An Important Message from Edee
Reprinted from her email sent to the entire Raskob community earlier this week.
Dear Raskob Families,
Below is a letter that was sent out to Corpus Christi and Julia Morgan parents this past weekend regarding an online predator. Please read and speak with your children regarding the importance of online safety!
I know that you support Raskob in reminding our students to be careful about who they are communicating with online. We, too, had Officer DeWarns present to Raskob parents and students earlier in the year, but it is an ongoing and team-effort in supervising appropriate online and multi-media communication. Please make sure that you monitor all of your children's online activity.
Thank you,
Edee
"Dear Parents,
We learned this week of an online sexual predator who is targeting young girls, pretending to be a celebrity. One of our girls thought she had "won" a celebrity's phone number through Vine. The celebrity in this case was Nash Grier. The predator enticed the girl, step by step, into sending him more and more explicit photos, asking questions considered textbook for someone trying to glean information for prurient reasons.
A police report has been made; and since this specific predator has a Virginia address, the FBI have also been notified. In terms of where the girl lives or goes to school, the texting stopped with the predator knowing the girl had a 510 area code, and nothing beyond that.
It is another reminder that girls during middle school years are not yet developmentally ready to make this kind of discerning choice. And why wouldn't a middle school girl want to directly communicate with a celebrity she likes? The Internet and various media expose the girls to so many positive opportunities, but the girls need guidance, support, and oversight by the adults in their lives as they make choices in an online adult world.
Before this incident came to light, this girl thought Officer Steve DeWarns, who presented to girls and parents in the fall regarding media safety, and her teachers were just overstating the warnings about giving out information online or via text, etc. She simply did not believe it. This is not an atypical viewpoint for students who are of middle school age.
Please check in with your daughters [children] so we can partner in preventing them from falling not only into this particular scheme, but also other media schemes that put them in harm's way."
