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Archives > Volume 8 Issue 14 - February 23, 2010 "Chatroulette" web craze could endanger children...On Chatroulette, a new and controversial Web site, every click lands you in a face-to-face video conversation with a random stranger. CNN story here 
The setup is simple: Activate your webcam and click "play." Then, as people from all over the world pop up one at a time in a box on your screen, you decide whether or not to chat with them. If you don't like the looks of things, click "next" and the site shuffles you to someone new.
The people you meet could be friendly. During a recent CNN test of the site, a man from France popped up on the screen wearing a jester's hat and telling jokes in French. Two men dressed as skeletons were having a dance party to techno music and flashing lights. A slouched-over man in Tunisia said he was tired because he'd been on the site for four hours. But the stranger Chatroulette sends you could just as easily be naked - or even masturbating in front of the camera, which is the case rather frequently. Two of the first four video chatters randomly selected for CNN by Chatroulette were naked when their pictures appeared. The fifth person simply held a sign up to the screen that read: "Please show me your boobs." CBS Internet reporter Larry Magid warns "Make sure there are no kids in the room if you plan on trying out the Chatroulette video chat service. While I was able to have a couple of very nice conversations with fully clothed polite individuals, I saw some things I would rather have avoided as I tested this relatively new service." CBS story here "Parents need to be aware that this service is out there and getting increasingly popular. Not only is it not appropriate for children to see some of the images I saw when testing the service, it's clearly not appropriate for kids to be showing themselves - even if fully clothed - to strangers via a video chat." "There was a time when I advised parents to avoid letting their kids use a computer with a Webcam, but many computers, including most laptops, now have them built-in. If you are concerned, about your kids' use of a Webcam, you might want to contact the PC maker to find out how to disable it. On a Windows machine, you can open up the device manager, click on Imaging devices, right click on the line for your integrated camera and select disable - do not select uninstall unless you want to completely remove the software that operates the camera." "If you have a parental control filtering program you can also block Chatroulette.com but, for most families, your first line of defense should be to talk with your kids." For information to use in that conversation with your kids about the internet, see eGuide/online safety and eGuide/MySpace and Facebook. Released missionaries worry about Haitians, describe jail... American missionaries who faced allegations of child trafficking in Haiti but were freed from jail described their trip to the earthquake-ravaged country as a simple humanitarian effort that left them even more concerned about the Haitian people. AP story here 
"It seemed like everyone in the group (was) legitimately really concerned about the children and helping them, to the point that it was almost amazing to me that they were so concerned about helping them," missionary Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas, told Oprah Winfrey on Friday's episode of her talk show.
Allen was among eight American missionaries freed Wednesday after three weeks in custody in Haiti. Two were left behind in jail. Four of the eight are now in Kansas. Three are home in Idaho, while Allen is back in Texas. The group denies the child trafficking accusations, arguing the trip was a do-it-yourself "rescue mission" for young victims of the massive January 12 earthquake. "We're four guys - well, we're a group of 10 people - that are convinced that it's better to get up off the couch and go and help people than just sit on a couch and do nothing," missionary Paul Thompson, of Twin Falls, Idaho, said during a segment taped from Topeka and aired Friday on NBC's "Today" show. Meanwhile, there is not one orphan among the 33 children that a U.S. Baptist group tried to take from Haiti in a do-it-yourself rescue mission following a devastating earthquake, The Associated Press has determined. AP story from CBS here In a visit to the rubble-riddled Citron slum where 13 of the children lived, parents who gave their children away confirmed that each one of the youngsters had living parents. 
Their testimony echoed that of parents in the mountain town of Callabas, outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, who told the AP on February 3 that desperation and blind faith led them to hand over 20 children to the religious Americans who promised them a better life.
Now the Citron parents worry they may never see their children again. One mother who gave up all four of her children, including a 3-month-old, is locked in a trance-like state but sometimes erupts into fits of hysteria. She and other parents said they relinquished their children to the U.S. missionaries because they were promised safekeeping across the border in a newly established orphanage in the Dominican Republic. Their stories contradict the missionaries' still-jailed leader, Laura Silsby, who told the AP the day after her arrest that the children were either orphans or came from distant relatives. In other news... 
