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Lawsuit: AOL monitor seduced girl
BYALEXVEIGA
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES — America Online
markets itself as a safe place for chil
dren, with parent-friendly features
and a force of employees who moni
tor kids’ chat rooms and watch out
for adults prowling for youngsters.
But is AOL doing enough to monitor
the monitors?
That question is central to a law
suit filed by a California teenager
who claims a chat-room monitor
tried to seduce her online.
She alleges the employee used his
position to proposition her over two
years, during which they exchanged
graphic images, e-mails and phone
calls — exactly the kind of scenario
the man was hired to prevent.
AOL fired the man, listed in the
lawsuit as a resident of Oklahoma,
and referred the case to the FBI
and other law enforcement
agencies, none of which pursued
criminal charges.
The girl’s lawsuit, filed April 1, is the
first such claim made against an em
ployee at AOL or any other major In
ternet service provider, according to
online child safety organizations and
law enforcement agencies. It alleges
negligence and false advertising and
seeks at least $25,000 from the chat
room monitor, AOL and its parent,
Time Warner Inc.
AOL says it closely screens its chat
room monitors and acted quickly in
this case.
Still, the company is being forced to
defend itself over a service it pioneered
in the mid-1990s and that remains a
selling point to keep its millions of
subscribers from jumping to other In
ternet service providers.
“This case isn’t so much are they
properly monitoring chat rooms for
kids; this is more a question of what
are they doing to monitor the quali
ties and qualifications of the people
they’re hiring,” said Parry Aftab, an
Internet lawyer in New Jersey who
runs online safety workshops for
parents and children.
Claims of online abuse by an em
ployee are rare, said Aftab, who has
heard of no more than a dozen
claims against chat-room monitors
or moderators.
Chat-room monitors are cyber
space’s lifeguards. They typically
watch over the messages that partici
pants post and warn users when they
cross the line with offensive or other
wise prohibited remarks. They can
delete offending remarks, kick viola
tors out of the chat room and even
ban them from returning.
AOL is a rarity as a major service
provider that offers its own chat serv
ice, as well as one of the few online
companies that have paid, full-time
employees monitoring some chat
rooms. The company markets its
KOL, or Kids Online, chat area as a
safer online experience.
It was inside one kids-only chat
room where the AOL employee,
then 23, first contacted the then
15-year-old girl, who was living in
Kern County, Calif., according to the
lawsuit. She is now 19 and living in
Los Angeles.
They grew close, according to the
lawsuit, the girl gradually confiding
in him about her parents’ divorce and
Most teens have visited a chat room
According to a survey, 62 percent of teens who visit the Internet
daily have entered a chat room, while only a quarter of parents
worry “a lot” about their teens being contacted by a stranger online.
Have ever used a chat room
Teens
Teens who have ...
Received e-mail or instant message
(IM) from a stranger
Exchange e-mail or IM with
strangers
Lied about their age to access
a Web site
Adults
26%
Parents who have ...
Family computer in a public space
in the home such as a den
Sat down with teens at a computer
and surfed together
Checked on their teen’s activities
after child had been online
61%
SOURCE: Pew Internet & American Life Project
AP
her troubles making friends. She and
the chat monitor were preparing to
meet on her 17th birthday and have
sex, the lawsuit said, when one of the
his co-workers became suspicious
and blew the whistle.
AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham
said monitors undergo rigorous
screening, including drug testing and
background checks, and receive spe
cialized training for the area and age
group they will be monitoring.
“That monitoring is itself actively
monitored and scrutinized by internal
compliance and investigation teams
with close, long-standing working re
lationships with both law enforcement
and children’s safety advocacy
groups,” Graham said. “The bottom
line is, AOL’s self-policing and self
monitoring efforts worked.”
Graham would not say how many
full-time chat-room monitors AOL has
or whether the company has tightened
its procedures because of the case.
But if AOL’s oversight was effective,
the monitor would have been caught
well before he arranged to meet the
girl, said her attorney, Olivier Taillieu.
“You can’t let something like this
go on for two years or a year and a
half,” Taillieu said. “You can’t have
the lifeguard jump in the pool and
drown one of the kids.”
| poll |
Gas prices affecting half of population
More than 50 percent say rising gas prices are causing hardship,
according to a poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs for The
Associated Press and America Online.
