The Child Protection eNewsletter

Private Facebook pages are not so private…

Private Facebook profiles aren't quite as hidden as many users might think they are. http://abcnews.go.com/ Pages that are supposedly restricted are visible to anyone using searches
based on religion, sexual orientation or relationship
status. Security researcher Christopher Soghoian announced the flaw. A quick search by Wired News for women in a major U.S. city who were interested in random hookups with men revealed the names and photos of two high school girls, including one ninth-grader.

Like many social networks, the increasingly popular Facebook allows its users to mark their profile page as private, semiprivate or open. However, even if you mark your profile to be visible only by friends, that doesn't change how you turn up in Facebook searches or whether your profile is open to indexing by search engines. Instead, users looking for privacy must also change their preferences under search, else their profiles will be indexed by internet search engine spiders and their names, photos and personal data fields will be searchable by any Facebook member who is a fellow member of a "group" such as a school or geographic area that the user elects to join.

"There is an easy way to fix this at the individual level," Soghoian said. "But the fact that so many people haven't done it easily demonstrates that opt-out privacy doesn't work."

Facebook is second only to MySpace.com in social networking site popularity.

New drug may delete bad memories…

Researchers at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal) are working on an amnesia drug that blocks or deletes bad memories. Read More The technique seems to allow psychiatrists to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow a memory to be recalled.

In a new study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the drug propranolol is used along with therapy to "dampen" memories of trauma victims. They treated 19 accident or rape victims for ten days, during which the patients were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event that had happened 10 years earlier. Some patients were given the drug, which is also used to treat amnesia, while others were given a placebo. A week later, they found that patients given the drug showed fewer signs of stress when recalling their trauma.

Similar research led by Professor Joseph LeDoux has been carried out at New York University on rats; scientists were able to remove a specific memory from the brains of rats while leaving the rest of the animals' memories intact. An amnesia drug called U0126 was administered.

For more on this field of research see http://www.childprotectionprogram.org/newsletter/vol5_iss22.html and http://www.childprotectionprogram.org/newsletter/vol2_iss40.html.

In other news… 

A sting in which police teamed up with "Dateline NBC" to catch online pedophiles was supposed to send a flinty-eyed, Texas-style warning about this Dallas suburb: Don't mess with Murphy. Read More Instead, it has turned into a fiasco. One of the 25 men caught in the sting -- a prosecutor from a neighboring county -- committed suicide when police came to arrest him. Read More The Murphy city manager who approved the operation lost his job in the ensuing furor. And the district attorney is refusing to prosecute any of the men, saying many of the cases were tainted by the involvement of amateurs. It is the first time in nine "Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator" stings across the country in the past year and a half that prosecutors did not pursue charges.

Death row inmate Mark Dean Schwab is a "scientific mystery" who should be spared execution so he can be further studied to prevent other pedophiles from raping and killing children, his attorney said in a motion for clemency. http://www.foxnews.com/story/ Schwab, 38, was sentenced to death for the 1991 kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa, Florida. Schwab, who had recently been released from prison for raping another child, targeted Junny after seeing his picture in a newspaper.

An HIV-infected physician who admitted to sexually abusing children was tracked down with the help of a boy who nearly fell prey to the doctor's advances. Read More The physician, Dr. Adam Lebowitz, a former emergency room doctor at Emory University's Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, pleaded guilty in federal court in Atlanta to sexually abusing two boys. Lebowitz admitted to enticing boys on the Internet, and filming his sexual abuse of the boys on two occasions. He then sent the images over the Internet.

Cyberbullying may not be as widespread as feared, as most teenagers are more worried about old-fashioned pushing and shoving than online tormenters, according to a new study. Read More Still, about one-third of all teenagers say they've been bullied through the Internet, complaining about a range of attacks that range from annoying to dangerous, according to research released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

A British judge who spared a man who raped a 10-year-old girl because she wore “provocative” underwear has sparked more fury by letting off another pedophile. Read More Judge Julian Hall allowed Brian Haines to walk free despite being convicted of molesting a girl of 11 he was babysitting. The petrified child needs counseling and is too afraid to step out of her front door after the judge told her 71-year-old attacker he didn’t need to go to jail.

The American Medical Association last week backed off calling excessive video-game playing a formal psychiatric addiction, saying instead that more research is needed. Read More A report prepared for the AMA's annual policy meeting had sought to strongly encourage that video game addiction be included in a widely-used diagnostic manual of psychiatric illnesses.

A former middle school security guard pleaded guilty today to holding a student captive in his house for 10 years and forcing her to have sex with him. Read More Thomas Hose, 49, was sentenced to a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, but he could get out after only five years, his attorney told ABC News. Hose was charged with several sex crimes related to the disappearance and alleged abuse of Tanya Kach, a runaway who was 14 when she vanished Feb. 10, 1996.

A Roman Catholic priest accused of fondling young boys pleaded guilty to five counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and was sentenced to five years in prison. Read More The Reverend Daniel McCormack was accused of abusing five boys ages 8 to 12 in the rectory of St. Agatha Catholic Church, where he served as parish priest. He could have been sentenced to seven years.

*for access to member only sites like the New York Times, use the ID "JohnDoeID" and the password "whatever". On sites asking for an email address, feel free to use "info@childprotectionprogram.org"