FOLLOW UP THOUGHTS FROM A VICTIM OF BRAD DORSKY

Ever since Brad was exposed in January 2006, I have definitely become a different person.

On the one hand, I finally admitted some very painful and disturbing things that he said to me and that I had repressed in my memory for months because it hurt so much I couldn't deal with it. I finally was able to name what happened to me - I was indeed targeted by an abusive predator, and there was no love or caring on his part. It was difficult to accept at first, but I was able to let go of the anger and stop constantly blaming myself for his treatment of me.

On the other hand, I also felt a great deal of relief after exposing him. I was absolutely terrified to expose him at first because I knew he would eventually find it and would not be happy (and yes, he did eventually find it and sent me emails full of threats and false statements, so that I had to delete all of my old email accounts and start new ones, but that's a whole different story.. he sent them to EOPC too, to no effect - Fighter)...but the benefits of exposing his actions outweighed the fears.

I believe he is still doing the same thing online (and offline); even though, about 2 months after he was exposed, he deleted the profiles mentioned on EOPC (Yahoo, Myspace, almost all dating profiles). However, the band project that he participates in is currently very active, and I believe that he uses other screennames of which I'm unaware.

I know for a fact that there are other women being targeted by him or by other predators like him, and if one of these women reads my story, sees her own relationship in it, and decides to improve her life by leaving this predator and exposing his actions, that my exposure of Brad has not been in vain. It is especially important to me to speak out about what I went through to show that:

a) many young women like me (late teens-early twenties) are just as targeted by online predators as teenage girls are;

b) that abusive relationships can occur even in "non-traditional" situations (almost entirely over the Internet, as opposed to a typical romantic relationship) and

c)that all the "red flags" of potential abuse are easily seen even in such a "different" setting.

In retrospect, I do not regret this experience because it taught me so many valuable lessons about love, relationships, and human nature in general, and I am thankful to EOPC for allowing me to share my story! Thank you very much, and to everyone who reads the blog, I hope that my experience can educate and inform you, as well as give you strength or inspiration to expose any "cyberpaths" or online predators you may know of.

You are quite welcome!!! - Fighter

UPDATE - Mr. Dorsky has, a number of times, spent over 2-3 hours on this site reading (probably making notes) and clicking on the "report this blog" link at the top. He's out clicked to various sites on Slander, Libel and so on. Knock yourself out Mr. Dorsky... and any other cyberpath who comes here.

However, your time would be better spent in counseling to work on your empathy and need to use & manipulate vulnerable people online. Additionally, doing whatever it took to speak to the person(s) you have hurt. Making amends. Talking about why you did it and together working towards healing would be a much better use of your time & resources.

KNOWING THE DANGERS OF THE INTERNET

Knowing the dangers of the Internet
Just as in virtually all other aspects of life, there are persons who will use the Internet as a means to pursue criminal enterprise, some of which may be personally hazardous to other users. Our purpose in presenting this information is to make users aware of the possibility of criminal application and to foster the same type of healthy caution which we encourage all citizens to observe in their daily lives.

The Internet is a venue through which people otherwise extraordinarily distant and diverse may communicate with convenience. "Meeting" people on the Internet as correspondents is very easy; discerning any real information about these new acquaintances is more difficult.

Whether you are meeting people through HTML/VRML links, MOO/MUSH/MUD sites, commercial services, commercial or free chat lines, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels, Instant Messengers, online dating services, newsgroups, or in other ways, you should be aware of the possible dangers of interaction when it turns in a personal direction.

While danger from such links may not be readily apparent, consider that the persons with whom you are communicating:

1. May not be anything like they describe themselves, and may not even be the gender they claim.

2. May not be providing their real name or personal information, and may be using someone else's account or even a "hacked" account.

3. May not be located where they say; the individual whom you believe to be on the other side of the country or overseas may be two blocks away.

Or may be in Prison! CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ON INMATES WHO TROLL FOR VICTIMS ONLINE

Depending upon how you connect, your communication with a perfectly legitimate person may be seen or intercepted by a third party with much different motives.

Practice safe net; if you'd use or require your partner to use protection during sex, is it not similarly prudent to insist that someone you've met on the net provide a dependable means for reference-checking before you consider meeting in person?

Predators on the net thrive on the anonymity of the interface. Find a way to positively identify your potential romantic partner before you allow a meeting. Where do they work? Can you call them at work? Where do they live and what is their telephone number?

ARE THEY TELLING YOU THE TRUTH??

Original Article Here

INTERNET IS SET UP TO BYPASS SOCIAL NORMS

On the Net, Love Really Is Blind

By JOYCE COHEN

EVERYONE has heard those amazing stories of online love - the intimate correspondence, the heart-pounding first meeting, the walk down the aisle - all supporting the notion that it can happen.

Just don't expect it to.

The reality, for those seduced by the dream of finding the perfect mate on the Internet, is that the success stories are the rare and serendipitous exceptions. When it comes to the search for lasting love, psychologists are finding that chat rooms, message boards and especially online dating services may have built-in mechanisms that make any offscreen romance very likely to fail.

The primary difficulty with the process of meeting online, according to some psychologists, is that there is little similarity between a disembodied e-mail consciousness and a real-life encounter. As a result, it is impossible to tell how two people, no matter how much they like each other in a computer context, will get along in the real world.

But the bigger problem is that online correspondence makes people feel they have a strong connection. The typical pattern is one of e-mail exchanges that draw the cybersuitors into a flurry of correspondence, an epistolary romance featuring an enormous emotional intensity that fizzles abruptly upon the first meeting.

