- High-Tech Stalkers
- "How I Stalked My Girlfriend"
- The Victim's Side
- Identity Assumption
- The Wild, Wild Web
- Sticks and Stones
- The "Stalker" E-Card
- Cyber Stalking and the Law
- Cyber Stalking Facts
- Lethality Assessment Tools
- If You Think You Are Being Cyber Stalked
- Teen/Tech Stalking
- Online GamesThe New Stalker's Ground
- Online Gaming and Malware
- Would You Say It to My Face?
- National School Board Survey
- Women as Perpetrators
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
National School Board Survey
A recent National School Boards Association survey reports that more than 25% of the educators polled report they are aware of false websites and/or pages being created for the purposes of exacting revenge on an educator.
Teachers Fight Back: The Erik Trosch Story
In Philadelphia, a high school senior used his grandmother's computer to create a fake MySpace account impersonating his school principal, Eric Trosch. In fact, several students were involved in creating multiple fake MySpace account pages with Trosch's profile, picture, and title, along with allegations that he was a pornography enthusiast who enjoyed urinating in women's mouths and considered Michael Jackson to be his hero (see Figure 1.7).
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Figure 1.7 MySpace prank page profiling a high school principal in Pennsylvania
In a case that will test First Amendment rights, the principal has sued the students he accused of creating these pages. In his civil lawsuit, he stated that the online postings damaged his reputation and left him embarrassed and humiliated. His attorney stated that "the profiles went far and beyond what you would see on a bathroom wall in a school." The principal alleges that another profile created by a student said his favorite movie was pornographic, and a third created by two brothers said he had had intimate relationships with students and brutalized women.
This will be an interesting test to see how far the online lampooning and degrading can go.
Interestingly and disturbingly enough, this practice is fairly common, and teens often find it humorous to set up MySpace pages for a principal or teacher they are not particularly fond of. We have seen this with at least two local educators who had been targeted for this type of degradation. The MySpace pages contained their photos, address info, and even phone numbers. The fake profiles were mean and humiliating. Ironically, we stumbled upon one of the pages in the course of an investigation. The other was discovered because the kids were bragging about it at the local high school. For one of the victims, we found three separate prank pages.