Child abuse detectives are investigating the sexual assault of a child. This case involves a 19-year-old boy who allegedly made contact with a 14-year-old girl through her online Web page.
Police say the suspect used the Internet to prey on his young victim.
They say he even took her out to eat and to the movies before allegedly raping her in the back of his car.(I can't believe her parents actually allowed her to or had no idea where their child was)
Nineteen-year-old Pete Solis is now charged with sexual assault of a child.
Police say it happened on May 12 on the 6800 block of Westgate Boulevard in a parking lot.
Police say Solis net the 14-year-old girl on MySpace.com. After e-mailing for several weeks and phone calls, they decided to meet. Solis eventually picked the girl up from school. Police say it was all part of his plan from the beginning.
"The suspect knew exactly what he was doing the entire time. He even confessed to me he thought she was 15. He's wrong. She's 14, then he says he thought the legal age for sex was 18 in Texas so he knew she was underage," APD Det. Joel Pridgeon said.
Pridgeon says after Solis drove the girl home, she then made an outcry to her mother.
It's the type of crime that's keeping detectives with APD's Child Exploitation Unit on their toes as more and more teens hangout on the Internet.
"We get constant calls from people about their daughter, niece, nephew on MySpace talking to people far too old to be talking to them," Pridgeon said.
Detectives say it's not just MySpace, but other chat rooms, e-mails, forums and even video games are aimed at getting your child's attention. So what can you do?
"You have to watch your children on the Internet. It's the same as dropping them off at the mall. You're not going to drop them off without giving instructions as to who they can talk to. When you drop your kid off on the Internet, you're dropping then off to the entire world," Pridgeon said.
Solis is still in jail. Solis' bond is set at $50,000.AUSTIN< TEXAS
Why in this world are the parents calling the police about their children talking to people too old for them? Can they not educate them enough before hand so they do not put themselves in this position in the first place?
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I hate you from the bottom of my shapeless heart. For various reasons.
I'm sorry you feel that way but your hate fuels my fire. Thanks!
Parental responsability is one of the most lacking virtues in our society and I agree with you 100% on the 'parents should know where their children are on the internet'. It's an unsafe area and far too many people refuse to recognize that.
~CallieV
That was rather stupid on the parents' part to not have a better handle on where their 14 year-old daughter was.
It's also rather stupid on the parents' part to not be teaching their children better and safer ways to use the Internet.
What happened to that girl is horrible, and that asshole that raped her needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
That said, I'm getting really tired of people blaming Myspace for these problems. Sure, they're an easy target, with more than 80 million users. Myspace is the most visible. But you know what? It's not up to Myspace to make sure your children are doing what they should be doing and that they're not talking to people they shouldn't. That's the responsibility of the parents.
Myspace doesn't corrupt children. Most of those kids were already like that before they got to Myspace. This just makes the problems visible to parents, who don't want to accept responsibility for their neglegence and chose to blame their problems on the Internet instead.
There have been dirty, sick and depraved people since the beginning of time, and there will continue to be until the end of time. And they will always find new ways to get what they want. if you close a door, they'll sneak in the upstairs window before you can blink. Restrict Myspace, and you'll see Friendster, Xanga, Livejournal and other sites get more popular.
You are completely right HMarsh unfortunetly Myspace is the newest fad so it is the easiest website to pin crimes on and point the finger at. And unfortunetly parents can no longer take the time to teach their children safety or keep track of their where abouts...its sad that this happened to this girl and maybe it is not her fault for being ignorant of the dangers but it is her own stupidity for meeting a stranger.
i am not suprised
Why are some kids so stupid? Honestly, if someone told me to met them, I would say no, I know how dangerous it is. And were we mom and dad?
That's the same thing I'd say, and probably I would have said it at a younger age too. But maybe at 14 (for example) kids actually lack the maturity to judge this, and want to do 'extraordinary' things - like hanging out with older guys. But that's when parents have to actually be careful.
Unfortunetly I guess some kids are too trusting and god knows where the mom and dad were.
I think many fourteen year-olds have better sense than that. It's useless trying to spread fear like this...
What needs to happen: parents need to get over their martinis and novelas and whatever else is occupying their time and spend a while with their kids.
Parental supervision is a miracle drug.
