The Child Protection eNewsletter
Volume 6, Issue 38
May 16, 2008

Neighbor mom indicted in MySpace suicide case… 

A federal grand jury has indicted a Missouri woman for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide.  Read More

Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis allegedly helped create a false-identity MySpace account to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.  Josh didn't exist.

Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.

Salvador Hernandez, assistant agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, called the case heart-rending.

"The Internet is a world unto itself.  People must know how far they can go before they must stop.  They exploited a young girl's weaknesses," Hernandez said.  "Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results, she's responsible for her actions."

U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said this was the first time the federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-networking case.  It has been used in the past to address hacking.

"This was a tragedy that did not have to happen," O'Brien said.  Both the girl and MySpace are named as victims in the case, he said.

Since her daughter’s death, Tina Meier has become a campaigner for stronger laws to protect children from cyberbullying and has established the Megan Meier Foundation to help educate kids about cyberbullying.  Read More

She’s worked closely with attorney Parry Aftab, the executive director of StopCyberbullying.org and the founder of wiredsafety.org.  Together, they have organized a campaign to get a million children this year to sign the “Megan Pledge” to end cyberbullying.  Kids can sign the pledge online at myyearbook.com.

Aftab said that 85 percent of middle-school students surveyed reported being cyberbullied, but only 5 percent of that number told their parents about it.  “MySpace is trying to work on these issues, but it’s a challenge, it really is,” she told NBC TODAY show’s Meredith Vieira.  “When you have adults doing this, what’s a Web site supposed to do?”

MSNBC also has a companion story called “Answering parents' MySpace questions.”  Read More  For more information on safety on MySpace see  vol1_iss2.

Meanwhile, Larry Magid, CBS technology analyst and Internet Safety Technical Task Force member, looks at how the task force takes on the task of protecting kids from web predators, and from themselves.  Read More

More than 2 million U.S. teens depressed… 

More than eight percent of U.S. teenagers have said they’ve suffered from symptoms consistent with a major depressive episode in the past year according to government researchers.  Read More

The report published by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) suggests that over 2.1 million teens aged 12 to 17 experienced a major depressive episode in the past year.  But there were “striking differences” by sex, with 12.7 percent of girls and 4.6 percent of boys affected.

Depression is the leading cause of suicide, which in turn is the third-leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds in the United States.

For almost half of the teens, depression drastically reduced their abilities to deal with aspects of their daily lives, the report said.  Overall, 8.5 percent of adolescents, the equivalent of one in every 12, experienced a major depressive episode.

“Fortunately, depression responds very well to early intervention and treatment,” said SAMHSA Administrator Terry Cline, Ph.D.  “Parents concerned about their child’s mental health should seek help with the same urgency as with any other medical condition.  Appropriate mental health care can help their child recover and thrive.”

The report is based on combined data from the 2004 to 2006 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) involving responses from 67,706 people aged 12 to 17 throughout the United States.  The survey is based on a scientific random sample of households throughout the United States, and professional field representatives personally visit each household to conduct the survey.

The survey uses the same symptom criteria that define a depressive episode by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official diagnostic manual of mental disorders.  However, because the survey was administered by survey-takers, not mental health professionals trained in diagnostics, it is likely an over-representation of the actual number.

In other news…  

Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch has appeared in court to defend her mother against charges she helped orchestrate her daughter's abduction in 1998.  Read More  Ms Kampusch's mother, Brigitta Sirny, has been accused by retired judge and self-proclaimed detective Martin Wabl of organizing her daughter's kidnapping to cover up the sexual abuse of the then 10-year-old girl.  Ms Kampusch, now 20, was kidnapped on her way to school in 1998 and held for more than eight years in a basement near Vienna before escaping in August 2006.  Her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide on the night of her escape.  She has previously dismissed Mr. Wabl's accusations and insisted she was never sexually abused as a child.  Meanwhile, Ms Kampusch has revealed she has bought the house where she was imprisoned in a windowless cell for more than eight years.  "It is grotesque.  I have to pay for electricity, water and rates for a house where I never wanted to live," she told the German magazine Bunte.  She said she decided to buy the house, owned by Priklopil's mother, rather than see it vandalized or torn down.

