Posted on 10/22/2001 9:00:37 AM PDT by jern
Internet deception
It started so innocently.
One afternoon in early summer of 1995, a mother in Charlotte was doing chores, folding laundry, while her 14-year-old daughter and some friends played nearby on a computer. The girls teased one another and giggled as messages from an online teen chat room popped onto the screen.
Listen to this one, the daughter said, and read a message aloud.
From across the kitchen, the mother suggested a reply.
Oh, you're so good at this! the daughter said, typing one letter at a time, slender fingers hunting and pecking across the keyboard. She sent a few more messages with her mother's help, then tired of the game. The girls wandered out of the kitchen.
The mother slipped into the chair, still warm from her daughter's body. Her fat fingers plodded across the keys, searching for the right words, a put-down, a come-on. It was easy for a grown-up, 41 years old, to look smart and witty in a room full of teen-agers. She smiled, something she hadn't done much lately.
The next day, she retreated to the computer, and the next day and the next …
Hiding behind the screen where no one could see her, she transformed herself that summer of 1995 from an overweight, middle-aged homemaker with a failed marriage and a monotonous future into a graceful teen-ager.
She pretended she was 5 feet 6, 118 pounds, with long, dark hair and brown eyes - like her daughter, with a few exaggerations: salutatorian of her senior class, well-read, 17 years old, wealthy.
Boys and men flirted with her online. She felt young again, and thin, and happy. Her depression washed away.
Day after day, then nights, too, she escaped into the computer, often for 10 hours, sometimes more. She quit cooking and cleaning and folding laundry. She rarely got out of her pajamas.
When her daughter banged through the front door, home for supper, the mother barked at the interruption.
When her husband, back from a week on the road, caught her at 3 in the morning, she screamed that he was invading her privacy.
When she took a break after hours on the computer, she gasped at the reflection in the bathroom mirror as she confronted the 220-pound woman she'd forgotten she was.
He was the type of boy she might have picked for her daughter - smart, sensitive, athletic. They talked about books; he shared his favorite quotes. She felt closer to a boy she'd never met than she did to her husband. It made her desperate to be the girl she'd created in her computer. If she wasn't that girl, she was a fat, middle-aged woman with a boring life.
She mailed the teen-ager snapshots of her daughter and told him they were of her.
You're beautiful, he wrote back.
It had been years since anyone had told her that.
He mailed her photos of himself and she hid them in the attic. She'd go up there and sneak a look when no one else was home.
They talked dirty over the computer and she masturbated. It was her first fling with cybersex.
After a few weeks, the novelty wore off. She hungered to see him.
She confided in her daughter and showed her some of his e-mails. She says her daughter thought the boy sounded too studious, a little nerdy, but other than that, she says, her daughter never questioned what was going on.
One Sunday afternoon, the mother persuaded the daughter to drive with her to the teen-ager's town, to the pool where he worked as a lifeguard. She spied on him from a parking lot. He looked so cute, chewing gum at the edge of the pool, his body tanned and muscular.
The next time, she took binoculars.
She fell deeper and deeper into her fantasy. She swore morning after morning she wouldn't log on. She always gave in.
That fall, she talked her daughter into going with her to watch the teen-ager play in a high school football game.
If he sees us, the mother says she told her daughter, he'll think you're the girl from the Internet. All you have to do is smile and wave back.
The mother took the daughter to a salon to have her hair styled. The mother thought it made her look older.
The teen-ager waved from the field. The daughter waved from the stands.
That simple gesture made the mother crave even more. It was as if the girl she'd invented had come to life. She felt scared, yet excited.
She said he told her the first thing he would say was that he loved her.
He loved her! This wonderful boy loved her! There was no way she was going to forfeit the relationship. Her daughter would have to pretend to be the girl again. Her daughter would have to meet the teen-ager for her.
The daughter worried she wouldn't be able to pull off the charade. She was scared the teen-ager would figure out she wasn't the girl. The mother begged. The daughter would do anything to please her mother, anything to see her happy again.