If you think many 14 year olds have better sense you need a reality check!!! It is a dangerous world already and younger teens are getting more and more "adventurous" If it sounds ridiculous, it most likely is true. I know of more 14 year olds who know more, do more and act more recklessly then you'd ever imagine. Whether the parents are there or not!!!!!!!!! Children have access to the web everywhere not just home! Local libraries, school and cyber cafes. It's a grass roots problem more then a parental issue!!!!!
That has been one of my major points all along.
I think at that age parents should be watching what children do
Crystalj -- I don't think age should matter. I think that at ANY age, parents should be watching what their children do. Parents should always be aware of what their children are doing. Obviously there are certain exceptions to this rule - such as when their child is married and has a family of their own. But they should then become involved in their grandchildrens lives. I know that when I get married, I would love it if my parents and my family could have dinner at least once a week so that we can all stay connected. I think that family bonds really help the way children see themselves. If they feel confident in themselves, they won't need to meet people offline. I have a feeling that the need to meet people offline is a subconcious need to feel wanted. Someone says you're pretty and that they want to meet you, you aren't going to say no because you want to continue to feel pretty and wanted.
Simply put, no matter what the age, parents should always be involved in their childrens lives. It is not MySpace's fault, although they do play a small part in the situation - saying you need to be sixteen and allowing younger kids on. However, if parents were monitoring the sites their children visited (especially knowing the acts that have been occurring through MySpace.com), less children would be putting themselves at risk.
And that's my view. Sorry if you feel singled out crystalj, I was just using your comment as the starting point. I may have gone off on a little tangent there, too.. yeah, sorry about that.
Nichole Elise*
I do agree with you. If families were more family oriented like the past than many of these crimes could be prevented.
People love picking out when things like this happen, when the reality is that it doesnt happen that often.
The parents of this 14 year old girl are teaching her more than one "bad" habit by how they are behaving. Suing for $30 million? Allowing their 14 year old to go out without knowing where and with whom? And then to use MySpace to try to absolve themselves of their responsibility? How much more damage can you do than to not ground her until she is 30, and reward her with the prospect of the windfall of a lawsuit? She should be suing her parents, as should MySpace! What next . . . will they be suing Verizon because their daughter finalized her illicit date plans on her cell phone? How absurd!
I should think that rape is an important enough issue and that this would get it out in the public in a hurry, as a mechanism for transfering information to different people and when you say that she deserved to be raped for being stupid that plays into "blaming the victim." Sure she was stupid, she's 14 and the guy said he was in high school. It's the internet how would she verify? Do you run cross references on everyone you meet in a bar?
So how many kids disobey their parents? ... Is that really so hard to believe? I mean responciblity is a good mantra and allowing everyone to take no responciblity is a bad idea but things never go according to plan, no matter what it is. It's why we have lawyers. There is a difference between a lawsuit and a settlement, the judge is responcible for deciding how much money is actually awarded and if the case is legitimate, not everyone gets the full value of their asking price.
Also, you are playing into class warfare as not all people can weather the structural changes in our economy as well. Economically we are pooling up at the higher and lower end of the middle classes. A lot of established families in the middle are facing downward mobility. As most people get more then minimum wage but mid level salaries are leveling off and they are paying more for gas and health insurance.
i am not shocked
Adults keep blaming myspace for these occurrences, and not the children. If it wasn't myspace, it would AOL chat rooms, or friendster. The problem is not the website, it is the children who are too young to use it, and seem to have no common sense. I don't care if the guy's picture shows you the cutest guy you've ever seen, you don't then give him your personal information. I've met someone off of myspace. Someone I talked to for several months before we even suggested it, and more importantly we are BOTH over the age of 18. When I was 14, I was very flattered when older boys flirted with me that I knew, I can't imagine how I would have reacted if they were on a website like myspace. I probably would have talked to them more than I should, but I still would have known better than to meet up with them out of the blue. I mean I had a guy hit on me through myspace the other day. He was being nice at first, and then suddenly he wanted to come meet me and asked me where I live. Does that sound suspicious? Yes. Do I talk to him after that? No. It's not that difficult, but it remains a concept that young teenagers don't comprehend. So, until that point where you think that child has found a sense of maturity big enough where they can handle themselves in the internet world, they should be moderated. Myspace was originally created for 16 year olds and up, and they had so many 14 and 15 year-olds joining under false ages that they changed the age limit, but added certain features for those ages. Now we have 10, 11, and 12 year-olds joining. As long as we want myspace to remain a free public website, so that we can enjoy, we can't complain about the fact that they can't afford to create all of these advanced features to prevent you from joining when you're underage.
