U.S. Communications Decency Act in declining to remove the rest of the material. The law states that websites and search engines are "republishers" of material, and so are "not liable for any allegedly defamatory, offensive or harassing content published on the site."
Spokeswoman Victoria Katsarou said Google is following federal law. "We do not remove allegedly defamatory content from www.google.com or any other U.S. dot com domains," she said in an e-mail to the Post.
She told Marcus in a separate e-mail that: "The only exception to this rule is if the material has been found to be defamatory by a court, as evidenced by a court order. If you need us to take the blog down this is the procedure you'd need to follow."
Other sites have been more cooperative, Marcus said. "Photobucket, in a day, took the photos down. Yahoo also acted fast, and SheWrites, a social networking site, responded after I complained," he said. "They also cut off the membership of `Caroline Harris,' the name that was used to attack me there."
Facebook took five weeks to remove the pages, including the fake "friends" and their comments about Marcus. The site does allow families to take over a member's page but only after the member's identity is established. The provision is often used by the parents of teens killed in motor vehicle crashes. But establishing the identity of fake people wasn't easy to do, Marcus said ruefully.
`Protect America's Children'
The online attacks began on June 25. Marcus became aware of them when friends began calling. Some were concerned, he said, but others wondered if he had orchestrated the incident himself to drum up support for his new self-published memoir, "Stories I'd Tell My Children (but maybe not until they're adults)." The book has the photo of the children in his backyard pool and across the bottom a blue banner proclaims "Dirty Parts Are Easy to Find."
That tagline is also on the book's Amazon.com ordering page, but it refers to the parts of the book, not to a child's body. Marcus also writes about having sex with a 15-year-old girlfriend when he was a student at Hillhouse High School in New Haven decades ago. The books do contain references to "three-ways" and other sexual activities; Marcus claims that his exploits "are at least 80 percent true."
The online petition and the letter and e-mails to the Connecticut Post were signed by a Harold Bishop and Susan Fisher, and the group "Protect America's Children." There are no Harold Bishops or Susan Fishers living in Milford. A Susan Fisher residing in Orange said this week that she did not sign and is not aware of any petition about Marcus. The wife of Harold Bishop of Woodstock, Conn., said that her husband did not start the petition.
Several groups use the name "Protect America's Children," including a Miami-based political action committee that advocates for more stringent child welfare laws. Phone messages left at its listed number were not returned.
Marcus said he believed none of the groups using that name was involved in the campaign against him. "It appears that it is just another identity adopted by this person to attack me."
He has written and published more than 10 books, under the imprint of Silver Sands Press, his own company. They are memoirs, phone manuals, even books on how to navigate the self-publishing industry.
Now, Marcus said, he is writing another book, to be called "Internet Hell: How False Accusations Almost Destroyed Me and Could Destroy You." The book will be published next year, he said, or as soon as the legal matters surrounding it are resolved. ..Source.. by Frank Juliano, Staff Writer
August 24, 2010
Anonymous Internet campaign brands man sex predator
August 18, 2009
MO- St. Peters woman accused of cyber bullying
This is a rather unusual case. Under the Adam Walsh Act, the girl being 17 is a minor, and sending porn to a minor would make this person a sex offender? This may also fall under what we consider vigilantism, not sure yet. Any thoughts are welcomed..
8-18-2009 Missouri:
ST. CHARLES COUNTY — A St. Peters woman sought to humiliate a St. Charles County teenager by posting the girl's picture and cell phone number in a sexually suggestive online forum on Craigslist, prosecutors said Monday.
Elizabeth A. Thrasher, 40, is accused of posting the listing after an online confrontation with the 17-year-old daughter of a woman Thrasher's ex-husband was dating.
Authorities say the case is the first felony harassment charge filed in St. Charles County under a new state law drafted in response to the suicide of Dardenne Prairie teenager Megan Meier. Misdemeanor charges have been filed in other local cases.
St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas said Thrasher and the teen's mother were bickering. The teen sent a MySpace message to Thrasher, telling her to grow up.
Thrasher, of the 1300 block of Farm Valley Drive, then created a listing on Craigslist's Casual Encounters section, investigators said. The listing included the teen's picture, employer, e-mail address and cell phone number. Banas said the posting's language would lead people to believe it was an invitation to sexual contact.
