How long before we start seeing MMOs characterized as "breeding grounds" for pedophiles? :\

http://www.darkesword.com/

I can list many more incidents of child victims from teachers at school than in WoW.

Sick stuff...

However you want to slice it, diminished mental capacity would mean that her mental age was somewhat less than her physical age of 16. Scientifically speaking, the ability to judge risk physically doesn't mature in the brain until the mid 20's, so while I have every respect for minors, there is still a limit to what I believe they are capable of distinguishing in forming full consent.  Particularly a teenage girl who may have developmental difficulties. When we get into this slippery slope of stating that at a younger ages minors are acting like adults thus we must treat them as such, we are in danger of slipping into that 19th Century Victorian mindset that children are just smaller adults that require NO special protections for their vulnerabilities (re: Charles Dickens).

In the interest of full disclosure, I believe the drinking age should be 18 if the voting and military recruitment/draft age remain the same.

Also, to clarify, the age of consent in Oregon is 18.

And here I thought "Faboo" was just a made up catchphrase Wakko Warner used. Color me surprised!

First off age of consent in CA is 18 so it was a crime no matter how you look at it.  Secondly what you should be concentrating on is that the guy felt the need to bring ropes and knives so this was a serious threat to that girl. I don't think "sensationalism" plays any role in this, this was a pervert targeting a minor.

Here I always thought the "G" in "LFG" meant "group."

How was the girl able to:

hold a conversation?

Reading stories like this reminds me of watching Nancy Grace.  You only get the bad facts that are twisted into words of horrific nature. 

Hrm.  Reading the linked article, sounds like the stories are not matching up very well.

According to the guy, he thought he was resucing a grown woman in an abusive relationship.  The police don't buy the explination under the idea 'it is just the sort of thing a guilty person would say!' which is a distrubing bit of reasoning.

The girl's comments only go as far as a text message saying 'she got in the wrong car with the wrong man'.

One plausible explination here is a mentally slow girl was having some fantasy fun with a guy and got (justifiably) scared when it turned real.

I guess it will depend on what they find in the chat logs.   Good example of why keeping your logs could potentially be really important.

To clarify about risk assessment development, I was pointing to the recent study by Dr. Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health writing in the Journal of Adolescent Health that points to differences between an adolescent brain and a fully adult brain neurologically speaking. It is clearly NOT just emotional development we're speaking of:

"Adolescence is a time of substantial neurobiological and behavioral change, but the teen brain is not a broken or defective adult brain. The adaptive potential of the overproduction/selective elimination process, increased connectivity and integration of disparate brain functions, changing reward systems and frontal/limbic balance, and the accompanying behaviors of separation from family of origin, increased risk taking, and increased sensation seeking have been highly adaptive in our past and may be so in our future. These changes and the enormous plasticity of the teen brain make adolescence a time of great risk and great opportunity."

Elizabeth R. McAnarney MD, Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester Medical Center goes on in an accompanying editorial:

"Novelty seeking/sensation seeking and risk taking is the basis for considerable growth during adolescence, as well as for the seemingly reckless behavior of some adolescents. Novelty seeking/sensation seeking and risk taking are topics of growing interest as adolescent brain development is defined better and as morbidity from adolescent risk taking mounts....The implication of our growing knowledge of brain--behavior mechanisms of adolescent conditions should provide insights into the risk of particular adolescents for morbidity and mortality."

Basically put, an adolescent brain generally is less risk averse than an adult's. Cognitive recognition of life-threatening or life-altering actions is somewhat limited, as is long-range planning and emotional control. 

I'm not saying that maybe we haven't gone overboard in being protective of children, but age of consent laws in terms of sexual contact with adults is not even in the same discussion as censorship regarding video game or other media content. One subject is regarding BEHAVIOR versus the other involving EXPRESSION. Please don't equate being 16 (in general terms as there can be no HARD cutoff other than a legal one) as most likely having INFORMED, willing consent. Kids are supposed to make these types of mistakes, but adults are supposed to know better.

Come on, look at that beard. There's no way he wasn't going to turn out to be a pedophile.

Wow, thank God they stopped him before he used those "items", at least I think they did.

I'm curious as to just what kind of mental handicap the girl has if shes able to communicate and play online with other users and arrange meetings with strangers, stupidity?

"When stopped by police, these items were recovered, along with rope, several knives, condoms and sex toys."