They drove to the football stadium a day or two before the game to figure out a place to park. The mother fretted over every detail. She didn't want anything to go wrong. She didn't want anything to jeopardize her happiness.
He'll probably want to kiss you, the mother remembered saying.
Hurry up, dammit! she remembered screaming. You're taking too long.
They barely talked on the drive up, the silence broken only by the mother's instructions. She told her daughter to pretend to have laryngitis, to whisper if she had to say something, so the teen-ager wouldn't notice her voice, so unlike the voice he'd heard over the telephone, the mother's voice.
At half time, mother and daughter left the stadium and drove to the high school to wait. After the game ended, a bus pulled into the parking lot with the football team. The mother crouched on the floor of the van beneath an orange poncho, somehow squeezing into the space between the passenger seat and dashboard. She said she planned to sit on a bench outside, but it had been pouring rain.
Oh, my God, he's right there! the mother remembered her daughter saying.
The daughter opened the door.
The teen-ager hugged her and told her he loved her.
The mother felt tingly all over, as if she was the one he'd spoken to. After all, he meant the words for her. She was the one he loved, not her daughter.
The mother said she heard them climb into the back of the van, where the seat folded down like a bed. For nearly an hour, she crouched beneath the poncho. One leg ached so badly, it felt as if it might fall off.
She said she heard only murmurs and rustling, and didn't find out until later that her daughter gave the boy oral sex.
The daughter didn't want to have sex. It had been exciting to get her hair styled and buy new clothes, she said, but the rest of it felt all wrong.
The mother knew it was wrong. She knew she shouldn't make her daughter do something like that. She knew her daughter didn't want to do it.
The mother rationalized that it must not be so awful because her daughter never refused.
On the drive home, she asked her daughter what happened. She needed to know everything. Otherwise, she said, she might slip up the next time she talked with the teen-ager, and he would figure out the truth.
What did you think of him? the mother remembered asking. He's good-looking.
The mother arranged to meet the teen-ager again a few weeks later and bought her daughter condoms. She would have given anything to be the one lying beside him in the back of the van. She sat in a park, angry because she couldn't get into her daughter's body.
On the way home, the mother asked what happened. She said her daughter said they had intercourse, the first time for each.
The mother said she felt awful for putting her daughter up to that. What mother wouldn't? But in a bizarre way, she said, she felt exhilarated. When she looked at her daughter, she saw the embodiment of the 17-year-old girl she had created, the girl she was pretending to be. It was the first time that girl had sex. And, in a strange way, the mother felt as if it were her first time, too.
It wasn't really you doing that, she said she told her daughter. You're a surrogate. I am the soul of this girl and you are just providing the body. This is not happening to you. You're still a virgin.
Her friends' mothers cooked supper and took them to movies. Her mother spent days and nights talking with men on the computer or the telephone. Her mother screamed and yelled and cursed and had her do things she didn't want to do, things that were wrong, things a mother should never ask a daughter to do. Her mother betrayed her.
"It was exciting at first to get my hair done," the daughter told police, "but the rest felt wrong. I don't remember when I started telling her I didn't like what was going on, but I would cry about it."
This is the only way I can be somebody else, the daughter remembered her mother saying. This is the only way I can be beautiful.
The mother arranged for her daughter to meet the teen-ager in the back of the van once more that fall of 1995, then another time at Freedom Mall in Charlotte. Each time, the daughter pretended to have laryngitis so the teen-ager wouldn't notice her voice.
The mother worried that the teen-ager might become suspicious if the daughter always had laryngitis. She said she told him that her parents had found out she'd been seeing him and had ordered her to stop. She kept chatting with him over the Internet, but never arranged another meeting. She had other interests by then - she had met several older men on the Internet.
In January 1996, she asked her daughter to meet one of the men, a businessman from New Jersey, a grown-up, 27, nearly twice the daughter's age.
"I got so angry," the daughter said. "I believed that since I had gone with (the teen-ager) the first time, there was no way to get out of it."
