Bit of a hijack but did you have any contact with your family over the 2 months you were travelling?
If an emergency had happened, would anyone back at your home have been made aware of it?
This is the second time I have seen someone on the SDMB recommend this movie to warn someone against traveling and it makes me want to scream. This is the most UNREALISTIC viewpoint of human trafficking I could possibly imagine. I could practically pit this movie it made me so angry. (I saw it on an overnight bus in Colombia, so I couldn’t walk out.) Human trafficking (which is fucking slavery) is a vile practice about which many, many Westerners have only the foggiest notion and movies like this do absolutely nothing to convey the realities of the situation, and only perpetuate paranoia. Kidnapping American girls to force into sexual slavery is absolutely ridiculous and totally unlikely given that it’s about a trillion times easier to manipulate poor Moldovan girls into signing away their lives in Amsterdam.*
Yeah. I don’t really have any opinions on whether 17-year-olds can travel by themselves to visit their online boyfriends (my first reaction is to think it’s not that big of a deal, but it would honestly depend on the maturity level of the kids involved, and not knowing that I can’t say), but showing her an incredibly stupid, unrealistic, and violent movie like Taken isn’t going to help anyone.
*I used to live in Eastern Europe, right? There are fliers EVERYWHERE - pinned to telephone polls, taped to bus shelters, etc - offering fantastic jobs to desperately poor people. Come pick strawberries in England! Be a maid in a hotel in Sweden! Do construction in Spain! This is how human trafficking is done. They don’t stake out airports looking for people from wealthy countries.
Yeah, I called every couple of days to let them know what country I was in. I didn’t have any particular itinerary, except to travel mostly clockwise around Western Europe, so I’m not sure what they would have done if I stopped calling, but they knew at least every three days or so that I was alive. If something had happened, I probably had emergency contact info in my passport.
I have some real life experience this as well, much like pepperlandgirl. When I was about 15 or 16 I used to participate in an online community much like this one and made fast friends with another girl who lived in Arizona. It was strictly platonic (we are both girls) but we were BEST FRIENDS FOREVER and wanted to hang out. I flew out to visit her for a few days and the next summer she came to visit me in Oregon. Our parents talked on the phone first, and I think that is perfectly sufficient. Guess what–she wasn`t a murderer, nor were her parents creepy rapists, and we got along just fine! She was just what she said she was–a 15 year old girl who was my BFF and we had a great time. I also met a boy I met in the same community–he came up to Oregon with his family and we hung out at the zoo. Again, exactly who he said he was.
Frankly, as this girls grandfather, it is none of the OPs business and you should stay out of it. Of course she is not going to put up with the OP going along with her. That is A) creepy and B) really weird and C) just not appropriate. At all. I dont think I can emphasize that enough. This is the 21st century and young women dont require an elderly family member to chaperone them when they leave the house.
Im not sure how you think 2 forty year old men could successfully pose as a middle aged woman and a teenage boy when they have been talking on the phone for hours but the reality is that your granddaughter is more likely to be in danger at any one of the parties she will almost certainly go to when she starts college. If you have taught her to be cautious and sensible, it shouldnt be a problem. Let her go, man.
When I went to the US, to spend the summer working in a camp (10 weeks at the camp followed by one week on my own in NYC), I had to give an emergency contact address and phone to the organization.
At that point, not a single one of my relatives could speak English, so the emergency info wouldn’t have done any good unless the callers realized that they needed a Spanish-speaker. Mind you, by the time the organization called home, I would have been in the hospital at least.
I called home once, on July 25, that being the feast of the patron saint of my father and youngest brother. But then, it was before cellphones: I’d already spent a month here and there with no parental contact at all.
To the OP: I think you’ve done what you can and, not only that, what you should. Some of the suggestions here are at least as controlling as the “I can’t wait to meet you, here’s a ticket” (assuming she wasn’t complicit to that, it IS controlling); you guys really intend to, when your kids leave for college, go over every possible security procedure in excruciating detail? Buy a helicopter already, willya?
D’oh! This is it! If they’re that in love and she hasn’t (video) Skyped or iChatted with him, something’s up. And yes, I guess he could be a 30-something woman posing as a teenage boy even in A/V, but this is still way more information than you’d get with a pen pal.
She will be 18 in a year and free to pass out in college dorms and backpack across the world, though one would hope part of being independent would involve paying for her trip.
