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Mom Debra Carver doesn’t mess around. When her daughter Sarah* mentioned that she wanted a Facebook account she was pretty leery. The age-old conflict of “should I allow my child to do something that other children are doing because it’s popular or defer the request until she’s older” came into play. Carver allowed her daughter to set up an account under strict constraints that she would be monitored frequently, which is something that I’d agree to — if I allowed my eleven year-old daughter to use Facebook, that is.
After a few uneventful weeks of middle school chatter, Debra became suspicious of messages of a more intimate nature from a male who claimed to be of adolescent age. Sarah corresponded with the male until a comment threw up a red flag for both Debra and her daughter. The male, “Tommy”, asked to meet Sarah and told her that he was interested in becoming her boyfriend. He promised all the mini-dreams of adolescence: ice skating, hot chocolate and a promise ring.
After finding out that the boy wanted to meet her daughter, Debra advised Sarah to stay off of the site for a few days while she investigated the request. After days of corresponding with the man, the intimations became of a more sexual nature: “Tommy” stated that he wanted to kiss her and touch her. A week later, he again prompted the young girl to meet him in a public place and discouraged her from telling her parents. Debra and her husband arrived at the pre-determined place and observed the man from a distance. He was middle-aged, greying and had worn a baseball cap backwards on his head. He was also driving the fabled after-school-special white van.
After finding out that Sarah had stood him up, he immediately sent a message via Facebook asking to meet once again. This time surveillance cameras were set up in order to catch the perp in action. Videos were sent to the local police precinct and the predator was arrested in his home only days later.
Thomas Gibbs, who initially claimed innocent, plead guilty to all charges this past week and will go to prison. For how long, one will remain to see, but at least it’s one more dangerous pedophile off of the streets. For now.
I’m sure some of you have children. Some of them could be infants, some of them could be grown adults and some might not even yet be thought of, but I don’t think the fear of having something so awful happening to your child ever goes away — even with age. My daughter is two years old and I know, for the rest of my life, I will have the constant nagging “awareness”, as I like to call it, to prevent anything that is even remotely possible in preventing in protection of my daughter. Will I go overboard with it? Probably. But I’d rather go overboard with coddling and watchfulness than to suffer the consequences of an ill-informed child.
I have to give strong kudos to Debra Carver and family for being so on the ball and preventing another innocent child from being abducted — or worse.
*Names have been changed in order to protect the minor child.
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She could have avoided all of this if she’d made her daughter’s profile private and forbidden her to add anybody as a friend that wasn’t somebody she knew in real life.
It’s not that difficult to be safe on the internet. It doesn’t require sting operations, just common sense.
I’m glad that she was on top of things instead of just saying, “I’m going to monitor your account” and then not following up. But it would’ve been better for her daughter if she’d set tighter restrictions in the first place.
Knowing that there are creepy old men on the internet that want to touch little girls is less scary than actually communicating with one.
Not only that but doesn’t facebook require you to be over 13 anyway? Sounds like mom should have educated herself about how facebook works before she allowed her daughter to get started on it.
Hehe. My two year old has a facebook page. But he’s set to super private and it’s only so grandparents who live far away can keep up to date on pics of him without hearing all the foul things my friends and I say…
But yeah, you need to educate yourself on social media before allowing your kids to take part in it.
My daughter has just gotten a fb page and she’s 17. And I made her friend me and I check her friends out all the time.
It bothers me when people go to great lengths to protect their car, house and money but then get all wishy washy when it comes to protecting their children.
We at university I voulunteered for a vigilante (of sorts) not for profit organisation that ‘fished’ for pedophiles and child abusers on the internet. It was amazing how many I found who wanted to talk but once I wanted to meet up with them they would back right off. We only informed the police about people who wanted to meet up or sent child porn. Many sent adult porn, and we didn’t bother with them, though possibly they were just as bad but the intelligent ones.
I will always feel sympathy for pedophiles to a degree, because it is a mental condition, and there but for the grace of God walk any of us. Child abusers, not so much.
I mean if half the f-ed up porn I like was illegal I’d be in jail too! (joking….joking…)
“I will always feel sympathy for pedophiles to a degree, because it is a mental condition”
I give you credit for seeing this. I do not have sympathy at all and I don’t think I ever will.
