I am not trying to spread the “stranger danger” fear-mongering here. If you are a parent, grandparent or any other kind of close relative please read the linked article at the bottom of this post. I have been following this since it began. More details are becoming known. I’m not doing the blame the victim game here but unsafe online behavior contributed to this crime. Parents PLEASE know what your children are doing.
In my experience this is usually the cause of mis-communication or a lack of communication. Technology is part of the solution but a good parental relationship will do better than any technology.
I was recently at the Brunswick Business Expo and I was disseminating the following documents:
1. This is a set of tips for adults in regards to online safety
2. This is a set of steps for youth in regards to online safety.
3. This is a “contract” between your youth and yourselves. This provides a framework for communications between the adults and the youth for proper online behavior. It also provides the foundation for a clear set of expectations from both sides of the conversation.
I am not saying this is the end all be all but I hope you find it useful. There are technological things that can be done to aid caregivers in supervision of their youth. If you have any questions contact us.
On November 10, a 12-year-old girl left her home in the Baltimore suburb of Nottingham at 7:30am, heading to her middle school. She never returned home. When her mother called the school later, she discovered that her daughter had not even arrived. Suddenly, Baltimore County Police were calling in the FBI to assist in their search for a missing person.
According to police reports, “an unfamiliar blue pick-up truck with North Carolina license plates” was spotted by neighbors near Jane Doe’s home that morning. (While the girl’s name was previously published in Baltimore local media, we’ll refer to her by the name used in recent court documents—Jane Doe—because of her age and because of the nature of the crime allegedly committed against her.) Over the next four days, the investigation of Jane Doe’s disappearance led to a ranch house on a cul-de-sac 340 miles away in Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s where North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement agents working under the direction of the FBI eventually found the kidnapped girl—along with a 32-year-old probationer named Victor Yanez Arroyo.
The girl is now back with her family, but according to arrest documents, Jane Doe told authorities that “at the residence, Arroyo had non-consensual sex with her two times.” Arroyo was arrested and now faces a wave of state and federal charges.
Luckily, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had Doe’s real name and several aspects of her digital identity to work with, including her Xbox Live gamer tag, her Apple iCloud account, and her social media chat accounts. All of these digital identities played a role in the forensics work used to track down Jane Doe’s abductor.
But they also played a major role in her abduction.
via 12-year-old’s online life brings an abductor to her doorstep | Ars Technica.