A Maryland woman who adopted three children despite a troubled past was convicted Monday of murdering two of the girls, whose bodies were stored in a freezer as the woman continued collecting payments meant to help with their care. AP News story here Renee Bowman, 44, kept the bodies of the two young girls on ice for months while she continued to collect subsidies paid to parents who adopt special-needs children in the District of Columbia, receiving a total of about $150,000 since adopting the girls. The bodies were found after the third daughter escaped by jumping out a window. The girl, now 9 and living with new foster parents, testified in the murder trial last week about the abuse she and her sisters endured - being beaten with a baseball bat and shoes and choked until they lost consciousness. The girl's older sisters, Minnet and Jasmine Bowman, were both younger than 10 when they died, though authorities were never able to determine exactly when the murders occurred. Nobody knew they were missing, and there are no records the children were ever enrolled in school. Prosecutors said Bowman killed them while the family was living in Rockville and took the freezer with her when the family moved first to Charles County and later to Lusby, in Calvert County. See vol6_iss60, vol6_iss61, and vol6_iss63 for more on this story.
The FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that a Pennsylvania school official remotely monitored a student at home, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told CNN. CNN News story here The official, who asked not to be identified, said the FBI became involved in the case after a family filed a lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District, located outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The family accused an assistant principal at Harriton High School of watching their son through his laptop's webcam while he was at home and unaware he was being watched. The family also says the school official used a photo taken on a laptop as the basis for disciplining the student. The U.S. Attorney's office said it does not normally announce investigations before they are complete but is making an exception in this case because the community needs to be assured that law enforcement is investigating the incident. Reuters story here "The issues raised by these allegations are wide-ranging and involve the meeting of the new world of cyberspace with that of physical space," U.S. Attorney Michael Levy said in a statement.
Delaware's Attorney General says a Lewes pediatrician accused of serial child abuse victimized 103 children, and the alleged crimes were recorded on videotape. CBS3 story here Attorney General Beau Biden said at a news conference Monday that Dr. Earl Bradley has been indicted on 471 charges, including rape and assault. Bradley was arrested in December and initially charged with 29 felony counts for allegedly abusing nine children. Biden says the charges are based on 13 hours of video files. The attorney general said the charges are "unique" in state history, and the alleged crimes were committed against "those without voices." See vol8_iss3 for more on this story.
The head of Germany's Catholic bishops apologized to victims of rape and molestation by priests dating back at least to the 1970s, echoing Pope Benedict XVI's recent words of condemnation. Bloomberg story here "Sexual abuse of minors is always a heinous crime," Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops' Conference, told a news conference today in Freiburg, Germany. "I support this wording by Pope Benedict out of a deep conviction and apologize to all victims of such crimes." Pope Benedict is struggling to contain the damage to the Vatican's reputation from European sex-abuse scandals that began in Ireland and have spread to his German homeland. On February 16, he called repeated instances of sexual abuse a "heinous crime" after summoning Irish bishops to Rome. Germany's Roman Catholic bishops are discussing possible changes to anti-abuse guidelines in effect since 2000 and ways to prevent future abuse at a meeting that began in Freiburg today. Even so, the guidelines "have worked" and are designed to ensure cooperation with prosecutors in abuse cases, Zollitsch said. At least 115 people have come forward since January saying they were abused at schools run by Jesuits in Germany, Ursula Raue, a lawyer appointed by the order to investigate the cases, said on February 18, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Most cases occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, she said. However, German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on Tuesday accused the Catholic Church of failing to cooperate with officials in the investigation of alleged child sexual abuse at Jesuit schools in the 1970s and 1980s. The Local news story here The member of the Free Democrats told broadcaster ARD that she did not have the impression that church leaders were working constructively with law enforcement. For more on this story, see vol7_iss77, vol8_iss11, and vol8_iss13. For more information on clergy abuse, see eGuide/clergy abuse.
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