My Dad and I once got into this conversation after he sat on Grand Jury Proceedings for 3 months. He sat through quite a few cases involving child molesters and that’s the same thing that he said. I never thought I’d ever hear my father say that, but something opened his eyes to the mental condition of pedophiles.
Sympathy??? Save your sympathy for someone who deserves it. Mental condition my ass, they’re just sociopaths. If they wanted to they could stop and get a chemical castration.
Don’t you think that anyone who displays socially abnormal behavior has a degree of some mental pathology. We don’t need to accept or condone it,but we do need to protect our selves from it. I don’t feel the need to persecute a pedophile,but we do need to lock them up and treat the disorder.
Samantha, Personally I completely agree with you. I just don’t get it at all. I have no comprehensive what so ever of how an adult can find a child sexually stimulating. Again, personally, I would have no problem doing away with anybody who sexually abuses a child. I was shocked when my Dad was discussing how “this was a sickness.” His thoughts completely changed after serving on the jury.
A pedophile and a child molester or abuser are two different things. A person can be a pedophile and never harm or touch or take advantage of a child and pedophilia is considered by psychiatric circles to be a mental disease or disorder.
These are the people I have sympathy for, the ones who fight to control it. Because it would be hell.
Child molesters or abusers can be pedophiles but mostly are not. Many are depraved individuals who wish to hurt someone and find children small and easy to hurt.
I was raped at the age of seven and the person who raped me was not a pedophile, as he was too young to form an adult/child dynamic. He was a child abuser.
Thanks a lot Zelda-Lilly,you just destroyed my affection for hot chocolate! Man,he’s creepy.
Why on earth was an 11 year old allowed to join at all? You have to be 13 to join most networking sites, facebook included. Luckily, this 11 year old was smart enough to tell her parents that she had an internet boyfriend, and they were smart enough to investigate. Most 11 year olds wouldn’t do that at all (hence the age limit).
I really don’t see a difference between age 11 or age 13. Regardless of the age, there are plenty of sickos out there who will always prey on boys and girls. My 11 year old neighbor has much more common sense on the internet then his 16 year old brother.
Fact is, parents need to moniter their children in whatever dealings they have with people they don’t know, especially on the internet.
You may not, but you don’t run facebook. I actually believe that there is a LAW stating that children under 13 cannot join social networking sites. Your opinions and the people you know really don’t have any bearing in this case. Fact is, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for her to have been on the site in the first place, and if not illegal, they were still breaking terms of service and her facebook should be terminated anyway. Sites like that were originally designed for college and high school students, not elementary school students. While 11 and 13 may not seem like much it is a BIG difference as far as maturity goes, on average. During the adolescent years, one or two years makes a HUGE difference. Perhaps whoever wrote the law or set the standards figured that the average 13 year old is mature enough but the average 12 year old isn’t. Who knows? The fact still stands, HER MOTHER SHOULD HAVE NEVER ALLOWED HER TO BREAK THE LAW/TERMS OF SERVICE AND MAKE A FACEBOOK.
And I do agree, at this age, parents should monitor their kids’ internet use. And it’s a good thing this mother decided to eventually do that.
You’re right, Syd, it’s law. It’s called COPPA, and it was passed in 1998, right around the time I turned 14, so I just barely missed the cutoff but was very familiar with the law at the time since it was brand-spankin’-new and every website with a sign-in had links to it to explain what it was.
It disallows children under 13 from joining online websites, but only if they’re doing so without their parents. There’s a clause for “verifiable parental consent,” which is basically what it sounds like – if there’s a verifiable way the parent can give their consent, the kid is still allowed to join.
So it’s entirely possible that Facebook, as huge as it is, does have some kind of legit parental consent procedure in place, and that the woman might have gone through those proper channels to get her kid an account.
Here’s the full text of COPPA: http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.htm
Syd, again why the attack? Sheez, can’t we have conversations and share life’s experiences without resorting to YELLING and attacking. NO shit that I don’t run facebook, and apparently neither do you if in fact the post following yours is true. Syd, get a grip before you have nothing left in your life. And I mean that sincerely not nastily.
It bears mentioning that COPPA is a US law.
I don’t know all of the particulars, but this incident took place in the UK.
Let’s not be stupid people, nothing is truly “private” on the internet. NEVER post your kid’s pic, that is just asking for trouble. The internet is full of sex freaks looking for something to oggle. Gross!
As much as I think an 11 year old having a facebook account is severely unnecessary I have to hand it to this Mother for actually keeping a close eye on what her kid was doing on the site.