Los Angeles Schools Superintendent David L. Brewer is coming under criticism from prosecutors for sending two high school administrators back to work after they were criminally charged with failing to report a student's sexual abuse claims.  Read More  David Demerjian, head of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Public Integrity Division, told the Los Angeles Times that it's "very unusual" for public officials accused of a crime to be allowed to return to their jobs—particularly when they deal with children.  "We prosecute a lot of public employees, and they are usually placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the trial," he said.  Jesus Angulo, principal of South East High School in South Gate, and Maria Sotomayor, an assistant principal, were charged May 1 with failing to report child abuse allegations by a girl who said substitute teacher Jesus Salvador Saenz had sex with her.  As district employees, they are mandated by state law and district policy to report any reasonable suspicion of child abuse.  The case follows criticism of the Los Angeles Unified School District for its handling of the case of former assistant principal Steve Rooney.  In February 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department told district officials that Rooney was suspected of having sexual contact with a student at Foshay Learning Center in South Los Angeles.  After initially putting Rooney in a desk job, district officials transferred him to Markham Middle School in Watts.  He has now been charged with molesting two students there and the former Foshay student.

Children are big business in Guatemala, where international adoption is estimated to be a $100 million industry, making orphans the country's second-most lucrative export after bananas.  Read More  With tens of thousands of dollars to be made on the sale of each child, and with little government regulation, a fertile black market has developed to sell children all over the world, especially the United States.  Children are routinely kidnapped and parents regularly coerced to sell their children, say government officials and human rights activists.  One in every 100 Guatemalan children is adopted by an American family, the highest per capita adoption rate in the world, and 95 percent of all Guatemalan children who are adopted go to the U.S.  The U.S. State Department says approximately 29,400 Guatemalan children have been adopted by Americans since 1990, and local sources peg the average cost at $30,000 per child.  Guatamala suspended foreign adoptions in January, 2008.  See  vol6_iss6.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services wrongly placed more than 3,000 people on the state's official list of child abusers over a five-year period, a Belleville News-Democrat investigation found.  Read More  That's an error rate of one in four, based on more than 11,000 cases where people appealed to have their names removed from the list.  Parents and foster parents accused of child abuse or neglect can lose their reputations, their jobs, even their children.  A review of state child abuse records by the newspaper found that more than 80,000 people were placed on the child abuse list—called the State Central Register—from January 1, 2002, to August 1, 2007.  Of those, 11,473 people appealed, and 3,051, or 27 percent, won their appeals and had their names removed from the list or saw their cases tossed out due to lack of evidence.  Another 1,426 appeals were denied; 3,178 were abandoned or withdrawn by the accused; 3,289 cases were closed or dismissed through various administrative processes, and 529 appeals were pending.

The Austrian woman kept as a sex slave by her father for 24 years has thanked people for their support in her first public message since being released.  Read More  Elisabeth Fritzl and her six surviving children were freed at the end of April after being held captive by Elisabeth's 73-year-old father, Josef.  In a handwritten message displayed on a noticeboard in the square of their home town of Amstetten, she thanked well-wishers for their messages of support since she and her family emerged from a cramped, windowless dungeon.  "We the collected family would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your concern for your concern in our fate.  Your sympathy helps us bear the bad times, and shows us that there are good and honorable people out there.  We hope that the time will soon come when we lead normal lives again," it reads.  In a drawing of an open pair of hands, Elisabeth, now 42, wrote:  "I wish for the recovery of my daughter Kerstin, the love of my children, the protection of my family and for people with heart and compassion."  The family is currently being shielded away from the media glare and is receiving psychiatric counseling in a clinic in Amstetten, 60 miles west of Vienna.

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