Call the FBI; glad you called the local cops. Keep records etc, but IMO, your child’s therapist should know what is going on. Just the facts and all, but she should know (I’m assuming the therapist is female).
Is there any way to get bio-mom to see the danger? Or is she invested in the “Disney-Mom” mindset or the “we’ll be best buds, my daughter and I” mindset?
<shudders>
Don’t beat yourself up. You ARE good parents. Bad parents wouldn’t know anything about this or would be either actively or tacitly encouraging it. Shit happens and 13 year olds make bad decisions. You’re handling it well. I would NOT tell her about this until you’ve contacted the FBI. And she should NEVER know (until she’s in her mid 20s or so) that big sis was in on it. She won’t share anything again and will feel you’re all against her. (because that is what 13 year olds do). Good luck.
I’m very much against knee jerk panic reactions to this kind of thing, that is not what this is.
There is no ambiguity in the situation at all, the guy is 27 (I presume you confirmed this when you checked the criminal record stuff), your daughter is 13, and he clearly knows this. What’s more he is already discussing meeting with her, at a hotel room.
There is no innocent explanation for this.
Your daughter is a mailed plane ticket away from disappearing to Texas to meet someone who is likely very dangerous. If you contact this guy and make clear what you know, it is fairly unlikely that your daughter will hear from him again, but the next set of parents might not be so lucky and he will probably have learnt more about covering his tracks.
Don’t play amateur investigator and don’t wait for the local cops if they don’t sound enthusiastic, contact the FBI, make sure that you stress that he has already suggested meeting and you are concerned that there is a time factor to this.
I’ve no idea how interstate plane travel in the US works, but if your daughter would require a passport or other documents to travel in this manner it might be a good idea to make sure they are safely in your possession.
And yes your child is being silly. but she is not responsible for this situation. In general teenagers are apt to make poor decisions, which is of course exactly why we have laws to protect them from this kind of individual.
Your comment *"…First, thank you all for the reassurance that I am not over reacting…" *suggests to me that you don’t appreciate how much you have under reacted to this.
I am a parent also, and I have daughters. I met with my daughters and explained to them in a discussion how the young mind develops and how that during the maturation process the quality of their decisions might be suspect.
We also discussed the threats they might face. I explained to them that it was primary job was to be their parent, and a friend secondarily. As their parent it is my job to protect them. Toward that end, they understood that the issue of “privacy” was progressive; that they had no “right to privacy” in some areas, and that with each passing year they would have more privacy. Earlier on, they were told that I had both the right, and obligation, to inspect their lockers, bedrooms, book bags, and even their diaries [only] if I perceived a threat. Every single web site had to be approved before they joined (and some were denied, like AIM, and all chat rooms.) and of the ones they could join I had to be “friended” and all passwords given to me.
They were 10 years old at the time.
My daughters are now 17 & 19, and I am still friended. I don’t know their email passwords now. (and in reality I never looked at them then) I wouldn’t go through their rooms, or read their diaries now, or look through their bookbags.
They are young women, and I treat them with the respect that a young woman deserves.
You’re in a tough situation. You’re not the bio mother, and it appears that shes learned some or all of this behavior from her bio mom.
If you draw a bright line you’re likely to get some pushback. (but better now than at 16) But when you say in the OP that you worry she ‘won’t trust you’ it seems to me that you haven’t defined your relationship----------especially the parts where you are a protective loving parent-----in healthy ways.
The internet is a wide open pipeline from the whole wide world right into your daughters bedroom. It is easier to manage that risk than snatching her from a bus stop. Yet many parents are oblivious to it.
Some 24 year old felon has made his way right into your daughters life. I’m afraid that’s on you.
I think you need to have a calm, loving discussion about your role, and both yours and her rights and obligations. As part of this I think you need to establish a clear line of loving authority so you stop sneaking around. Only a concerned friend needs to sneak around----or a parent who’s trying to be a friend first.
And I would make this guys life a living hell. I’d call Dateline, Perverted Justice, his parole/probation officer, the judge that sentenced him, the prosecuting attorney that prosecuted him, the Attorney General in your state, his state, the internet crime division of both police forces (state and local), every friend he had on Facebook (from my older daughters Facebook account), providing screenshots and chat logs, his parents, and the FBI.
No parent can control all that their kids’ see and do. And no parent should. I don’t see you as being very supportive of the OP here. If someone’s 13 year old daughter is raped–is that on the parents, too? Place the blame where it belongs: on the predator. I agree that a ground rules discussion should be had (again–I believe this was already done), but her situation does not match yours. Heck, it wouldn’t even if she were the bio-mom. The OP is in there, trying. Her daughter has issues and complicated family relationships. None of this is cut and dried–this meaning how to deal with it. The one thing that is cut and dried is this guy is a predator and sounds very unstable.
