Give & Take

Let's Talk (Continued)

About the photos, there are two issues. One is that a photograph may make it possible for someone to identify her, and I've seen photographs on some of these sites that are a little bit risqué for a young person.

They are definitely risqué, they definitely want to show off their sexual appeal, they want to show off their beauty and they sometimes put things on there just to show how outlandish they can be. They can put them with another woman, they can put them in unusual positions. She is totally convinced that everybody is doing this, so therefore what she's doing is just like anyone else. She's not showing off any body parts, which is true.

So she's fully clothed?

She's fully clothed like you'd see her on the street. It's just the way she's posing looks suggestive. Her facial expressions, her body expressions are very suggestive of 'hey look at me, I'm sexy, I'm cute, I'm wonderful.

But that isn't unusual for a 14-year-old girl to be that way, at school, for example?

Right. But they keep it to themselves. They don't expose the whole world. Plus, the reason they get these photos on there, it's not the photos I've taken or other people. They have these cell phones and it's from the cell phone cameras, and they can take them at any time and any place and put them on the Internet - and that's one of my concerns too, that these people with cell phones can sometimes take a picture of you in a revealing position and put it on their Web sites, and you can't do anything about it.

I'm sure you are a very responsible mother and probably always had the kids in seat belts or car seats and have lectured to them about drinking, etc. Do you feel as good a parent online as you are in the physical world?

Absolutely not. Because I have no control over it and I have no control over who she corresponds with and who she doesn't correspond with. I do trust her judgment, but at some point.. You know, I haven't heard any stories, and this is why she's not afraid. She hasn't heard any stories of anybody she's close with who has had something happen to them.

The one thing I will disclose from my interview with her is that she is aware that there are some young people that have been molested and exploited.

Definitely, but nobody that she knows who is her friend who has done it through the Internet at this moment. But maybe it happened that they don't even happen to it.

There are a lot of terrible things that have never happened to any of my friends but that doesn't keep me from worrying about them happening to me. Is that something about youth that is different from you and me?

Yes. I think so. I think they believe that they have no vulnerability. That they can do anything, that nothing's going to harm them. They're doing to live forever and ever.

I can see you're a responsible parent and I also know that you are the mom and sometimes parents say 'this is the way it's going to be because I'm the mom or I'm the dad.' What is it that's keeping you from fully implementing the power that you do have as her legal guardian?

Even if I could control her in the house. It's like you say to your child when you leave for school you can't wear anything revealing, you need to wear a sweat shirt but as soon as they leave the house they take the sweat shirt off and put on a shirt they bought from somebody else.

It's like the kid you see with the bicycle helmets around their handlebars.

Exactly. There's no way she goes out the door without her helmet on but as soon as she gets to that street corner she can take it off and I can't do anything about this.

How worried are you and what, if anything, do you think you might want to do about it?

What I would love to do is be able to put locks on there. I would love to have a parental lock when she's on there so that I'm on there doing it too, and also have more cases reported where kids have been exploited by putting their stuff on these places.

My daughter has never been to a chat room - we're very clear she couldn't go to a chat room, but we haven't heard anything specific about these things, and I think, if there are things that happen on these sites and those things were publicized, then I think maybe she'd be afraid about doing it a little more.