Internet Safety News
12-Year-Old Girl Back Home After Ordeal
by Christine Loftus
A 12-year-old girl who vanished from her home in the United Kingdom to meet up with a 31-year-old man she first met online is back home with her parents. Before she disappeared she was just a schoolgirl living in an ordinary suburban home. She liked punk and heavy rock music and football and spent hours surfing the Internet.1
By all accounts the child's parents had been aware of the risks their daughter could face while using the Internet. They "had their concerns about the time she spent online, but were not unduly worried."2 The child's parents seemed more worried about being labeled "heavy-handed" parents and urged her to spend a little less time on the Internet and not to give out personal details when chatting online."3 They even followed an important NetSmartz safety tip of keeping the computer in a common area of the home by having it in their kitchen.4
The child had talked about her "American Internet boyfriend," but still her parents passed it off as nothing more than a figment of their young daughter's imagination.5 The child was a quiet girl, and her parents never imagined that her long hours spent in chatrooms would lead to an international search.
Considering that the girl is back home and seemingly unharmed, the child's story turned out happily, unlike many other stories reported about young people who have face-to-face encounters with people they first meet online. But now that the ordeal is over, new details have surfaced about the life of the man with whom the child had been e-mailing for five hours a day and planning a romantic weekend in Paris.6
Toby Studabaker has emerged as an alleged predator.7 During their investigation to find the pair, law enforcement allegedly discovered sexually exploitive images of children on his computer and sexual allegations involving two underage girls in the U.S.8 The Federal Bureau of Investigation is continuing their investigation into claims that Studabaker assaulted his 12-year-old niece and a complaint that he gave a 9-year-old girl some "sex lotion" 5 years ago.9 Studabaker claimed that the child had lied about her age, saying she was 19, but records found on his computer suggested that he knew her real age.10
In a sense, this ordeal could be a reality check for parents
who think they are doing enough to prevent their children
from becoming prey to online sexual predators. Keeping the
computer in a common area and instructing your children to
not give out personal information on the Internet are good
approaches to the problem, but not always going to be completely
effective. In this case, the 12-year-old girl was spending
hour after hour on the Internet. The Internet is like any
other public place and should be treated as such. Allowing
a child unmonitored access to the Internet is like putting
him or her out on a street corner and not watching what happens.
1"From Internet chats to
international schoolgirl hunt." Scotsman.com.
July 17, 2003, http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=775082003&tid=932.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4"Marine's Family: Brit Girl, 12, Is Safe."
CBSNews.com. July 15, 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/16/world/main563473.shtml.
5"From Internet chats to international schoolgirl
hunt." Scotsman.com. July 17, 2003, http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=775082003&tid=932.
6Ibid.
7"Ex-Marine a predatory pedophile." Scotsman.com.
July 17, 2003, http:// www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=777202003&tid=932.
8Ibid.
9Ibid.
10"From Internet chats to international schoolgirl
hunt." Scotsman.com. July 17, 2003, http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=775082003&tid=932.
Christine Loftus is a research assistant/editor for the Parents & Educators component of the NetSmartz Workshop® at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children®.