The mother told the daughter everything she remembered about the man - his business partner's name, his favorite drink, the music he listened to. It was like preparing for a test. The businessman must not become suspicious.
The mother took her shopping for clothes, and to have her hair styled.
"That hair treatment meant I was supposed to have sex with someone," the daughter told police. "I was terrified of what was going to happen, both of having to have sex … and what would happen if (he) discovered I wasn't (the girl). I was so scared."
The mother dropped her off for about an hour at a Marriott Courtyard Hotel. The daughter was in ninth grade. It was a weeknight. She should have been at home studying, or watching TV, or telephoning friends.
She said she felt like a whore. Her mother disgusted her. She wanted to hit her. She felt angry, trapped.
"There was a pool at the hotel and if we would go swimming (my mother) was sitting in a chair by the pool, watching," the daughter said. " … Later, I had to try to catch up on my school work."
That was the last of the encounters. The mother said she realized she couldn't keep doing that to her daughter.
Before all this happened, the daughter loved school. "I wasn't a genius, but I loved school," the daughter told police. She said she stopped caring about school and everything else. She was demoted from academically gifted classes to advanced classes and did poorly even in them.
If she didn't tell her father about the men, she said her mother told her, her mother wouldn't tell him about her bad grades.
For two years, the daughter kept the horrible secret.
In February 1998, she said she told a friend, and the friend insisted she tell her father. The daughter said she told him everything. The father said he didn't find out details until six months later.
In a statement to police, the daughter wrote: "Dad said that he and Mom would get me help and wanted to work this out as a family. But they never got me help."
In September 1998, the daughter's senior year in high school, misery overwhelmed her. The father confronted the mother. The mother said she sent her daughter to a psychologist, finally recognizing that her daughter needed help, even though it meant that she, the mother, might be arrested.
Rivera specialized in computer crimes and juvenile sex crimes. She said she had never confronted such a horrible situation.
When she interviewed the mother on Sept. 29, 1998, Rivera said, the mother spoke in a monotone, answering questions as if reciting events from a story. First this happened, then that happened. Rivera detected little emotion, no remorse. The mother seemed nervous and rambled. She told Rivera she'd felt lonely, got hooked on the Internet and became obsessed with the men she met online.
Rivera could understand that. People turn to the Internet as a way to connect with other people. But using your own daughter to fulfill your fantasies?
She expected the mother would cry out in anguish and say something like, "I can't believe I did this to my daughter." But the mother never did. She seemed to blame her daughter for a big part of what happened.
"Instead of protecting her child she exploited her both sexually and mentally and put her life at risk in many different forms," Rivera wrote to a court official. " … (She) was calculating and premeditating in her actions."
When Rivera interviewed the daughter, she cried a lot, but always composed herself. She carried herself like a grown woman who has survived a traumatic experience, and knows she must control her emotions. She seemed robbed of her youth.
The daughter was angry with her mother. But Rivera said she pleaded: I don't want my mother sent to prison. I want her to get help.
The mother suffered major depression, Travis said - because of her weight, her failed marriage, her husband's failed business, her father's death. Travis also diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from an incident in 1992 when the mother was propositioned by her father while he was dying.
The Internet provided a way for the mother to feel better about herself, Travis said. Women feel better when they feel attractive, she said, and many seek solace in chat rooms. They like the anonymity.
What began as an escape, Travis said, escalated into an addiction.
"Just like an alcoholic, she kept going deeper and deeper to avoid the pain of life," Travis said. "It became such an addictive process for her to get that fix. At that point, everything else became distant. The truth of what she was doing was not so clear to her. She lost sight of reality. Had she not been compulsively attached to the Internet, she's someone who would have never done anything like that to her daughter.
"People get obsessed with the Internet in a way that they lose themselves. I think that's what happened to her. And if it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone else."
He realizes people wonder how he could not have known, and he wonders that, too. He said he grew suspicious of his wife and a few times sneaked up behind her on the computer and read over her shoulder. Her computer conversations seemed innocent, woman to woman, about books, politics, life.
