The Child Protection eNewsletter

49 states settle with MySpace…

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on behalf of 49 states and the District of Columbia today announced that MySpace has agreed to significant steps to better protect children on its web site, including creation of a broad-based task force to explore and develop age and identity verification technology. Read More

MySpace acknowledged in the agreement the important role of this technology in social networking safety and agreed to find and develop on-line identity authentication tools. The attorneys general have advocated age and identity verification, calling it vital to better protecting children using social networking sites from on-line sexual predators and inappropriate material.

Other specific changes and policies that MySpace agreed to develop include: allowing parents to submit their children's email addresses so MySpace can prevent anyone using those addresses from setting up profiles, making the default setting "private" for profiles of 16- and 17-year-olds, promising to respond within 72 hours to inappropriate content complaints and committing more staff and/or resources to review and classify photographs and discussion groups.

The agreement culminates nearly two years of discussions between MySpace and the attorneys general.(See Volume 5, Issue 5, Volume 5, Issue 35, Volume 5, Issue 36.) The attorneys general were led by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, co-chairmen of the Executive Committee consisting of Connecticut, North Carolina, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Every state except Texas signed on to the agreement.

In the agreement, the attorneys general commend MySpace for its efforts to address social networking safety issues.

Under the agreement, MySpace, with support from the attorneys general, will create and lead an Internet Safety Technical Task Force to explore and develop age and identity verification tools for social networking web sites. MySpace will invite other social networking sites, age and identify verification experts, child protection groups and technology companies to participate in the task force.

The task force will report back to the attorneys general every three months and issue a formal report with findings and recommendations at the end of 2008.

MySpace also will hire a contractor to compile a registry of email addresses provided by parents who want to restrict their child's access to the site. MySpace will bar anyone using a submitted email address from signing in or creating a profile.

MySpace also agreed to work to:

• Strengthen software identifying underage users;
• Retain a contractor to better identify and expunge inappropriate images;
• Obtain and constantly update a list of pornographic web sites and regularly sever any links between them and MySpace;
• Implement changes making it harder for adults to contact children;
• Dedicate meaningful resources to educating children and parents about on-line safety;
• Provide a way to report abuse on every page that contains content, consider adopting a common mechanism to report abuse and respond quickly to abuse reports;
• Create a closed "high school" section for users under 18.

The Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety recognizes that an ongoing industry effort is required to keep pace with the latest technological developments and develop additional ways to protect teens, including on-line identity authentication tools. The Principles of Social Networking fall into four categories:

On-line Safety Task Force. As part of the Principles, MySpace will organize, with support of the Attorneys General, an industry-wide Internet Safety Technical Task Force to develop online safety tools, including a review of identity authentication tools. The Task Force will include Internet businesses, identity authentication experts, non-profit organizations, academics and technology companies.

Site Design and Functionality. The Principles incorporate safety initiatives that MySpace has already implemented and initiatives it will work to implement in the coming months. Examples of safety features MySpace has in place include reviewing every image and video uploaded to the site, reviewing groups, making the profiles of 14- and 15-year-old users automatically private helping protect them from being contacted by adults that they don't already know in the off-line world and deleting registered sex offenders from MySpace.

MySpace has also agreed to consider a common abuse reporting mechanism and provide a means to report abuse on every content-containing page, also allowing users to easily categorize the offensive content at issue via a drop-down menu. MySpace will try to acknowledge reports made via the Report Abuse mechanism within 24 hours and will report back to consumers within 72 hours of receiving complaints.

Education and Tools for Parents, Educators and Children. The Principles acknowledge that MySpace has already been devoting meaningful resources to Internet safety education including a new on-line safety public service announcement targeted at parents and free parental monitoring software that is under development. MySpace will explore the establishment of a children's email registry that will empower parents to prevent their children from having access to MySpace or other any other social networking sites. In addition, under the Principles, MySpace will increase its communications with consumers who report or complain about inappropriate content or activity on the site.

Law Enforcement Cooperation. The parties will continue to work together to enhance the ability of law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute Internet crimes.

