I recently turned in a name to Facebook of a convicted sex offender who was using the social networking site and got a message back that they had dealt with the problem.
I happened upon him accidentally as I was looking at a friend's profile and saw that this guy, who spent five years in jail for sexual assault and was a classmate of mine from college, had established a profile.
I also know both of his victims--both 13 year olds at the time who would have been horrified to see him up on Facebook and communicating with other teen girls. I had no problem getting him thrown off of Facebook--I sent a link to his registry entry in my state's sex offender registry to Facebook and they put two and two together themselves.
I'm no crusader to get people thrown off any social networking sites.
But sex offenders are not supposed to be on social networking sites, yet there are tens of thousands of them using Facebook and Myspace, even risking going back to jail in some states.
Myspace has banned 90,000 convicted sex offenders from using their web site. Facebook hasn't released any information yet on how many they've barred. I know that they've barred one.
The general public needs to be aware that if they find someone that they know who are convicted sex offenders on a site like the two social sites discussed already, to contact those web sites and let them determine if the person involved falls under their guidelines, as forty-nine attorneys general have insisted that they do.
They're breaking the law by doing what they're doing and risking going back to jail. That isn't the sign of someone who is complying with the law and squaring their debt to society. If they were, they'd give Facebook and Myspace a WIDE berth and follow the instructions of their supervisors completely, no matter how unjustly they feel they're being treated.
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