Investigators said men called the girl and sent e-mails, text messages and pornography to her cell phone after Thrasher posted the listing.
Mike Kielty, Thrasher's lawyer, said he wasn't sure prosecutors could meet the elements of the charge. He said the statute itself was poorly written.
"To charge a woman, a mother, with a felony for what is tantamount to a practical joke, that's awfully rash," he said. "That's taking it to the extreme."
Thrasher has two children. Her ex-husband and the mother of the teen could not be reached for comment.
The first page of the Casual Encounters section warns that its pages may include adult content. It also links to information about safe sex and a way to report suspected exploitation of minors.
The Meier cyber-bullying case received international attention after Lori Drew, an adult neighbor of Meier's, was linked to a fake MySpace account blamed in her death.
Drew eventually was charged with four federal misdemeanors. A jury found her guilty of three, but a judge overturned the verdicts, saying he will acquit her. He has not made the decision official by putting it in writing.
Banas said the case filed Monday afternoon surprised him because of the widespread coverage given to the Meier case.
"I would just question the wisdom of somebody who would get involved in this type of behavior after the information that has been disseminated rather voluminously," he said.
Missouri's harassment law, which took effect last August, covers threats or communication that cause emotional distress, including electronic messaging on computers, text messaging and e-mail. Statewide, felony charges have been filed in other cases since the new cyber-harassment law was enacted. In the Meier case, Banas said no state law applied at the time. ..Source.. by Shane Anthony, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
August 21, 2008
IN- Wabash man pleads guilty to harassment
See earlier report for more facts. Folks, by now everyone knows about the TV show "To Catch a Predator" where a Perverted Justice employee would impersonate, usually, a underage female and then converse sexually with men on the Internet, getting them to come to the home where she allegedly lives, and the police would arrest the man for soliciting a minor over the Internet. Effectively, Brown did the same at least with one of the persona's, does anyone see any comment that the police are looking into finding those predators?
8-21-2008 Indiana:
Ryan Brown, 23, Wabash, faces a maximum jail time of 180 days in jail plus fine at sentencing in Wabash Superior Court on Sept. 17.
At that prospect, Cindy Flanagan spoke for herself and daughters Haley Flanagan and Emily Jones: "We just want to throw up." They were speaking to this reporter, just outside the Judicial Center.
In Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon Brown pleaded guilty to two counts of harassment, one for each of the sisters. In pleading guilty he admitted surreptitiously stealing pictures and personal information and placing it on the Internet. Pretending to be them, he made up wild and false sexually explicit stories about them and sent them to Internet correspondents.
Wabash police investigated the offenses and, finding no Internet laws applicable, charged him with stalking and harassment.
When Brown pleaded guilty to harassment in return for getting stalking dropped, he gained a great deal: Stalking is a Class D Felony, for which he could be sentenced to as much as three years; harassment is a Class B misdemeanor, for which he could draw up to 180 days. As the charge bargain stipulated that the two harassment sentences be served at the same time, Brown can serve no more than 180 days and escaped a felony conviction.
The Flanagans have been making the rounds to school boards and the city council seeking support for stronger, specifically Internet laws for the future.
In court Wednesday, when it became clear that the charge bargain entailed no more than 180 days, Cindy Flanagan, spoke up, " With all due respect, your honor. We beg you not to accept this plea bargain. The prosecutor (deputy prosecutor Kristina Lynn) has never spoken to us." Later, outside court Flanagan amplified on that: Lynn had never returned her calls.
Recognizing the strong sentiment underlying the case and numerous Flanagan supporters present, Judge Chris Goff only mildly admonished her for the interruption. But he did contend that the agreement was so structured that he did not have the power either to reject it or hold it in abeyance.
In accepting the plea and finding Brown guilty, he did, however, postpone sentencing and ordered the probation department to work up a presentencing investigation. A PSI looks at the defendant's life from every aspect - education, attitude, prior offenses, danger to the community, if any. It will also incorporate attitudes of the victims, and the victims will presumably also be able to address the court before sentencing.
Under slightly altered circumstances, Goff could have held the finding of guilty in abeyance until after he had read the presentencing investigation. Under that circumstance, the judge could, if he felt the bargain unjust, have rejected it and allow the case to be reset for trial. There is, however, no power in a judge to force a prosecutor to prosecute beyond what he or she thinks can be proved and is just.