Ok, sorry if this might be redundant because I didn't take the time to read ALL the replies to this story, but why do people point the finger at myspace.com as if they were the ones who did the crime?!! It seems to me like this mother and her lawyer just found a way to get a statutory -rape case and turn it into gold. I went to school with Pete since middle school and I really have a hard time believing he "raped" her... What a moron for even wasting time with her knowing she was in the 14-15 yr old range, but still, it's sad to see this mother finding peace with her daughter's innocence being taken for a measly $30mil.... wow. I have yet to talk to Pete since this, (I worked with him up until his arrest) but if anyone knew the guy, he was a dorky goof ball. Now every has jumped on him and labeled him as a predator and molestor when really, parents need to look at their children's myspace accounts and see just how their "innocent" children are portraying themselves and how old they are trying to act. This case seems to be a money-making scheme and all parties involved in the lawsuit against myspace.com should feel ashamed by it.
The internet does obscure some of our more traditional intuition. It makes it harder to judge strangers as you can't read their body language online and capitals are supposed to show how passionate they are, but are very stylistic. It makes acting a lot easier. It is difficult to tell how old photographs are or how much photoshopping has been used: what you see is an icon and that blinds us to most of our natural senses.
I do think parents are also neglegent but also that their jobs are pretty difficult. They should be paying a lot more attention to where their kids are but kids are also getting better at lying and using technology then their parents are. We snuck out of my friends window at night when we were 16/17 and got picked up by our 21 year old friend. If we were stupid we could have gotten ourselves hurt. For the most part though, most people aren't criminals including older kids who you meet at coffeeshops.
I do agree with the lawsuit, they're changing their child safety measures now, aren't they? If you don't inform companies of weaknesses, such as children don't have as much judgement and parents aren't always there, they tend to forget to plug them up. I think that making the profiles of 14/15 year olds more difficult to access can be a good thing. Of course they haven't figured out what to do about people who lie about their age. I do think that meeting someone in person is safer the online particularly at that age, as a lot of kids can tell if someone they meet in person is "creepy," and if their friends can't someone is ussually there to criticize their poor judgement.
I don't think so, and My Space completely not responsible; I doubt that as well......As a society, we must all take a look at what is taking place around us at all times. We are being raped and manipulated all the time. From the moment we walk out our door till we come in for the day, someone is out to make a dollar we might have. Now that the internet is in full swing we face another delimma the moment we sign on. My question with my space is the free part. If they charged even a small minamal fee that required a credit card to join you deminish alot of riff-raff. Now forgive me for mentioning fee, but what in life is really free? For generations we have tought our children not to talk too strangers, yet we have accepted strangers creating places for our children to go on the internet to do exactly that, therefore My space is not innocent here (sorry) I have a teen and i dont allow her on My Space, so she steals it or gets it in whenever she can. School, at friends or even at home should i leave a pc on not password protected, and I am in opposition with all the chatting sites that our children can access (soory again). This child wasn't stupid, she was a child, and if you look at the fact that she is your child just as she is her real parents child maybe you would see where I'm coming from. We have to start being more connected as a society, and having more love for each other, and once we learn that than things like this will become something of the past. My Space take your responsibility in protecting yourself, charge a fee by credit card then the parents of these who authorize the credit card use are then responsible.
Well people use a good idea to do bad things, look at the church and the bible
"Detectives say it's not just MySpace, but other chat rooms, e-mails, forums and even video games are aimed at getting your child's attention."
Nobody blamed myspace here? Is it just me or is it all these constant comments trying to defend myspace that proves exactly why myspace is the first to get blamed? This story is about a child who was RAPED and the biggest concern is that myspace shouldn't be sued? What about the child? Where are her rights in this? Where is the concern for her safety and the effects that these things have on her life? Myspace is ok an all and they shouldn't be getting "blamed" but if I started a company and it resulted in countless stalking and sex offenses (which I'm not saying that myspace does) I wouldn't care how much money I was making, that service would be gone. We all have a responsibility to keep a safe enviornment. And as far as the comment I saw earlier that "these things don't happen very often" ... you are dead wrong. Read my "Violence Against Women" blog. During the vietnam war there were almost as many women killed in abusive homes as there were soldiers killed in battle (51,000 to 58,000). Just because you don't see things happening (growing up in a healthy home, I completly understand that) doesn't mean that they don't happen and that it's not common. If it wasn't common it wouldn't be all over the news (which, contrary to popular belief, is there to make us aware of things going on and not to make us feel safer that it "isn't really happening that often") The bottom line is that parents need to regulate their children's access to these kinds of sites and educate them on the dangers of this world. Many of these kids are just too young to be able to handle themselves maturely.
