Letter to the Editor

Re: DK Katzman; Canadian Paediatric Society, Adolescent Health Committee. Sexting: Keeping teens safe and responsible in a technologically savvy world. Paediatr Child Health 2010;15(1)41–5. To the Editor: We were very interested in Dr Katzman's article on ‘sexting’ in your January 2010 issue because it regards the topic of ‘new’ methods of communication among teens. We would like to report two cases of sexual assault in which perpetrators contacted vulnerable adolescent targets online. After having procured their intended victims’ confidence through Facebook interaction, a rendezvous was arranged. The meetings took place at midday, during the week: one on the school ground and the other near home. In both cases, the teens were invited into the perpetrator's vehicle. Once in the cars, they were driven to a nearby location and assaulted. The youth reported that the meeting and assault lasted less than 30 min. In each case, the perpetrator was more than 10 years older than the victim. Although the risks of online relationships or personal connections have been reported (1,2), we want to draw attention to the seriousness of potential consequences of establishing Facebook friendships and similar online connections through social networking sites. Research has generated a profile of youth most susceptible to aggressive online solicitation and also describes salient features of these online interactions (3). In our cases, the youth were engaged with online emotional seduction that concluded in a sexual assault. Our victims conformed to the literature's depiction of the most at-risk teens (2). The youth were between 14 and 17 years of age, had experienced previous psychological trauma and were from a single-parent family with estranged fathers. Finally, each victim was facing issues of gender identity and family loss. The impact of the post-sexual assault on the younger victim was substantially more severe and resulted in a suicide attempt. This finding among early teens is parallel to the psychological experience of younger youth, ie, ‘friends are everything’. The literature reports that younger youth are at higher risk for post-trauma consequences (4). Facebook and similar social networking sites can establish ‘friendships’ at the touch of a button, and our experience suggests that the betrayal of trust by these ‘friends’ can be devastating. With the pending expansion of Facebook, extra precautions need to be taken to safeguard youth. In addition to protecting those already engaged in virtual ‘friendships’, how are we to protect the tweens who are new to social networking? The rapidly changing and exploding popularity of sites such as MSN, Twitter and MySpace make creating a timely and effective intervention strategy more difficult. However, up-to-date information can be acquired from the teens themselves and case studies. Our fear is that if this exploding virtual world of e-victimization is not addressed, we will see an increase in Facebook-facilitated sexual assault.

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