If you can't trust your spouse, he said, whom can you trust?
If you can't trust your mother, whom can you trust?
His work consumed him. He stayed on the road, long hours away from home. He thought he was giving his wife and daughter everything they needed: a nice house, Caribbean vacations, evenings out. When his daughter told him she and her mother weren't getting along, he said, he brushed it off as teen-age rebellion. You've got to try to work it out, he said he told her.
He has remarried and is living in another state.
The daughter left North Carolina a year after graduating from high school. She is 20 now, and in school. She is still recovering, the father said, and probably will struggle for the rest of her life. Some days, she telephones him, afraid to leave her home. Other days, she brims with energy.
No matter the day, she is firm about one thing: She wants nothing to do with her mother.
She looks like someone you might see shopping at the mall, a homemaker from the suburbs, volunteer at the school, member of the Junior League.
She once was all that.
In September 1999, despite objections from therapists who said it would harm the daughter even more, the mother was sent to prison. She spent 16 months in prison, another six months under curfew and will be on probation for 4 1/2 more years.
She hasn't seen her daughter in a year because her daughter doesn't want to see her. That, she said, is her greatest punishment.
"I want to see her more than anything in the world. But I am willing to stay out of her life, if that's the best thing for her. …
"I remember the day she was born. I looked at her and I thought to myself, I'll kill anybody who ever dares hurt this child. If I'd known then that I would be the one who would hurt her, I never would have drawn another breath. I would not have allowed myself to live if I'd known I was going to hurt her.
" … If I could take it back, if I could undo it, if I could make it better, there's not a thing I wouldn't give. I don't know how to say any more. They haven't invented the words that can express how sorry I am."
She said she'd like to apologize to the men, too. The businessman, the doctor and the salesman pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a minor, were placed on probation and registered as sex offenders. The teen-ager wasn't charged.
"I don't in my heart of hearts feel any of them would have come to Charlotte if they'd known," the mother said. "I feel horrible about bringing them into this. They thought I was 18 … I was a unique girl who talked about art and current affairs. We had what I felt were real relationships."
She now goes to group therapy once a week.
"People talk about forgiveness, that I have to learn to forgive myself. That is never going to happen. But I realize I have to learn to live with it. I am not talking about this publicly to purge my soul or offer excuses. I'm telling this story so that this never happens to somebody else's child. Maybe one person will recognize that they are heading down this path. … It's a warning."
September 1999: The mother, represented by lawyer James Gronquist, pleads guilty to felony child abuse and is sentenced to 15 to 27 months in prison and five years' probation, fined $500, ordered to pay $111 in court costs and complete 50 hours of community service.
March 2000: The pediatrician pleads guilty to taking indecent liberties with a minor and is placed on probation for two years, ordered to perform 72 hours of community service, fined $500, ordered to pay $111 in court costs and register as a sex offender. The businessman pleads guilty to taking indecent liberties with a minor and is placed on probation for a year, sentenced to 72 hours of community service, fined $300 and ordered to pay $111 in court costs and register as a sex offender.
April 2000: The salesman pleads guilty to taking indecent liberties with a minor and is placed on probation for a year, fined $115 and ordered to register as a sex offender.
Just wondering
Too bad someone didn't loan her a gun.
Can't be. The mom was watching her daughter have sex with men.
The pediatrician pleads guilty to taking indecent liberties with a minor and is placed on probation for two years, ordered to perform 72 hours of community service, fined $500, ordered to pay $111 in court costs and register as a sex offender
No mention of surrenduring his license. The doc's a pediatrician!! He works with kids, including teens. He could be banging his patients!!
Uh oh...I could be in the beginning phases of something here--
Thank the Lord that at least THAT didn't happen.
I also thought maybe it was going to be one of those ironic things where the "teenage boy" turned out to be a middle-aged fat slob.
There are no words to describe my thoughts about this piece of human debris who now wears a size 10.
That you can't believe how people describe themselves on the internet. And that there are some sick puppies out there.
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