Compare Myspace to facebook. Facebook strictly regulates the content of material that is posted on their site. They regulate pictures (which can't be posted until approved) and they regulate other material as well as giving their users more freedom to regulate their contact information etc. Many college students choose not to post this type of material, but those that do, like myself, are far less likely to have problems with it than people on myspace. I have a myspace too but I won't post my contact information on there because it is much more common to be used illigitmatly and in ways I wouldn't want it to. Myspace is being used more commonly by porn industries to promote their cause. People creating myspace accounts which say things like "Myspace won't allow me to pose nude for you but I'm getting back at my boyfriend so click here to see me now" are showing up everywhere. I haven't seen any of this on facebook.
And for a webservice that is made mostly for kids that are under 18, myspace does not regulate its images nearly enough. There are pictures all over myspace that, for a kid that age, might as well be porn. All it does to see people showing things with cleavage shots and little to no censors is to make these kids start searching for other places they can find more revealing pictures. It's a bad deal.
The real story here though is this child was RAPED. The sickness that makes people think this stuff is normal and ok in our society or that it "doesn't happen that often" so it's nothing to worry about is ridiculous. We need to be taking every step available to make sure that our children's enviornments are safe and that they are free to learn their math and sciences without having to learn that they have to look over their shoulders to make sure nobody is stalking them.
These people make me furious and our apathy is fueling their fire. No punishment will ever compare to the actions of these criminals until they face the judgement of God himself. Until then, it's our responsibility to love our kids and those around us and to protect those who can't protect themselves.
And now these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
I would like to open this posting by responding to the lengthy diatribe against MySpace that Boldfaith3 posted. And I say what I am about to say as someone who is a Christian, too!
Of course, If the 14-year-old girl really was raped, I have the deepest of sympathy for her. EVERYBODY does! (As a sidenote, I should also add that it remains to be proven whether she really was raped or not, but it is not my purpose to discuss that question here ...) Defending the position that MySpace shouldn't be sued is NOT antithetical to having sympathy for the girl! And boldfaith3's statement, "This story is about a child who was RAPED and the biggest concern is that myspace shouldn't be sued?" is a non-sequitor. As a matter of fact, it is more than a non-sequitor, it is just plain stupid! Punishing an innocent person or an innocent company or organization for what happened to the girl will not undo the harm that was done (or allegedly done) to her!
No doubt, if Mr. "boldfaith3" were arrested and charged with a rape that he did not commit, he would go to court and fight it and defend himself. He WOULDN'T say, "Because I have so much sympathy for the girl, I am going to passively allow them to send me to prison for a crime that I did not commit!"
Honestly -- and again, I say this as a Christian -- when people like boldfaith3 make ignorant statements like the ones that he makes, and use their Christian religion as an excuse for making such ingnorant statements, and (even worse) they try to at least imply that they are speaking for all Christians, they really give Christianity a bad name!
I also cannot believe the mentality of the parents of this 14-year-old girl who says she was raped. But if her parents seriously believe that there was any direct connection between the fact that she had an account on MySpace and the alleged rape, then it was most irresponsible of the parents to allow her to have an account in the first place.
And it is not acceptable for the parents to say that they didn't know. It is their responsibility to monitor her use of the computers at home, and even to question her regularly about what she does on the computers at her school.
The ridiculousness of this lawsuit is like a case where a careless father leaves a loaded gun lying around the house, and his son injures himself, and then the parents decide to sue the manufacturer of the gun. Simply put, the parents are blaming MySpace when they should be blaming themselves.
Finally, if the girl hand't been raped (again, for the moment, I will assume that she really was raped) by someone that she met on MySpace, she could have just as easily been raped by someone that she met by a more "conventional" method that didn't even involve the Internet in any way. For example, she could have just as easily gotten raped by a friend that she met at school, by someone that she met at a social club she might have belonged to, or even by someone that she met at a youth group at her local church! These days, people just blame too much ont he Internet in general, including MySpace and other social networking sites!