Scott Long, the Wabash police detective who investigated the case, talked to the Plain Dealer about how the facts of this case kind of fell between the cracks of applicable law. "Stalking" and "harassment" were the closest they could come, he said.
The federal government has some laws that might fit, but they get involved chiefly if there's an interstate aspect, Long said.
The wildly explicit false sex stories were bad enough, Long said, but even worse was the danger the Flanagan daughters were in - are perhaps still in. For in pretending to be the girls and posting on the Internet, Brown was also providing accurate personal information - information that might lead a predator right to them. As the family did not discover the Internet connection until this March, they went two years without knowing they were in danger, Long said.
"He (Brown) probably needs to register as a sex offender, but there's apparently nothing on the books to require that," said Long.
August 20, 2008
IN- 15 Finds Out: Internet stalking
See earlier report.
8-20-2008 Indiana:
WABASH, Ind. (WANE) - A Wabash man accused of stalking and harassing women has had two felony charges against him dropped.
Ryan Brown, 23, will be sentenced in September on two misdemeanor charges of harassment. He had also been facing two felony charges of stalking. But at a hearing on Wednesday, the two felony charges were dropped as part of what's called a "charge bargain".
Prosecutors said Brown created profiles on the social networking site, Facebook. According to court documents, he posed as two Wabash women and engaged in online sexual activity with men.
Back in March, Emily Jones, 28, was alerted by her church pastor about a profile built under her name. Soon after, Emily discovered her 16 year old sister, Haley, was also a victim.
"I was completely sick. My stomach got tight, I had trouble breathing," Jones said about seeing the site for the first time.
According to the family, the online identity theft went overlooked for 2 years.
The family told NewsChannel 15, Brown was a worker at their church.
"He got pictures of me from our school roster, my cheerleading picture. He got pictures from the church directory," said Haley.
Brown was charged with two counts of harassment and stalking. The victims said that's not enough. They are working with local and state officials to update current laws involving Internet activity. State Representative Bill Ruppel is one lawmaker working on this problem.
"Our laws were written before the Internet was in and even the laws we made during the 90's and early 2000's have not kept up with what's happening in the electronic world," said Ruppel. "Stalking, harassment, ID theft, child and sexual predator laws all need to be changed to adopt this," he continued.
Emily and Haley told NewsChannel 15, they are working to help prevent other people from going through the pain they've experienced.
"It's just humiliating beyond words, you just feel helpless and completely humiliated," said Jones.
"I just feel very violated. Every time I go somewhere, I wonder, ‘what has he read about me on the Internet? What has he seen? Why is he looking at me like that?'," added Haley. ..News Source.. by WANE.com
August 18, 2008
IN- Wabash Sisters Cyber-Stalked
This is real weird almost a virtual reality (Second Life) circumstance.
8-18-2008 Indiana:
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Indiana's NewsCenter) -- Police in Wabash arrested a man for cyber-stalking two sisters -- one of them underage -- and using their identities for sex for two years before he was discovered.
Prosecutors charged the man -- who worked at the family's church -- with felony stalking and misdemeanor harrassment.
Police say he created Facebook pages under the young women's names, then pretended to be them -- posting pictures of them, displaying their addresses and phone numbers, and even detailing their after-school activities and work places.
Using those fake identities, he had virtual sex with men around the world, using language so graphic, we can't share it with you.
The ruse was discovered by their pastor, who was compiling an Internet list of his congregation to take to his new position out of town.
And since their personal information was in cyber-space for two years, the young women now fear for their safety.
Haley Flanagan\Had Identity Assumed:" Me and my sister have both taken a self-defense class. We carry Mace on our keychains with us. And I don't go anywhere by myself."
Cindy Flanagan\Daughters Had Identities Assumed: " These laws need to have some teeth to them, and not just a general law. They need to be substance, they need to be basic enough that it's okay if the Internet changes that they can still apply it to whatever the new technology would be."
The best way to protect yourself and your children? Google your name and see what pops up. If there's anything fishy, call the police.
The man is scheduled to be in court August 20th.
But even if he's convicted of stalking and harrassment, he still wouldn't have to register as a sex offender, which would restrict his Internet use.
That's partly why the family is working with state and federal legislators to draft some stricter laws. ..News Source.. by WISE-TV
