Log-on with the sharks

Kristen Helms, 14, was like so many young people, she enjoyed logging onto the online social networking sites looking for new friends and to chat with old ones. Her mother Danielle now speaks out on the dangers of these sites and the need of the authorities to
sound the alarm she wishes others had done for her.

"The Internet is a sly danger," she warned.

Kristen, a star student and athlete, was seduced by a predator online who was nearly twice her age. Kiley Ryan Bowers, 27, traveled from Texas to California to have sex with her and left her emotionally crippled when he left. She eventually told her secret to her mother and stated that she didn't mean to fall for him and it wasn't her mother's fault that she had. Her parents called the police as soon as they knew the secret, took away her computer, closed down her MySpace account and forbade her to contact Bowers.

Kristan continued to secretly communicate with him using the school computers and then one day, while her parents were at church, she hanged herself. Her mother Danielle now wants to sound an even louder alarm than the ones that have been sounding for several years.

Child advocates have called the Internet social networks a "Sears Catelog" for child predators and just this past week, Facebook came under fire for not doing enough to protect children using it. The end of June 2007, MySpace revealed that it had found 29,000 registered sex offenders out of it's more than 180 million user profiles. MySpace now uses a program that matches offenders to a national database and Facebook is looking into that technology as well.

The offenders that were found are those who were registered with their own names, no one has suggested a way yet for finding the thousands more that could be using a false name on their accounts. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, like the attorneys general in the other 49 states, is calling for a more effective age and identity registration and parental permission for youths to post profiles on those sites.

Prosecutors in his state have made several arrests of sex offenders with profiles online. Scott D Shefelbine, 32, of Tolland CT, recently had his bail revoked after a two day hearing. Shefelbine had been free on $1.5 million bond after his arrest for making contact with and assaulting underage girls through an online social network in 2006. He was charged with first-degree sexual assault along with other charges then and part of the conditions of his release on bond were that he not use a computer or have contact with girls under 18.

In June 2007, West Hartford CT police arrested him for making contact with a 14 year-old online, meeting and kissing her and of having made contact with a victim in another case against him. The girl and her sister testified at the recent court hearing and stated that he had told them he was 17 years-old. Shefelbine had been under house arrest then and was being electronically monitered as well.

Judge Stanley T Fuger Jr ruled that Shefelbine was a "significant threat to the safety of society" and ordered him held in jail until his trial. It's about time that somebody noticed...... he is accused of repeatedly using the Internet to meet young girls, not a one-time offense. Shefelbine is far from the first to have preyed on young people online and he is far from the last unless better methods for monitoring the social sites can be developed. Danielle's mother though is a very effective monitor... learning the dangers and keeping track of where and what your child is doing.