High gasoline prices
forcing changes in
lives of Americans
Over the next six months, do you
expect that increases in the price
of gasoline will cause hardship
for you or your family, or not?
4811
i ' ' i i
It will Will not Not sure
I
Do you expect that will be a
serious hardship or not serious?
30 20 1
I | i-,
Serious Not serious Not sure
Do you think President Bush is
or is not handling the nation’s
energy problems effectively?
31 62 7
I I I
Is Is not Not sure
How much do higher prices for
gasoline, natural gas and home
heating affect you personally?
m
33 8
A lot Some Not much Not at all
BY WILL LESTER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Half the
people in the country say record-high
gas prices are starting to cause them
problems. Who’s to blame? Americans
point a finger at the oil companies, for
eign nations that control the oil supply
and politicians.
More than half say they’re cutting
back on driving, and many plan to
stay closer to home on their
summer vacations.
An Associated Press-AOL poll found
51 percent of those surveyed say that if
gas prices remain high for the next she
months it will cause a financial hard
ship for them.
the summer.
Americans spread the blame
around, with 29 percent blaming the
oil companies, 24 percent blaming for
eign governments that dominate oil re
serves and 23 percent blaming politi
cians. Eight percent blame the high
prices on “environmentalists who
want to limit oil exploration,” whil
6 percent blame “people who drive
gas-guzzling vehicles.”
Anxiety about gasoline prices
comes as President Bush is pressing
Congress to approve energy legislation
that includes tax breaks and subsidies,
mostly for energy companies, and
would open the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in
As a result of recent increases in energy prices, would you say
you have or have not done each of the following?
i I Have done 1 1 Have not done 1 | Not sure
Reduced the amount of driving 58 41 1
Turned down home heat or air conditioning 60 40
Thought about buying a fuel-efficient vehicle 41 58 1
Vacation plans to stay closer to home 41 58 1
Cut back on other expenses 57 43
Which one of the following would you say deserves the most
blame for higher energy prices?
Oil companies that want to make too much profit 29
Foreign countries that dominate oil reserves 24
Politicians 23
Environmentalists who want to limit oil exploration 8
People who drive gas-guzzling vehicles 6
All equally 6
Not sure 2
-* No one to blame/not a problem 1
Other 1
NOTE: Poll of 1,000 adults conducted between April 18-20; margin of error ± 3.1
percentage points
SOURCE: Ipsos Public Affairs for AP and AOL
AP
Thirty percent of
those polled clas
sified the hit as
“serious,” ac
cording to the
survey conduct
“You have to decide — gas,
groceries, medicine. ”
Marcia Cain I Semiretired
Alaska to oil de
velopment. The
House passed its
version of the bill
Thursday.
The president
ed by Ipsos-Public Affairs for the AP
and AOL News.
“You have to decide — gas, gro
ceries, medicine,” said Marcia Cain of
Indianapolis, who is semiretired.
“I’m on limited income. I don’t go
out as much — eating out, going to
listen to jazz. It uses gas you don’t
want to use.”
Cain paid $2.15 per gallon this week
after paying $2.35 per gallon the week
before. “It aggravates me, but there’s
not much I can do about it,” she said.
High global oil prices have pushed
the cost of regular gasoline for U.S.
motorists to around $2.21 per gallon,
with prices ranging from an average
of $2.64 in California to about $2 in
Oklahoma, according to the auto
group AAA. Prices are expected to
remain above $2 nationally through
gets low marks from the public for
his handling of the nation’s energy
problems, with 62 percent saying
they disapprove. When he first
took office, people were more in
clined to say he would handle energy
problems effectively.
Many people, 41 percent, say gas
prices are making them seriously
consider purchasing a more fuel
efficient vehicle.
Sales of big trucks and SUVs are off
at General Motors. And purchases of
Ford’s largest SUVs — the Excision,
Expedition and Explorer — fell by
more than 24 percent in the first three
months of the year.
Auto makers that produce hybrid
cars that run on a combination of
electricity and gas are reporting
strong interest from consumers.