DETROIT — The Detroit mother opened her 13-year-old daughter’s
bedroom closet late Sunday night and found a surprised set of eyes staring
back: a 19-year-old man her daughter had met on Facebook.
“I said, ‘Who are you?’ and he looked at her,” the
32-year-old mother said Monday of her daughter, who was sitting on a bed across
the room.
Detroit police spokesman John Roach said Monday night that
Donald Hunter of Detroit is in the Wayne County (Mich.) Jail and that the Wayne
County Prosecutor’s Office approved seeking a warrant to charge Hunter with two
felony counts of criminal sexual conduct, punishable by up to 15 years in
prison.
Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor’s Office,
said she could not identify the suspect Monday night because she did not know
if the warrant had been signed by a magistrate. If so, the suspect could be
arraigned as early as Tuesday.
The girl told investigators they had sex in the bedroom of
her home, where she hid him Saturday night and Sunday until her mother found
Hunter and detained him until police arrived, police said.
On Monday, the girl’s mother heatedly explained that she
tried to stop the relationship after the pair met online last year. She thought
the boy was just 15. She canceled her daughter’s Internet service, shut off the
girl’s cell phone and pulled her out of one school for another.
As her mother spoke, the girl softly called the man her
first boyfriend.
“I hope I get blamed for it and he don’t go to
jail,” the quiet teen said.
The case has those who deal with troubled teens again waving
the warning flags about children using the Internet and Web sites like Facebook
and MySpace.
“This case illustrates that we must be diligent about
monitoring what our children are doing on the Web,” Wayne County
Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Monday.
Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans said in a statement Monday
that “an iron-clad condition” of a child being allowed to use the
Internet should be for the parent to know the passwords to their child’s e-mail
and social networking accounts.
Birmingham psychologist Aldona Valivonis, who specializes in
treating adolescents, said Facebook gives users the ability to create the
person they want to be — accurate or not.
“I think Facebook really opens people up to danger. You
don’t know who’s e-mailing your or writing on your wall,” she said.
“They just say ‘I want to be your friend.’ … But they’re not necessarily
all your friends.”
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