I openly admit to “sneaking” around and reading Daughter’s diary and snooping into all the corner of #1 son’s bedroom when vacuuming. And I am also a “friend” on their FB walls and have been since they joined. IMO, a good parent needs to know when to snoop and when to be open about limits. I won’t tell you what I found when I snooped on either of my kids, but knowledge is power and I used what I knew to change some things. YMMV.
This. Go further – call the police and unless they talk you out of it ALSO call the FBI. If you don’t get a response that makes you say, “Wow!” call your local political representatives and tell them the police response isn’t making you feel safe about this. Then your congresscritters, if need be. If THAT doesn’t generate a response you like, call the news – most local stations have an “on your side” segment that will eat up this kind of thing. Escalate until this guy is a memory.
I am supportive of the OP. Parenting is hard, and at least part of it is trial and error. The OP came to a message board. My reading of her posts—and the thread in general---- indicates that too much is being focused on the “predator.” Dio and a couple others have encouraged her to take a more proactive position.
However, the most proactive family can be victimized. And I’m sympathetic to the extremely hard situations of being a step parent; especially when the bio parent is not a good parent.
Still, my take is that this situation isn’t the real problem, but a result of the real problem. (and now a problem in its own right)
I think every child needs to know up front that 1) they are loved, 2) that a loving parent must set guidelines and boundaries, and 3) open, honest non-judgmental communication is encouraged, but that in the end healthy families are not democracies.
The world is full of predators who want this girl, and the internet gives them a ticket to her bedroom. (and now a ticket to a Texas hotel room)
If the core problem isn’t addressed-----like how/why a 13 year old can/is posting provocative pictures on FB, why the parent is taking such a passive role in all of this, among others----the next predator will be from her home town.
Balls to the police. Call the FBI no matter what the local LEOs say – before they say it.
There’s an old saying: ‘One turd at a time.’ An adult soliciting a minor is a crime, and it’s still being committed. The first thing to do is to call the FBI. It’s their bailiwick. There will be time to deal with the fallout after Predator is under investigation.
Yes, Daughter will feel betrayed. Yes, she’ll hate the OP. Yes, she has emotional problems. But she’s seeing a psychologist, and she has a loving family. The important thing right now is to catch the guy with the biggest ‘guns’ available (i.e., the Feds) without tipping your hand.
There’s been several cases like this in the papers. Usually the cops set up a sting and arrest the guy at the meeting place. That way they have a stronger case.
Amazing how far these sickos will travel. I’ve seen one guy in the news that drove half way across the country. Cops were waiting for him. Since he crossed state lines, they had him on Federal charges.
I turn 24 on wednesday, and I’d just like to defend my brethren by saying I’m totally not into 13 year olds. Well, I used to be, when I was 13 or so, but I very quickly got over that.
Sorry to hear that your daughter has gotten mixed up in this. I agree with the advice to involve the FBI and to NOT contact the predator yourself or give the daughter any indication of what you know. This is definitely a dangerous situation - not just for your daughter but also for the rest of the family since you don’t know what he might do if he decided to come to your house.
The existence of the bio-mom throws a wrench into things. You should let her psych know what’s going on because the last thing you want to happen is for your daughter to hate you and bond with the bio-mom, she sounds nuts. Who knows what she’ll encourage her to do? So don’t burn that bridge yet, I’d let her keep the FB page for now. Kids these days have a lot of ways of contacting people not just through the internet so don’t think for one second that deleting her page will protect her. Leave it up as evidence and to lull that guy into a sense of false security until he can be caught.
Wow…thread kind of exploded on me. Thanks again for the responses!
Just so y’all know I wasn’t just sitting around waiting for dopers to tell me exactly what to do. I have been all over this since I discovered it, and just now have things quieted down enough to think about other things too for a while.
My biggest reason for coming here as I said in the OP is for the parenting aspect of it- I feel like her dad and I have failed her tremendously if she thinks it is acceptable to flirt with a 24 year old in this manner. When I said she is not entirely innocent I only meant that she knows what she is doing is wrong (or she wouldn’t be hiding it) and is very far beyond what she was taught. Not that she shares the blame in any crime or even for “falling” for him- that’s all on Predator and hopefully he will pay. But still as a parent, I feel like it is a lot my fault (and her dad’s) for not being able to protect her from this kind of BS. It’s the feelings of guilt that are bothering me almost as much as thinking about my poor little girl being caught up in such a mess.
