Year In Review: MySpace Faces Lawsuit After Teen User's Alleged Assault by Web Predator
December 29, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A multimillion-dollar lawsuit accuses the popular social networking site MySpace.com of failing to protect minors from adult sexual predators. The suit claims a 14-year-old girl from Austin, Texas, was contacted via MySpace by an adult male who allegedly pretended to be a high school student, gained her trust, lured her out to meet him, and then sexually assaulted her. Pete Solis, the 19-year-old man accused of the assault, has been arrested by Austin police and is awaiting indictment. But according to Adam Loewy, the accuser's attorney, this case is by no means an anomaly, and this is not the first time MySpace has been implicated in such a tragic set of circumstances.
"There's a long part of our lawsuit where, unfortunately, we list up to 15 to 20 incidents in the past four or five months nationwide, all related to this site," Loewy notes. "And that is not an exhaustive list; there are more incidents out there," he says.
Also, the attorney points out, the crimes listed are just some of those that have been reported by the media. "Unfortunately, in a lot of these incidents, when they occur, the family is too ashamed to come forward and tell authorities," he says.
Prior to this lawsuit, Loewy observes, 21 state attorneys general warned MySpace that the site's security measures were ineffective and urged the site to adopt age-verification systems. To his knowledge, however, the company has not taken steps to address its security problems.
"What we want and what the family wants is simply to make sure this does not happen to someone else's little girl or little boy," Loewy says. "And we want the MySpace.com company and News Corp., which owns MySpace, to simply start taking the security of children on their site [seriously], and to implement some of the security measures that attorney generals throughout the nation have suggested that they implement."
The accuser's attorney contends that MySpace had full knowledge of the fact that sexual predators were contacting young children on the website but did nothing to stop it. Also, the lawsuit filed on her behalf alleges that MySpace.com fraudulently represents that it has security measures in place to protect its users when, in reality, it does not.
Loewy's firm is seeking no less than $30 million against MySpace.com -- damages worth about one percent of the company's estimated value -- for what the attorneys describe as "negligent and fraudulent conduct." The lawsuit also seeks damages against the alleged sexual predator for assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
