Date: Sunday, June 11, 1995  
Source: By Vincent J. Schodolski, Tribune Staff Writer.  
Section: NEWS  
Dateline: LOS ANGELES   
Copyright Chicago Tribune

Additional material published June 18, 1995:
   Corrections and clarifications.
   A June 11 story reported that the FBI was seeking an "older male" for
questioning in connection with the disappearance of a 16-year-old boy from
Washington state who had been lured to San Francisco through conversations in
a Gay and Lesbian chat room on America Online. Later, the FBI determined that
the person who had engaged in the on-line conversations that led the boy to
leave his home for California had been another teenager, not an older man.
The Tribune regrets the error.   

ONLINE ANONYMITY CONDUCIVE TO VICE
TEENS ARE VULNERABLE IN CYBERSPACE  

   They met at the cyberspace equivalent of a masked ball.
   Lonely and confused about his sexual orientation, a 15-year-old boy felt
he found a kindred soul online three weeks ago, a man he knew only by the
screen  name "Damien Starr."
   From his home near Seattle, the youth encountered the older man from San
Francisco in America Online's popular "Gay and Lesbian" chat room. After a
few exchanges and a private online encounter outside the chat room, the two
agreed to meet in person.
   "Damien Starr" sent a bus ticket to the teenager, who skipped his
sixth-period high school class the next afternoon and hopped the bus south.
   In St. Matthews, Kentucky, a 13-year-old girl was also investigating
adolescence and cyberspace through America Online.
   Intrigued by an offer from a man to "run around our room naked all day and
all night," she left her home May 30 and has not been seen since. The FBI
believes she headed toward a rendezvous with the man in California.
   Chat rooms, the anonymous gathering places that are popular features on
all major online services, provide entertainment and genuine social exchange
for  millions of people who regularly dwell in electronic worlds called
"Flirts  Nook," "Over Forty," "Best Lil Chat House" and "Gay and Lesbian."
   But the same anonymity that frees some from inhibition has been used by
others to bring real-world vices to the new frontier of online relationships.
   While the instances are still few, there has been increasing use of
services such as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe and the Internet's World
Wide Web to lure adolescents into relationships and sometimes personal
encounters with sexual predators.
   The same cyberspace tools are frequently used to distribute pornographic
materials, including sexually explicit video clips.
   "The scary thing is that these individuals, sometimes pedophiles, can be
anywhere and can represent themselves as anything," said Ernie Allen,
executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
   In the last few weeks there has been a series of such encounters that have
led young people from their homes on odysseys to meet online acquaintances.
Some have ended innocently, others have not.
   For example:
   - John Rex, a 23-year-old Massachusetts man, is about to stand trial for
the kidnap and rape of two boys-one 12, the other 14-whom he met through a
computer bulletin board service called "County Morgue" that he operated from
his parent's home.
   - Mark Forston, of Fresno, Calif., used an online bulletin board to
attract a 16-year-old boy to his home. He has just been convicted of
sodomizing the  youth.
   - The Washington teen spent several days in San Francisco with the man
known as "Damien Starr." The boy, whom the FBI found at San Francisco
airport, returned home last week. He insists he had no sexual contact with
his new  acquaintance.
   "We have handled about 10 cases in the past year," Allen said. "But it is
the nature of these cases and child exploitation in general that they are
woefully underreported."
   The Justice Department estimates that only one in every 10 cases of child
exploitation ever comes to the attention of police.
   The use of online services to arrange encounters that lead to criminal
activity has raised questions about the adequacy of existing laws on the
electronic frontier.
   "Under existing state law there is nothing that could be charged," said
Ivan Orton, a deputy county prosecutor in Seattle, talking about the "Damien
Starr" case.
   "You can broadcast these messages. The law deals with conduct, not
communication."
   Existing laws do apply in some cases.
   The FBI is looking into whether "Damien Starr" could be prosecuted under
the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of a minor across state
lines for immoral purposes.
   Orton and his colleagues in Seattle successfully prosecuted Alan Paul
Barlow, 51, who sent online messages describing his sexual fantasies to
14-year-old girls in Montana and New Jersey.
   But Barlow's conviction didn't come simply from his explicit online
chatter. Prosecutors were only able to convict Barlow after he solicited lewd
photographs from the two girls and sent them Polaroid cameras to take the
pictures.
   "Had he just sent the messages, there is little chance he could have even
been charged," Orton said. "When he communicated for the photos, he broke
existing statutes."
   A number of states already have legislation governing the improper use of
online communications. In Congress, Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.), introduced a
bill that would establish a national code.
   But the gap that currently remains between existing laws and the evolving
rules of cyberspace has some industry leaders concerned about questions of
liability and freedom of speech.
   "We are operating on the fundamental principle that responsibility, and
thus liability, lies with the individual or the company that originates the
statement, not the carrier of the information," said Robert L. Smith, Jr.,
executive director of the Interactive Services Association, an industry
organization that represents major online service providers.
   Of particular concern to Smith and others is a recent decision by a New
York state judge regarding Prodigy's liability for comments that were posted
on one of its business bulletin boards.
   The case centered on a series of messages posted by an unknown Prodigy
user that portrayed a penny stock brokerage company called Stratton Oakmont
as a  criminal organization that defrauded clients.
   Prodigy's lawyers argued that the online service was nothing more than a
carrier of information, much like a telephone company, and that as such it
had no control over what people said online.
   The judge disagreed, ruling that because Prodigy used electronic means and
human monitors to remove objectionable material from their service, the
company was in effect acting as a publisher, not a passive distributor of
information.
   "That is a very serious issue," Smith said of the Prodigy ruling, which is
under appeal. "Given the state of the technology it is nearly an impossible
job to control everything that is online."
   All the major online services have taken steps to control access to adult
material that they provide. America Online has built in controls that parents
can use to curb limit access to certain online areas, such as chat rooms.
   Together with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the
industry has developed a guide for parents and children about the potential
dangers that lurk in cyberspace.
   That guide can be downloaded on many services, including America Online.
 
Keywords: TECHNOLOGY   ISSUE   SEX   CRIME   TEENAGER   VICTIM   PROFILE