(It is sort of silly to reference Taken –IMHO, if that movie happened IRL the first bit would have been the same but the guy at the airport would have been happy stealing the naive American girls’ money, gadgets and passport. But apparently this grand-daughter does have a horse, like the girl in the movie. Coincidence?)
Well, there have certainly been a lot of posts to think about here. Also, as time passes and I ask more questions, I learn more. (duh)
There are indications that this is how it happened.
The dynamics of this family are such that it is my business and I’ve no intention of staying out of it.
As far as her self-sufficiency goes the girl has not been sheltered per se, but her idea of planning goes like this: If she’s got 10 dollars, spend 8 dollars on lunch and another 2 dollars on trinkets. Then run out of gas in her car 15 minutes later and call somebody for help. She’s run out of gas so much that she carries a small plastic gas can in the car for these situations.
She had a good job and held it from November until mid-June. Then she quit the job on the reasoning that “This is supposed to be the best summer of my life”. Since then she’s been laying around the pool at her mother’s apartment and working on her bikini tan. When I spring for the gas, she comes up here (about 40 miles) and rides horses.
Is there such a thing as teen-life crisis?
Someone mentioned that she should take a credit card with her. I’ve thought about that but am undecided at this point. If she takes a credit card with her it will be mine, there’s no other option for that.
She’s frilled away her HS graduation money while laying around the pool, so that’s gone. If she leaves here with more than $20 it will be because I’ve provided it. So far I’ve seen no compelling reason for me to financially support a venture that I don’t agree with.
Y’all keep it coming!
Accepting her decision and bankrolling it are two completely different things. She could sell off some of the stuff (iPod? Camera? Whatever)that she bought with her graduation money to pay for it. Adult privileges require adult responsibility.
Along those lines, adults aren’t supposed to promise things they can’t deliver. If the boy and his mom paid for a ticket and she doesn’t go because she can’t come up with money, that’s on her. If they’re upset because she freeloads on them while she’s there, that’s on her. If they expect reciprocation in the future and she can’t provide it, that’s on her.
It’s the “plan ahead” lesson that has gone unheeded too long come home to roost. She won’t learn if you bail her out, and it sounds like there has already been plenty of bailing. It’s one thing to understand, intellectually, that you should not quit jobs on a whim or burn through money, and so on. It’s another to experience the effects and “own” the lesson.
As a Grandfather who couldn’t directly prevent her from going I would spend the money to have the boy and his family investigated to establish if they are real, have a police record, and are financially sound.
It’s irresponsible to allow a teenager to hook up with an unknown out of state internet romance.
Minors can’t book their own hotel rooms in most states.
FWIW, my first reaction was, “you’re thinking about letting her go? You cannot be serious.”
Then I realized that I was in college at 16, and there were plenty of girls around who were 17, at least as freshmen.
If you consider her for mature for her age, let her go. If you consider her flighty and irresponsible, act according.
Do make sure she’s got pepper spray and knows how to use it.
Oh hell no. She isn’t even close to demonstrating adult responsibility. It sounds to me like you’re the family matriarch and that means you’ll be dealing with the grandchildren.
I am only a little wiser and older than the granddaughter in question but here’s my two cents:
I also know a few internet-romances-turned-real-life situations that HAVE worked out, including one where both parties flew halfway across the country to meet each other for the first time.
However, I think you should trust your gut on this one. Yes, everything may be dandy and be exactly how your granddaughter describes it, but the potential risks are just too much. Put. Your. Foot. Down. As other posters have mentioned, go with her, or have the “boy” come and meet you in a non-threatening situation (you can all go out for ice cream while you determine if he is, in fact, a somewhat sane teenage boy).
(bolding mine)
:dubious:
I think some people are missing the issue. It’s not about letting a 17 year old fly somewhere by herself. That’s not such a big deal if you know where she’s going, who she’s meeting and what she’s going to do. This is not that. This is a child going off to meet complete strangers from the internet. It would be a moronic thing for even ME to do as a 43 year old man. It’s a completely irresponsible for thing for her parents to allow her to do. Neither they nor this girl actually has the slightest idea who these people are.
