Mom Who Used Son's Facebook Account Found Guilty Of Online Harassment
from the careful-what-you-post dept
We're somewhat skeptical of the various "cyberharassment" laws out there, as they leave themselves wide open to interpretation (often in dangerous ways). In April, we wrote about one case involving a son who sued his mother for harassment after she used his Facebook account (she went to the computer and he had not logged out) to post angry messages on his wall, pretending to be him, and then changed his password and locked him out of the account. (As a quick aside: I just checked, and as with most online services, Facebook appears to require you to type in your old password before you can enter a new one -- so I'm wondering how she had access to his existing password...).Either way, Rose M. Welch alerts us to the news that the mother has been found guilty, told to pay $435, given a 30-day suspended jail sentence, and ordered to take both anger management and parenting classes. Clearly, what she did was wrong, though I do wonder if it really reaches the level of harassment. Some of the judge's reasoning also is a bit suspect. Part of the reasoning for the guilty ruling was that the mother had left messages on her son's voicemail that included curse words. The son is 17, so it's not like he hasn't heard those words before -- and the mother insisted that this was part of their normal joking banter. The judge, however, declared it "totally, completely inappropriate." Now, I'm not going to say that leaving voicemail messages to your children with curse words is a good parenting technique, but it still seems a bit extreme to use that as evidence of harassment.
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What changed my mind about this
Certainly all the evidence seems to indicate she's a weirdo, and the court is pretty much telling her to leave her son alone.
Keep in mind she has ceded guardianship of the boy to his grandparents, which has a bearing as well.
IMO, that act of posting on your son's FB account isn't harassment in and of itself, same as phoning someone isn't harassment in and of itself, but can be if it forms a pattern of harassment, as seems to be the case here.
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The 'busting an adult' double standard
1) an adult doing it
2) one of the parents
it's OK? What a load of crap. It's the typical, 'kids only have the rights adults decide to give them' mentality. If we wish to teach children to respect the law, we must face the consequences when we ourselves do not.
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So, in this case I have to agree with the jury. If they weren't having physical contact and it was messages he could easily block or ignore, then I would disagree. But this was a little closer to home than that.
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way to think here is
they d get hacking charges too which are federal prison time kinda stuff
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totally off subject
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Password availability
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Again...
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Re: Again...
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> so I'm wondering how she had access to his existing password...
With a web browser like Google Chrome, it's also possible to view all those passwords, if you know how.
About the case itself... It just shows bad parenting, for which the mother has been punished with a fine and suspended sentence. It's fair, considering she's mentally abusing her own child. (Who is still a minor, btw.)
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Too many laws!
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you do not need to know the old password
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