In other news…

At least six city employees will be fired for improperly handling concerns about a woman's care for her four daughters, who were later found dead in their home, D. C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said. Read More The decomposing bodies of the girls -- ages 5 to 16 -- were found when deputy U.S. marshals served an eviction notice at the row house. Their mother has been charged with murder. (See Volume 6, Issue 3) A social worker at the school where the oldest girl was a student tried twice in April to raise concerns about the family. At a news conference, Mayor Fenty played tapes of two calls she made after the girl, Brittany Jacks, stopped going to school to try to get city agencies to investigate. The social worker describes visiting the house, but not being let in by the mother, Banita Jacks. She said Jacks told her she did not want Brittany going to school because she was afraid she would run away. She reported seeing two or three younger children, who were also not in school. In a follow-up call, the social worker expresses frustration at being transferred among several departments.

Colorado's Catholic Church leaders are planning to again fight a bill that would give victims more time to sue predators who sexually abused them as children. Read More A measure by State Representative Gwyn Green, D-Golden, would lift the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits for children who suffer sexual abuse from now on. Any past victims for whom the statute of limitations has expired would have a two-year window -- starting in July -- to file a civil lawsuit against their alleged abusers or any institution that knowingly allowed the abuse. Under Colorado's current statute of limitations, Coloradans who suffer abuse have six years after they turn 18 to sue their abusers. Children's advocates say that is not enough time because many victims blame themselves and often hide their abuse for years before reporting it or considering criminal or civil action against their abuser.

The same cell phones that parents buy as safety devices for their children are the gadgets that pedophiles and predators use to prep kids for sexual encounters, experts and police say. Read More The latest case is out of Pennsylvania. Police say a 26-year-old P.E. teacher admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old student in the school's parking lot. Detectives from the Moon Township Police Department said they found nude pictures of Beth Ann Chester on the teen's cell phone along with text messages. Chester faces 14 charges, including three counts of sexual abuse of a child and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. (See Volume 6, Issue 2) Betsy Ramsey has spent 20 years working with child and female victims and chairs the DeKalb County Domestic Violence Task Force in Georgia. Stalking of adults and grooming of kids almost always involve using electronic devices these days, she said. Often adults who have their eyes on a child invest time in making them comfortable, police said. "They groom children," Shelton said. "A lot of the time, these kids mistake the grooming activity for friendship, which is exactly what it's designed to do -- to look like a platonic relationship, when all they are really doing is getting closer and closer to them socially so they can get closer and closer to them physically."

A small-town Missouri mayor and church pastor is in jail on charges of soliciting sex over the Internet from a police detective posing as a 13-year-old girl. Read More Allen Kauffman, 63, was arrested on four counts of felony enticement of a child in the latest sting orchestrated by a police detective in another southwest Missouri town, Diamond. Prosecutors alleged in court filings that Kauffman believed he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl from the Joplin area in a Yahoo chat room last November and December. In online messages, Kauffman allegedly asked the girl for sex and for nude pictures and encouraged her to have sex with a girlfriend in front of a Webcam so Kauffman could watch. Kauffman is mayor of Collins, a town of about 200 people in St. Clair County about 50 miles northwest of Springfield. He is married and serves as a pastor of the Temple Lot Church in Collins, Diamond police said. It was the latest in a series of online sex stings by Diamond police Detective Jim Murray, a retired chief of the force he now works for. His investigations have led to 20 arrests, more than half of which have resulted in prison time for adult men convicted of soliciting sex from Murray's online character, Brumfield said. The other cases are pending.

This week's Newsweek looks at the lingering effects still felt in Eskimo villages of decades of abuse in the Roman Catholic pedophile priest scandal. Read More It is one of the darkest chapters of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. More than 110 children in Eskimo villages claim they were molested between 1959 and 1986, raped or assaulted by 12 priests and three church volunteers. Families and victims believe that another 22 people were sexually abused by clergy members but have since killed themselves. The Jesuit Oregon Province, which includes Alaska, has agreed to pay $50 million in damages. It is believed to be the largest settlement ever against a religious order. (See Volume 5, Issue 76)

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