There’s no fucking way I would allow one of my daughters to drive across town to meet some scumbag from the internet, much less fly to a different state. John Cater appears to be the only member of that family who doesn’t have his head up his ass, but since he’s not her guardian, I think the only real option he has is to go with her. She can’t stop him from flying on the same plane at least, and he’ll be there when Zac Effron inevitably turns out to look like James Gandolfini.
I’m amazed at the number of people in this thread who apparently just automatically believe anything anybody tells them on the internet. How many of you have answered emails from Nigeria?
Did you miss the people in this thread mentioning people getting together over the Internet and having it work out? I’ve known a trio of couples that have done it and they all seem very happy together, even years later.
“The Internet” is not some big scary place as long as you aren’t stupid about it. However, no offense John Carter, your granddaughter does not sound financially responsible enough to make this trip on her own.
When I was 17, I spent weeks wandering around Asia by myself, so yeah, I’d let her go.
So what? That means that all prospective encounters with internet strangers may be assumed to be safe? What kind of dumbass logic is that?
Letting a child fly off to meet random, unknown strangers IS being stupid about it.
I suspect that all of those saying they’d let their own kids do it don’t actually have any kids.
How many stories do you read about where boys are used for sex, raped or somewhere inbetween because of some middle aged (and older) pervert posed as a teen on line?
I can’t recall one.
But there are a bunch of stories on a regular basis of teenage girlsgetting duped into such a situationor cops busting these scumbags.
John Carter of Mars, you are the only sane one in your family.
The parental units in this case need to grow a pair and say to the boy that he has to come to their side or make it a family outing to where ever it is this boy lives. There has to be some family amusement/zoo/thing that can be a group outing event. That way everyone is safe. Yeah, it is an inconvenience, but so is …ohhhh, being raped and possibly gutted and stuffed into a barrel.
If the boy and his mom ( put quotations around that part, because I am not buying it at all, how do you know that this boy isn’t some young sounding guy who is running and conning a dozen girls at once seeing who he can land?) bail on that, then you know something is rotten in Denmark. It gives the parental units ( who seem particularly dense in this matter) a chance to scope things out.
There was an article on Fark in the last year where some cellar-dweller of the EYE BLEACH kinda pedo was arrested for luring teenagers. The picture of the guy is what every teenager should have posted by their monitor. (Massively overweight and 100 kinds of Fugly.) If I can find the picture, I’ll link it.
Did I miss the part where the boy’s age was stated? I didn’t see it in the OP, and if it was listed subsequently, I missed it.
If the boy is 18 or older, it would probably make better sense for him to come to see her, rather than vice versa. And especially after reading the OP’s later assessment of the girl’s relative maturity level and sense of responsibility (which doesn’t seem terribly high) then in this particular case, I would probably be on the side of “have him come to her, or have her wait until she’s 18 and can go on her own regardless of anyone’s opinion”.
However…
Does anyone else get as annoyed as I do at the automatic assumption of so many people that if it’s a teenage girl, she’s automatically flighty, can’t take care of herself, is going to get snatched/raped/otherwise molested, will inevitably make bad choices, and should be protected?
DAMN, but that attitude bugs me, as does the whole “overprotective daddy” schtick (you know the one: “Yeah, son, you might be the local preacher’s boy with a straight A average, a good job, and a 10-year-history of helping disabled kittens down from trees, but you put one toe out of line with my daughter and I’m gonna blow your head off! And you’d better have her home by 10, too!”) This probably one of the biggest of the myriad of reasons why I never dated when I was in high school (not that my dad was like that, but as a responsible, smart, and highly tomboyish teenage girl, I would have been mortified at the thought of some boy being put in charge of when I got home). Good grief, folks (not aimed at anyone in particular, just the attitude in general): it’s the twenty-first century! Girls are every bit as capable, smart, and independent as guys, and it’s insulting to treat them like little hothouse flowers who have to be monitored from those evil boys who only want one thing! (one thing, I might add, that many of the girls want too–but we don’t do this sort of stuff to boys).
Sorry if that got a bit ranty–it’s a huge hot button with me. As it happens, in this particular case it sounds like the girl in question could probably do with a bit of monitoring, since she doesn’t sound like she thinks things through very well and that would be a Very Bad Thing™ if she found herself in a strange city and unhappy. But for Pete’s sake, don’t generalize it to ALL teenage girls just because they’re girls. There aren’t rapists around every corner the same as there aren’t pedophiles around every corner.
Rant over, we now return you to your regularly scheduled post. 