School Bullying Council

Story Published:
May 10, 2011 at 10:54 AM PDT

Story Updated:
May 10, 2011 at 5:29 PM PDT

SEATTLE — A 12-year-old girl who prosecutors say sought revenge by bullying a former friend with her own Facebook account pleaded not guilty on Monday.

The girl has been charged in juvenile court with first-degree computer trespass and cyberstalking.

The girl, along with an 11-year-old girl also charged in the case, were classmates at Issaquah Middle School with the 12-year-old victim.

The three were friends but had a falling out that prosecutors say spilled onto Facebook.

The two girls who have been charged allegedly logged into the victim’s Facebook account and edited pictures to depict a knife pointing at her head, drew devils horns and added word bubbles reading “I’m a slut.”

Using the victim’s account, the girls posted comments on other profiles saying “Have sex with me,” and soliciting men for oral sex.

“I was hurt and sad and very angry,” Leslie Cote said in an interview last month.

KOMO News normally does not identify crime victims, but Leslie and her family chose to discuss the incident that she says left her crying and unable to sleep for weeks.

“Some people looked at me differently, and then judged me differently now because of what happened,” she said.

Leslie said the former friends had access to her Facebook account because she had accidentally saved the password in the web browser on one of their computers.

When police confronted the two girls, both allegedly admitted they accessed Leslie’s Facebook account without permission because they were mad at her.

“This case reveals the dark side of social media sites used by young people,” King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said in a news release. “Many kids think that on a social media site that their actions will be anonymous and that they are free to use it as weapon to bully, harass, and intimidate another person.”

The 11-year-old girl who allegedly took part in the scheme has not been arraigned. A hearing has been scheduled for later this month for a judge to determine whether the girl understands that her actions were wrong.

According to the King County Prosecutor’s Office, state law presumes that children age 8 to 11 are not capable of committing crimes.

The judge also ordered the 12-year-old not to have contact with the victim, either in person or online.

If convicted as charged, the girls could serve up to 30 days in juvenile detention.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/121577664.html

Nafeesa Onque’s Facebook page had all the trimmings
of a teenage girl’s Internet home: Her cell phone
number, favorite movies, relationship status and photo
albums were just a click away, lined up neatly beneath a
smiling photograph of the pretty 15-year-old.

But the person who built the profile was nothing like the
Newark teen who was a popular cheerleader for years and
spends most of her time working toward a Rutgers University
scholarship. Someone else was behind the computer screen,
someone who stole Nafeesa’s online identity and was
using it to destroy her real one.

For nearly three years, an online bully plagued Nafeesa,
following her across the social networking spectrum,
hounding the girl and her friends on MySpace, Facebook and a
video chat service called ooVoo, according to police and her
family. In 2009, the bully started impersonating Nafeesa,
according to police and relatives, using several fake
profiles to hold her online personality hostage until police
tracked down the impostor last month.

Nafeesa’s mother, Karima, worked relentlessly to end
the harassment, pleading with Internet providers, school
officials and Newark police.

There were momentary victories, but every time the mother
managed to get a page deleted, a new one would spring up
within days.

The tormentor used varying online identities. A fake
Nafeesa, calling herself “Nafeesa McPomPoms Onque
Onque,” sent “friend” requests to dozens of
city teens as well as family members on Facebook.

Shortly after accepting an invitation from
“Nafeesa,” friends found their inboxes and
Facebook “walls” flooded with threats, sexually
explicit comments and profanity-laced tirades, police and
family said.

One girl became so angry she attacked Nafeesa, striking her
in the face outside a city school last March. After years of
attacks, the impostor was caught, but Nafeesa’s ordeal
and the family’s frustrated attempts to help her speak
to the larger challenges facing law enforcement as
cyber-bullying becomes a more visible national problem,
experts say.

“No one knows where or how to report cyber-bullying.
They just don’t. I am that person. I do this all the
time, and apparently I am failing and all of us are
failing,” said Parry Aftab, executive director of
WiredSafety, the country’s oldest and largest nonprofit
Internet safety group. “When it happens, everyone
thinks they are the first person it ever happened to.”

Aftab said Nafeesa’s experience may have been
harrowing, but it’s also fairly common.

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