[CHANDLERS WISH]

Well...until last night when she called me. She was bawling her eyes out, and then told me that she's accessed his Facebook and e-mail account...

Just because she confided in "you", doesn't mean that you are obligated to keep a promise..Most certainly, you may lose a friend but, he has a serious illness, serious...and it's like an addiction, he will find a way to access, a computer, this is destroying young girls minds, maybe they find it funny, but then when he states "you must find a day when your Mum isn't in the house", may have scared a couple of them.....

Anyone could have reported his "facebook name, one of those girls", to the Police...unfortunately some secrets have to be left in the closet....maybe this is one, that you have to act upon and then "suggest" it could have been one of the teenagers and live with that...

His parents are covering, hoping....She is covering hoping...And you are covering, hoping....and someone out there will be hoping HE never finds them...

It's not a game...unfortunately....He needs to be on file and he needs help.......

CW

[Nira]

PLEASE GO TO THE POLICE! Stop making excuses! It's not about punishment it's about protecting these girls. You're looking out for your friend's interests, by doing that you are more interested in protecting this man than you are about protecting these girls. Your friend is being manipulated by this man, she is not thinking clearly. GO TO THE POLICE, make sure these girls are protected.

[FlowerFairy]

I don't believe that religous beliefs should excuse people from the law. Go to the police. A court should be the one to decide what happens, they know about these people, about the chances of recommitting, etc.

Go to the police, seriously. Also, email service providers + facebook probably still have the data on their servers. The police can just let them know about the enquiry and ask for that data and they'll probably be able to easily hand it over.

[Colorado]

Though she may consider this to be an honorable and forgiving gesture, I also believe it to be wrong.

If it were I in her or your situation, I personally could not live with myself knowing that (God Forbid) some child gets assaulted by this nutcase, and she is injured/killed. I don't know of many who could.
Have you asked yourself that question? Can you live with knowing that "you could have done something about it, but didn't" because she asked you not to turn him in? Could she?

Is it a hard thing to do? Absolutely. Is it the right thing to do? ABSO-FLIPPIN- UTELY!

As Nira said, her focus thus far has been for him; and forgive me for saying this, but I'd much rather see him in prison or at least on the offenders list, and some young 14 year old safe.
I'd personally rather see any child abuser/woman abuser/sex offended with a bullet between their eyes, but that is another post.

[CHANDLERS WISH]

ABSO-FLIPPIN- UTELY!

Can I use that?

I think when you get not one person saying,(including yourself) your doing the right thing by withholding this information, you know what you have to do....

Just wanted to add though, you also ensure your safety, ensure that the Police are aware that this man, has commented about "Mum not being home", how dangerous he may be is anyone's guess...I'm not trying to scare you, rather, let you know that you are JUST as important as those other young ladies out there, in this World.

CW

[Alexandra]

~*~* UPDATE *~*~

Okay, after reading all this and talking to my family, I knew I had to go to the police. After the holidays were over I knew I would. So today I walked into the station and after a while they brought someone out to talk to me.

Well, because he deleted a lot of evidence before I had a chance to save screen shots of it, they said they can't actually retrieve it. And because I accessed the account illegally, apparently it won't hold up in court (and I'm lucky they didn't put me under arrest). When I asked if they could recover deleted messages, the police officer said, "no, we can't. Everyone thinks we can, but it's not true." They said they would call and let me know if they have anything they can do, but right now I'm a little peeved. It didn't help that I didn't know the guy's address, and that my friend will not testify against him at all.

What's even more sick is that she's back together with this guy and making a big deal about how "happy" she is.

Can I beat my head against a wall yet?

[CHANDLERS WISH]

Nup...cause all walls come down

Don't you think it's going to peeve them off that they will monitor her whereabouts, therefore obtain an address for him, sit on it a bit, until they can gather fresh information?

I think so...

I'm sorry regarding accessing an account illegally, I don't think any of us thought about that, at the time we replied, however, the fact that they let that slip, to me, means there will be an ending with this..You did the right thing...

CW

[jns]

~*~* UPDATE *~*~

Okay, after reading all this and talking to my family, I knew I had to go to the police. After the holidays were over I knew I would. So today I walked into the station and after a while they brought someone out to talk to me.

Well, because he deleted a lot of evidence before I had a chance to save screen shots of it, they said they can't actually retrieve it. And because I accessed the account illegally, apparently it won't hold up in court (and I'm lucky they didn't put me under arrest). When I asked if they could recover deleted messages, the police officer said, "no, we can't. Everyone thinks we can, but it's not true." They said they would call and let me know if they have anything they can do, but right now I'm a little peeved. It didn't help that I didn't know the guy's address, and that my friend will not testify against him at all.

What's even more sick is that she's back together with this guy and making a big deal about how "happy" she is.

Can I beat my head against a wall yet?

You still did the right thing. Maybe it was too late to recover enough of the files. Maybe the police didn't have computer specialists. After all, since they are upholding the law, they cannot learn by hacking. But if a computer is taken to a competent specialist and it's been just a little while since the site was looked at, a lot can be recovered. I have done it and I know how to dumpster dive on my computer. If I was looking to recover everything, I would get recovery software. Oh, and I would copy the hard drive using a bootable CD or USB stick. I used to carry the bootable USB stick everywhere. I could go on to a HDD and leave no tracks.

If you have rights to the access point (your friend had those probably) you can legally use a sniffer to capture the entire data stream from the internet session. Then you are not using unauthorized access, if he is the one logging on. Many things, if not most are not encrypted (authentication usually is) due to the fact that the sending end has to encrypt also and that puts a tremendous load on a server. The receiving end has to decrypt, also, possibly requiring a lot of computing power. And a sniffer is not even half of what can be done legally.

It's always crazy to see the bad guys having more rights than the good guys.

Hopefully the police will keep an eye on him, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[x.st.angel.x]

im glad you went to the police, i have a bit of a strange suggestion though, is it possible that he has these underage girls as his friend on facebook? i ask because that could be a way to access the proof? by maybe informing the police of who he was speaking to?

[Colorado]

You still did the right thing. Maybe it was too late to recover enough of the files. Maybe the police didn't have computer specialists. After all, since they are upholding the law, they cannot learn by hacking. But if a computer is taken to a competent specialist and it's been just a little while since the site was looked at, a lot can be recovered. I have done it and I know how to dumpster dive on my computer. If I was looking to recover everything, I would get recovery software. Oh, and I would copy the hard drive using a bootable CD or USB stick. I used to carry the bootable USB stick everywhere. I could go on to a HDD and leave no tracks.

If you have rights to the access point (your friend had those probably) you can legally use a sniffer to capture the entire data stream from the internet session. Then you are not using unauthorized access, if he is the one logging on. Many things, if not most are not encrypted (authentication usually is) due to the fact that the sending end has to encrypt also and that puts a tremendous load on a server. The receiving end has to decrypt, also, possibly requiring a lot of computing power. And a sniffer is not even half of what can be done legally.

It's always crazy to see the bad guys having more rights than the good guys.

Hopefully the police will keep an eye on him, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Absolutlely this info can be recovered - even after being deleted (excpetion is a GOVERNMENT SECURITY WIPE). Maybe they didn't have the resources required to do it, but it can be done. As you said jns - I've also done it on many many occasions!

Sorry to hear they weren't willing to follow up on this - I guess it'll take a tragic event to instate the investigation. What a shame.