Creepy, man. That is just creepy

First, Pedophilia is considered a disorder in medical circles but is also defined as a sexual preoccupation with girls of pre-pubescent age (generally younger than 12).  Specifically, targets of pedophilia typically have not developed sexual characteristics yet, and this is what true pedophiles focus on.  Pedophilia is rooted in physical immaturity, though mental maturity can occasionally influence it.  If this guy knew she was 16 and was interested in her because of her youth, it doesn't necessarily mean he was a pedophile.  He might have been an ephebophile (one who is sexually interested in post-pubescent youths).  Ephebophilia is not considered a disorder unless it becomes an obsession, but in that case, any obsession is considered a mental disorder.  The distinction between pedophilia and ephebophilia is often completely ignored in American society because interest in any youth under the age of 18 is considered mentally sick.  Even non-sexual interest in youths is stigmatized, and biased more against men than women, though there are plenty of examples of older women who prey on younger boys.

But I'm not saying this guy wasn't mentally sick.  If he intended to use the knives, ropes, etc. in his car to dominate an unwilling (and physically weaker) victim, then by all means he is a predator and pervert.  Regardless of his mental health, he IS a criminal because he abducted a girl.  Regardless of whether she willingly went with him, she is under the age of consent and not emancipated (she could not possibly be given her mental condition) and therefore it was not her decision to make.

In all likelyhood, this guy is what he appears to be: a sexually obsessive ephebophile.  He most likely finds girls around 16 to be particularly attractive due to the fact that they are easily dominated, both mentally and physically, but are not so young as to be physically unattractive.  This seems to be a classic case of obsessive predatory dysfunction.  The extra details, such as the fact that he used WoW to stalk his victim, are not important, and are only mentioned because it creates some controversy that the news media can thrive on.  The fact is that predators can use all kinds of environments to hunt thier victims and that parents need to be aware of the environments their children play in, both real and virtual.

On this note, I believe more parents should play video games.  If your children play MMO's, then you should play the same MMO's, and play with them.  Group with your kids, know the people they hang out with in the MMO and be a part of your kid's circle of friends.  Teenagers will often tell their friends much more about the people they meet online than they do when they talk to their parents.  If, as a parent, you can blur the line between parent and friend, you will be much more capable of protecting your kids and understanding who you should really watch out for.

Besides, MMO's are always more fun when you play with people you know.

I actually feel bad for the guy because he's not a pedophile, and the way it sounds in the article (at least what's on here) is that they're calling it abduction because he crossed state lines. Also, rope and knives aren't exactly uncommon things in somebody's pickup truck.

So preventable. These parents fail. If your daughter is mentally challenged, at least SUPERVISE what she does on the internet. Is that too much to ask of parents these days? Control your children. 

I'm all for freedom of ttnet vitamin speech and allowing rent a car game makers to put whatever they want in games, but there's one thing about this app that has me scratching my head.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but from araç kiralama the previous article araba kiralama on this I gathered that players can use Google maps in-game to find the other (real-life?) dealers in their area.  If this is the case, has travesti anyone considered what's stopping someone from using this app to actually move drugs between hands for reals?

But majority araba kiralama of their outrage araç kiralama stems from what it could DO TO children, not the content itself.  Talk to one of these people and you'll find they don't think any books kiralık araba should be banned from children.  Mention American Psycho and they talk about kiralık araç the redeeming value of using imagination to construct a story.  Reading, no matter what the content, is largely viewed as a consequenceless activity for people of any age.  The reason why I mention American Psycho is because of the content itself.  Gaming never has and likely never will have any scenes where someone has sex with a severed head.  Not gonna happen.  Yet despite this, they'll fight tooth and nail to protect their children from two boys kissing in Bully but whatever they read is harmless... yeah.

The entire arguement is kiralık oto based upon a social normality inflicted by luddites who can't figure out the controls for Halo so it's frightening and terrifying and obviously the cause of youth violence on the rise even though, in reality, it's in decline (which is actually a HUGE suprise given minibüs kiralama the economies status).  In  a perfect world, we would have parents that actually parent.  The idea of sales restrictions on media on oto kiralama any form to accomidate parental unwillingness to get involved with their child's life is the real problem to me.  Here I am, 32 years old, and being held up at a self-scan rent a car needing to show ID before I can buy a $10 M rated game all because Soccer Momthra can't be bothered to look at the crap Billy Genericallystupidson does in his free time.  It's too hard for her, so I have to suffer?