I think this might be what they have in mind. I did call the FBI, they were much more interested than the PD (but funny story: two minutes later I got a call from the detective saying that he thinks they may need to do a bit more than he originally thought. He sounded not very happy that it might get taken out of his hands.) Another funny aside, did you know that the FBI has business hours for phone calls? After 5 PM or so you get an answering service…weird.
Anyway…basically the same thing as before. I am supposed to capture any screen shots, log any chats, save any emails (with headers intact) etc. But they did agree with you guys who said not to mention it to my daughter (or Predator). I honestly don’t know what they plan to do but they asked for his FB account info and if I knew about what time he tends to be online, so I got the impression that they might be doing some sort of set-up or communication that way. I don’t know. As long as he leaves my daughter alone (and any other young girl!) I will be satisfied, even though I’d love to see him face some sort of “street justice” too.
I still have the appt. on Wed. but in the meantime I keep getting phone calls asking for more and more details, so at least I know someone is doing something with it already.
And now…as an update on the “relationship” itself: some girl sent my daughter a message today saying that she saw this guy as her boyfriend on FB and wanted to warn her that he would tell her he loved her and that she is sexy and all the things he has already said and then would dump her after she “put out” because that’s what happened to this girl who he also met on FB but is in his same town. My first thought was, “Hoooray! Advice from a peer, now daughter might listen!” But, sadly no. My daughter messaged her back a horrible note calling her a slut and saying she was just jealous of “our love” and that nothing and nobody will ever break them up! :eek: This is one week after “meeting” him on FB and never having seen each other face-to-face! Then my daughter sent him a message (thank God she is slow to delete them today so I could see them!) asking if what the other girl said was true and telling him that she believes him and loves him, etc…Naturally he denied it and said that other girl was just jealous…but the saddest part of that (maybe not saddest, but still sad) was the other girl’s profile lists her as the same age as my daughter. (Just a few months older actually, she is 14.)
So hopefully that will get used too, because this guy really is a sleaze-bucket!
Okay now you made me laugh, thank you. Don’t worry this hasn’t colored my opinions on 24 year-olds altogether.
I sincerely hope you were able to screen print that message from the other girl. If a 14 year old has indeed “put out” for him he’s probably going in the slammer. Good enough!
Very innocently (and non accusingly) say “The person that I spoke to on the phone didn’t seem all that concerned and told me they couldn’t help me with this until Wednesday and this guy is getting more and more serious about meeting her PLUS another 13 year old girl tried to warn my daughter that he would just sleep with her and then dump her like she did to her so this probably isn’t the first time he’s done this and I wanted to be more proactive, what if instead of waiting for her to come down there he decided to drive up to our city? I was just trying to get that ball rolling, that’s all. I wasn’t trying to step on any toes or go over your head, but I’m not going to just sit here and wait for something to happen”
That’s what I would say when they ask why you called the FBI.
OR, a sweet and simple “I didn’t feel like the person who I spoke with on the phone took me all that seriously”
They were assholes for brushing you off like that, but remember, you have to keep them on your side, if you piss off the local PD, it’ll make this a lot harder.
Oh, and make sure you forward that message to the FBI, I’m sure they’ll want to talk to that other girl as well.
“Nuts” is just the tip of the iceberg with that woman! But yes, you are right. She (daughter) already has an appointment with her therapist on Friday- she sees her weekly and both her therapist and psychiatrist have after-hours and weekend numbers, so I already called and will go in and discuss this with them a couple hours before daughter’s appt. Since we are supposed to pretend we know nothing just yet (per the authorities’ requests) I am not sure how we will handle it with regards to the mental health aspects but we do have family sessions every few weeks too so we can ensure it does (eventually anyway) get addressed.
This question is what scares me more than you know.
Ha! That’s what I said when I had the distinct non-pleasure of updating my husband by phone since he is at work all weekend (stupid 72 hour shifts!). But, unfortunately that is not an option since it is to visit family we haven’t seen in a long time. The upside is that we will be in San Antonio, and Predator is near Dallas, which should throw a monkey wrench into his plan, but might not…What we are considering instead of canceling the trip is, we might send daughter to visit other relatives in still another state while the rest of us go to TX. If we do that, we will not be informing daughter of where she is going or that she is going until the last possible moment so she can’t make any new connections or dates. And it wouldn’t be a punishment or hardship on her because we would be sending her to a place she loves to go with family she adores and she would still have a great vacation.
I did. And I think that might have something to do with the irritated phone call I got immediately afterward. The detective (PD) who phoned me hemmed and hawed a bit and stopped just short of apologizing, but kept saying over and over that he wanted to “assure [me] that we take these kinds of complaints seriously”. My mental image is that he got a “talking to” from somebody.
Since he crossed state lines, they had him on Federal charges.
