The Child Protection eNewsletter

Teen breaks up on 'Dr. Phil' with Arab man she met on MySpace…

A teenager who flew secretly to the Middle East last year to be with a man she met on MySpace has gone on television to end the relationship. Read More

Katherine Lester developed an online romance with Abdullah Jinzawi in 2005, but kept the relationship secret until she disappeared in June 2006 from her mother's home in Gilford, Michigan, 80 miles north of Detroit.

Lester, then 16, was intercepted in Amman, Jordan, by U.S. authorities as she was heading to Tel Aviv to meet her Palestinian boyfriend, then 20. Volume 4, Issue 26

"This is really hard for me to tell you, but I'm not going to be with you anymore," 18-year-old Lester said Monday on the syndicated "Dr. Phil" show as Jinzawi watched via satellite from the West Bank town of Jericho where he lives.

After the breakup, Jinzawi left the room, then returned a few minutes later, wanting to know why she was ending the relationship and accusing her family of brainwashing her. Her mother, Shawn Lester, told Jinzawi: "I'm so glad you're not in front of my face right now because they'd have to take me to jail. You're never going to touch her again."

Social networking sites have other public relations problems…

Seeking to keep the peace in its popular online hangout, Facebook Inc. has overhauled a new advertising system that sparked privacy complaints by turning its users into marketing tools for other companies. Read More

Under the changes outlined, Facebook's 55 million users will be given greater control over whether they want to participate in a three-week-old program that circulates potentially sensitive information about their online purchases and other activities.

Facebook provided two different opportunities to block the details from being shared, but many users said they never saw the "opt-out" notices before they disappeared from the screen. With the reforms, Facebook promised its users will now have to give their explicit consent, or "opt-in," before any information is passed along.

The concessions were made after more than 50,000 Facebook users signed an online petition blasting the system, called "Beacon," as a galling intrusion that put the Palo Alto-based startup's pursuit of profit ahead of its members' privacy interests. More than 40 different Web sites, including Fandango.com, Overstock.com and Blockbuster.com, had embedded Beacon in their pages to track transactions made by Facebook users. Unless instructed otherwise, the participating sites alerted Facebook, which then notified a user's friends within the social network about items that had been bought or products that had been reviewed.

Facebook thought the marketing feeds would help its users keep their friends better informed about their interests while also serving as "trusted referrals" that would help drive more sales to the sites using the Beacon system. But thousands of Facebook users viewed the Beacon referrals as a betrayal of trust. Critics blasted the advertising tool as an unwelcome nuisance with flimsy privacy protections that had already exasperated and embarrassed some users.

Beacon is a key component in Facebook's "Social Ads" program, which is vying to make more money from the rapidly growing audience that uses the social network's free services as a place to flirt, gossip and share personal passions.

Meanwhile, Good Morning America takes a deeper look into the story about a woman who created a fake MySpace account to torment a neighbor’s teen daughter, leading to her suicide. Read More

Lawyer: Stepdad beat to death 'Baby Grace' for not saying 'Please,' 'Yes, Sir'…

The stepfather of a 2-year-old girl lost control and beat her to death because she wouldn't say "please" and "yes sir," an attorney for the girl's mother said. Read More

A body found last month in Galveston Bay is believed to be that of the little girl, Riley Ann Sawyers, though DNA tests are pending. Her mother, Kimberly Dawn Trenor, and stepfather, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, were arrested Saturday. (See Volume 5, Issue 77)

According to court documents, Trenor, 19, told police she and her husband killed the girl in July and hid her body in a shed before dumping it in the bay.

Trenor's attorney, Tommy Stickler Jr., said Zeigler, 24, was overwhelmed by his sudden fatherhood and didn't know what behavior to expect from a toddler. Trenor moved with her daughter from Mentor, Ohio, to Texas in June to be with Zeigler, whom she met online.

Zeigler wanted his wife to spank Riley with a belt when she failed to say things like "please" and "yes sir" or "no sir," Stickler said. Zeigler didn't believe Trenor was doing it, however, because the 2-year-old's behavior wasn't changing.

The fatal beating happened after Zeigler stayed home from work to make sure his wife was following his discipline plan, Stickler said.

Meanwhile, it was painful for Robert Sawyers to talk about his daughter -- the little girl nicknamed “Baby Grace” -- who was brutally murdered, stuffed in a box and dumped in Galveston Bay. Read More

He choked back tears repeatedly as he remembered her Thursday, but he told TODAY it was important that people knew what kind of person she was, and how he will always remember her. “I wanted to get her story out, to let everybody know she was loved, very loved up here in Mentor, Ohio,” he told co-host Meredith Vieira. “She was just a darling little girl that something this tragic shouldn’t happen [to] nowadays.” Video of the interview is available online.

In other news…

Massachusetts lawmakers say a proposed measure that would ban parents from spanking their children, even in their own homes, is a way to protect kids from abuse. But many parents believe it's an example of government run amok. Read More In all 50 states, parents are legally allowed to spank their children. But in 29 states it's illegal for a teacher to practice corporal punishment, including spanking. A Massachusetts nurse is hoping to change that and make the state the first in the nation to ban corporal punishment at home. The very idea of the bill has stirred huge controversy, because many parents say the state is trying to take away what's been a tried and true method of child-rearing. As many a mom has said, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." Nineteen countries have banned corporal punishment, and some child-rearing experts believe one day the United States will do so as well.

Teenage girls may be more likely than teenage boys to copy their friends' alcohol use -- and more vulnerable to peer pressure, a new study shows. Read More

For the study, more than 1,400 pairs of 14-year-old twins in Finland answered questions about their drinking and their friends. About two-thirds of the twins -- 63 percent of girls and 66 percent of boys -- said they never drank alcohol. Similar percentages of boys and girls reported drinking occasionally or at least weekly. Teenage girls were more likely to report drinking if they had friends who drank, smoke, or who had gotten into trouble at school for bad behavior or dishonesty. The same wasn't true for boys. So the researchers suggest that girls may be more influenced than boys by their friends.

Internet harassment is becoming more common, affecting nearly one in 10 online adolescents, new research shows. Read More Back in 2000, a national survey showed that 6% of online youths aged 10-17 reported being harassed online. That percentage jumped to 9% in 2005, based on a telephone survey of 1,500 adolescents who use the Internet. Another new study estimates that 11% of online middle school students are bullied online; nearly half of those students don't know their Internet bully's real name, since screen names can hide a person's identity. The findings appear in a special edition of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

A doctor who once faced child abuse allegations kept a staggeringly large collection of child pornography, found nearly a decade after his death, and investigators fear there could be hundreds of victims. Read More The owner of a West Hartford home formerly owned by Dr. George Reardon found the images -- 50,000 35-mm slides and more than 100 8-mm movie reels -- in a hidden storage space during a renovation project in May, town police said. West Hartford investigators announced the cache Wednesday as they set out to find the victims, saying identifying them could lead to others who possessed the images or were otherwise involved.

*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"