If only more parents paid this much attention
Pedophilia is not a “sickness” or a “mental disorder”. It is a sexuality just like being gay or straight. Those people just find kids attractive and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that, regardless of what some may think. There is no evidence suggesting that any of them can actually be cured. Even the experimental treatments using the depo shots (birth-control found to lower sex drive) hasn’t been proven successful. That being said, everyone knows it is wrong to molest children. If you can’t control yourself then you need to be shot in the head, if I find a man attractive I can’t just help myself to him or I’d be a rapist. If people can’t control their sexual impulses then they can not function in our society.
Child rapists almost always get just a slap on the wrist, even for serial re-offenders. The judicial system makes me sick. Maybe if more judges got molested as children they would realize that it is just as bad or worse than murder. Being abused changes who you are and how you think FOREVER. It never goes away, it never gets better and knowing that the lowlife who did it to you will be back on the streets in less time than a guy who got in a bar fight just makes you feel raped over and over because it shows that not only have you suffered this great breech of trust from the perv that assaulted you but now the judge is basically slapping you in the face with it, and knowingly victimizing another child. I’m not totally sure on the exact number but I believe the re-offending rate for peds is like 85%. It has the highest rate of re-offence of ANY crime.
I love watching lock-up where you get to see the lives of inmates and i find it appalling that our killers, pimps and drug dealers care more about the safety of our children than the rest of us do. They call pedophiles “chomos” and if they get a chance to stab or beat them, they take it. So in closing I would like to thank all the killers, pimps and dope dealers out there for protecting our kids when judges and people who “feel sympathy” for peds are out there.
Well I’m not into the whole death thing but they do need to be put somewhere far away from children FOREVER. We need a Gitmo like place for them. Of course it will never happen because they have “rights” according to the Constitution.
Who makes the decision what a child is,that magical 18 years old number is arbitrary and only a legal decision determined it. I’m sure most middle aged men would never admit that those sixteen year old cheerleaders at their sons football game are hot. They don’t,and they won’t. They don’t want to get locked up. One more thing,those pimps and drug dealers would gladly exploit your 15 year old if they were out on the streets.
Calling something a sexuality to segregate it from a disorder is a misnomer,how about beastality or neicrophillia. I know those two are misspelled.
Joey are you watching Girls gone Wild?
I’m watching the geriatric version,Girls gone Mild.
I agree strongly with 18 being merely a construct. That is not actually the issue here though. The pedo- in the -philia here refers to actual children. As in, pre-puberty children. The man checking out the sixteen-year-old cheerleaders (who probably are hot), is not a pedophile, despite uneducated people collapsing all categories together. In clinical terms, you only become a -phile of any sort when you are expressing a *preference* for the specific type, not just appreciating the hotness. So your man watching the cheerleaders is only an ephebophile if he actively prefers sixteen-year-olds to women his own age. Even then, there is nothing wrong with being an ephebophile. Or even a pedophile. Some people really can’t help what they are drawn to. What is unacceptable is when they take action.
My general point – attraction to anyone post puberty is not pedophilia. In proper terms, it is hebephilia or ephebophilia. I think everyone can agree that a medical (prepuberty) ‘child’ is an unacceptable sexual partner, regardless of any differences in opinions on teen age of consent.
Second, we punish actions, not thoughts. It is unfortunate that some people cannot distinguish.
If you are an adult and you are fucking someone who hasn’t graduated high school yet you are a PIG. End of discussion.
I’m assuming you mean adult with a significant age difference. The I will agree to ‘pig’. I was taking issue with ‘pedophile’.
But if you just mean any adult, then again there are problems. An ‘adult’ may well include an 18-year-old who has not yet graduated himself. He would not be of issue. An 18-year old dating a seventeen year old would not be an issue. If she was fine to date him yesterday, reaching the age of majority should not change that.
But I’ll assume you meant significant age difference.
Wow, Kai, strangely your logic is lacking… puberty stands in the way of semantics and calling someone a pedophile. Wow. My own baby sister hit puberty at 9 years old. I was molested at 12. I was flat chested and 4ft 10. A child is a child. Puberty or no. Youngest girl to have a baby was a peruvian 4 year old. By a freak of nature, puberty caused her rapist to not be termed a pedophile? I’d say age is a more accurate indicator than puberty any day…