This is neither mundane nor pointless and it also is not seeking legal advice. I know that legalities might come into play, but I don’t have enough evidence to report anything just yet, so I’d like to keep this limited in scope to what I should do as a parent. This is going to run very long, so I apologize in advance and thank anyone who makes it through and can offer any advice to help calm me down.
Here is a brief description of events: 5 days ago my 13 year old daughter’s Facebook relationship status changed to “in a relationship with [Predator’s Name]”. This is a person who she has never met, and she starts posting all these pictures of herself half dressed and in “Myspace angles” that make her boobs look huge and make her look a lot older and more sexually active than she is. And this guy, who for ease of conversation we will call Predator posts comments on every one. “Oh Babe! You are so f****ing hot. You are so sexy, I love you so much” etc. and he’s posting all over her wall about how much he loves her (and she responds in kind!) and how she is the best girlfriend ever (they have known each other for less than a week and entirely in FB!).
So important facts to know are (1) daughter deletes all his wall posts as soon as she sees them (to keep me and her father from seeing them) (2) Daughter doesn’t know that I see them in my newsfeed before she does and (3) Daughter is ditzy enough to not put it together that her Dad and I actually pay attention to her FB page- although she has accused us of cyber-stalking her when have left comments on her wall.
Okay, the reason I am so het up is because I checked out this guys profile. He lists his birth date as 1986 and only has one picture up in which he could be any age…very hard to tell. So I figured it was a 13 or 14 year old who changed the date to look older. I still didn’t like what he was saying to my girl or what she was saying back but kids will be kids and I figured there was no real harm…he also claims to live in TX which is far away so I figured at least she is physically safe from him. But I don’t like it and I wanted to know if it was a kid or if it was some 24 year old predator. So today I am checking out his profile and his status update is that he just got out of jail. WTF?? Now I need to know what the hell is going on so I did something I probably shouldn’t have, but don’t regret.
I had my older daughter comment under him on my daughter’s most recent slutty picture specifically stating her age (hoping to warn/run this guy off). So she writes, “Sissy! You look so hot! I can’t believe you are still only 13, you look so much older in this picture.” And what happens next has my head spinning still…
Predator immediately adds my older daughter as a friend. And hits her up in chat. She played along with him for a few minutes and said “who are you? Do you know my sister?” to which he at first didn’t want to answer. He said, “I can’t say anything because you might tell your parents”. Because he is an idiot, he believed her when she said she never talks to us and that it was okay because Sissy has already told her everything about him. “She is so in love with you! She told me how cute you are” etc. Then she says, why don’t you want my parents to know you are dating and he flat out tells her because he is 24 years old. “does Sissy know that?” Yes of course she does. "do you know how old she is? “Yeah I know she is 13 but she is so mature for her age.” (Ugh! If he only knew!) He went on to tell her about how he plans to get a hotel room when we go to Texas in June (our family vacation, but he thinks she is making the trip down solely to see him apparently) and that “Sissy” is going to make an excuse to get away from us and spend the night with him. (OMG would any parent allow that? It’s not like she has friends in Texas she could tell us she is with and she is barely allowed to cross a street by herself, let alone go out for a night on the town all alone in a different state! And she has never even seen this man in person.)
Predator went on to tell my older daughter about how he just got out of jail (was in for 32 days) for making death threats against his own parents. She was of course reading their conversation to me as she went along, and I was running my own searches to verify what he was saying, because I desperately wanted him to be lying and turn out to be some 14 year old boy trying to impress my gullible daughter. But no such luck. I found court records and a previous incarceration that match what he was telling her.(He served time for drug charges too.)
So what the hell do I do now? I am loathe to confront my younger daughter because she is still not that stable (was in the psych hospital until last week) and I don’t want her to block me from her Facebook page (which would get the computer taken away) or to feel like she can’t trust me, because then she will just hide things better and that is not going to improve the situation. But at the same time I do not want a 24 year old ex-convict soliciting her.
I have the whole weekend to stew about it too, which is not helping at all. This is the visitation weekend with her bio-mother (against he therapist’s advice to continue visitation, but still judge’s orders, so we have no choice) and her mother is not going to keep her off the computer or phone and actually encourages precocious sexuality so she would be of no help here.
As I said, I know she is physically safe for now as Predator is states away, but I am so worried about everything else surrounding this. Is there anything I can do to fix it?
I of course have copies of the chat logs between Predator and my older daughter, but all they are doing right now is driving me insane and making me angry.
I did plan to be up all night worrying. I am definitely checking this link right now, and I am already searching the local (non-emergency) numbers to call in the morning.