I will start out by saying that I think MySpace is a great resource for young people. Parents definitely need to monitor what their children do on MySpace, as they do any other activity for youth.
I believe the biggest problem lies not in MySpace, but in the antiquated attitudes of many law enforcement agencies in our country. When a crime is committed, the public relies on the police to investigate the crime and find the perpetrators. We think that the police stand between us and the ugly parts of life. When we find out that is not always true it shakes us to the core.
Evil blossoms in a small town
My family has experienced this in the last week, and the response of the local authorities shocked us. My son was on a school fund-raising trip to the Daytona 500. His lacrosse team, along with the baseball team, was cleaning up trash during the race in return for a generous donation to their teams. The baseball coach told the boys to return to the bus about 20 minutes before the end of the race to try to beat some of the heavy traffic. My son, in what turned out to be a nearly fatal error, did not return to the bus until the end of race.
The coach was angry, and the boys on the bus were even angrier. They began taunting and threatening my son on the long ride back to Palm Coast. Not only did they use incredibly foul and abusive language about his sexual preferences but they also promised to beat him up when they got off the bus at the high school. Some of the boys even said, “You’re dead at school on Tuesday.” They followed through with their threat of a beating at the school. As twelve boys encircled my son he pleaded to the coach to help him, but the coach, in silent approval of what was happening, got in his car and drove away.
Promises kept.
The players that did not help with the beating slunk away to their cars and left my son alone to face twelve angry boys. They punched him in the stomach and head, shoved him back and forth between them and continued to threaten to do even more at school Tuesday. When we arrived at the school, we found my son extremely shaken but he had miraculously survived. An officer from the Sheriff’s department came to our house and reluctantly took a report. He seemed to think that since my son was not in the hospital there was no real harm done. The school principal also came to our home and he assured us that the school was taking the entire thing very seriously, including the coach who had left the boys unattended on the school campus.
It gets uglier.
Monday my son enjoyed President’s Day just hanging out at home. He practiced some new songs on his drum set, watched a movie and then got on his computer to chill with his friends. He checked his messages at MySpace as he chatted with several people on AIM. Then he got a link to a MySpace group that changed all our lives. The group named “Fuck Ted Hogan”
Mom, I don’t want to go back to school.
I could tell how devastated my son was by the look on his face as he told me he could not ever go back to his high school. I asked what had happened and he sent me the link to the MySpace group. There was a prominent photo of my son with an ugly red slash across his face part of the international symbol for NO drawn on his head. There were forums that again taunted with the most vicious, disgusting and evil language I have ever seen. There was even a call for everyone to wear shirts with their slogan, F— Ted Hogan, to school the next day. When I looked at the photo, with the NO sign, and thought of the boys telling my son that he was dead on Tuesday, I was terrified.
Boys will be boys?
We immediately called the sheriff’s non-emergency number. We gave the case number we received the night before and asked that someone come to the house to document the site. Shortly afterwards a young deputy arrived at our home and listened as we explained what had happened Sunday and what was now being posted on MySpace. The deputy refused to look at the computer monitor. He told us we should call in the morning and ask to speak with the deputy from the night before. We told him that we wanted someone in authority to preserve the evidence, but he still refused. We asked to speak with his sergeant. The Sgt. arrived at our home with the same attitude as the deputy. At our insistence, he reluctantly looked at the site for a moment or two, and without even reading what was in the forum shrugged, his shoulders and said, “Boys will be boys.” The whole situation seemed surreal, in a world that has seen school shootings like Columbine, how could anyone ignore threats like these?
In desperation I made screenshots (you can see them here) of the site and printed out all the various pages showing the forum comments. I was concerned that what I was doing was not sufficient to use as evidence in court, so I also asked members of the QuiltArt mailing list to go and look at the site. I wanted witnesses besides my family to see the postings.
The school responds.
Tuesday morning my son went to see the principal to make his official statement about Sunday night. We took the pages I had printed the night before and the school resource officer was very concerned. He felt that the boys who battered my son at the school should have been arrested immediately before they had time to escalate the violence. At least five boys created and wore the shirts with the MySpace group slogan to school. My son tried to go to class after his meeting with the principal but was followed down the hall by one of the boys who yelled insults at my son and told him “they were going to get him when he came out of his second period class.” We ended up taking him out of school for the remainder of the week. Both resource officers at the high school spent the rest of the week interviewing all the kids (over 51 members of the MySpace group alone) that were involved, learning everything they could about the Florida statutes dealing with cyberstalking and online threats and preparing the paperwork to consider charging some of the boys with crimes.
Aftermath
A week later, there is much to do. Several local news stations interviewed us for pieces about cyberbullying. I have met with our Sheriff and while the department still does not seem to appreciate the necessity of collecting electronic evidence; they are open to reading the information I am collecting about training, grants for training and software designed to assist law enforcement personnel to preserve electronic information properly for use in court. My son is in school today, and I am worried about his safety. Once the message appeared on MySpace, it was out in the world spreading like cancer from site to site. What if someone harms or kills my son to impress the school athletes that created the MySpace group? I am frightened when the doorbell rings because I am being harassed by other parents for taking this to the police in the first place. My family discussed the importance of standing up for what is right. We know that it is right to educate our community and as many other communities as we can reach about the importance of MySpace in the life of teens today…and that crime is crime…even on MySpace.