"Most people you encounter, online or off, are those you will not be interested in," said Dr. Joseph Walther, an associate professor of communication, social psychology and information technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., who studies online relationships. "What's different about the Internet is surprise," surprise at how feelings blossom so quickly, he said. "The medium sucks you in."

Joe Teig, 42, of Manhattan knows how hard it is to find lasting love. For three years, he has been giving fate a helping hand by scouring two of the Web's biggest dating sites, match.com and matchmaker.com. As he has gained experience with the process, he has lowered his expectations.

"Early on, I would get all excited; I would be meeting a girl," said Mr. Teig, who lives on the Upper West Side. "Now, it's like an appointment."

He estimated that he has contacted "hundreds" of women through the Internet. Only about a third of the women he contacts write back. He ends up speaking on the phone with about a third of those, and meets perhaps three- quarters of those.

All told, he said he has had about 100 meetings, about 10 of which led to a second date. Five relationships lasted several weeks but eventually faded. Still, he remains hopeful.

"I've invested so much time and energy because it is important to me, not because my mom wants wallet-sized photos of her grandchildren," said Mr. Teig, who works as a paralegal and pursues singing and acting jobs on the side. "Otherwise, I wouldn't be subjecting myself to hundreds of doltish profiles about candlelight and fine dining and walks on the beach."

What did he learn? "You can't tell anything until you meet," he said. Though it would seem that someone likable online would be likable offline, Mr. Teig found no connection. "It's not looks," he said. "It's more of a vibe."

Social psychologists have already figured that out. "What you lose with text is the dynamic of the behavior," said Dr. Jon E. Grahe of Monmouth College in Monmouth, Ill. Words are largely irrelevant in determining rapport, he said. Nonverbal communication is what counts. "With nonverbals, there's motion and activity."

He conducted a study in which 100 people were paired off in opposite-sex couples and given a simple task to perform. Afterward, the participants rated the rapport they developed during their conversation. Dr. Grahe then had observers try to determine the rapport between the participants either by reading a transcript of their conversations, by listening to an audiotape or by watching a videotape with no sound.

The observers most accurately assessed the rapport between the couples by viewing the soundless videotape. They least accurately assessed the rapport by reading a transcript. In short, the nonverbal communication was more telling than a written form of what they had actually said.

"You can't hear proximity," Dr. Grahe said, referring to the deficiencies of a written conversation, like an e-mail message. Nor can you perceive things like eye contact, gestures, smiles and smirks. "Words are ambiguous out of context," he added.

Rita Kane found that out when she signed up with SocialNet.com after separating from her husband nearly a year ago.

"E-mail is completely devoid of all the nuances that make understanding transcend words," said Ms. Kane, of Orlando, Fla. "Silence itself has meaning in real life, and that's also missing."

"I have met some people I have thoroughly enjoyed communicating with," said Ms. Kane, 47, who recently reconciled with her husband. "Upon meeting in person, I was disappointed each time."

Statistics from one online dating site are hardly encouraging to would-be online suitors. Match.com said it had enrolled five million members in its six-year history, with 1,100 confirmed marriages (and 45 babies) resulting. That figures out to about one in 2,270 members who have met and married through the site, or 0.045 percent.

Another dating site, uDate.com, has been running for a year. According to a company spokesman, the site has had 1.2 million members with 75 confirmed marriages among them.

Of course, it may not be fair to use marriage as the measure of a happy outcome. Match.com says that 520,000 people have left the service "after finding the relationship they were seeking," but there is no way to verify that number. And the service has no figures on how many people returned after being dumped, or how many suffered from divorces or broken engagements.

"I would ask, `What yields better results?' " said Cindy Hennessy, president of match.com. "Going to the grocery store or the bookstore at peak hour results in exactly zero meetings. People simply don't know where to go to meet."

Storm King, a doctoral student at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto, Calif., said online romances create a false intimacy among couples.

"Text-based relationships are very deceptive," Mr. King said. "People know only the good stuff, and none of the bad. The missing pieces are filled in based on hope, not on reality."

Mr. King has an example from his own life. In 1993, while living in Hilo, Hawaii, he met a woman from Michigan through an online bulletin board. Three weeks later, he paid for her to fly out to meet him.

"She wore heavy eye mascara, and I was a West Coast hippie," Mr. King said. "I don't date women who wear mascara." Their relationship ended after she returned to Michigan.

A week later, he met his wife, Nancy, standing in line at the post office. "It was just before Valentine's Day," he said. "It was a long line."

Most people meeting online start by emphasizing their good points, said Dr. Walther at Rensselaer.

"You get the sensitivity and thoughtfulness," he said. "You don't get the waistline, hairline, fidgets, twitches and interruptions. Our study showed if people are communicating with someone they believe to be attractive, they edit and rewrite more than if they don't care whether they are impressing them."

The correspondence becomes a kind of upward spiral - a "feedback loop of flattering, desirable messages that get intensified through the channel," he said.

"If you meet spontaneously," Dr. Walther continued, "you build your impression from real data, not from an idealized basis. It is nearly impossible for people to live up to such an artificially high, idealized range of expectations."

Mr. Teig admits that he has found himself getting pulled in. "It's a trap," he said. "Your imagination fills in the blanks with exactly what you want. You don't learn more with more rounds of writing. All you do is invest more emotional energy, for which there is no payoff."

Another claim of some dating services is that online suitors tend to be more forgiving of small flaws. Trish McDermott, Match.com's vice president for romance, said that members have told her "they feel a friendship or kinship" from meeting on the site, and "they are less likely or willing to reject someone based on minor physical imperfection."

Psychologists don't buy it. In fact, psychologists say, online dating can make people less forgiving, as they are fostered by a kid-in-a-candy-store effect that makes them more willing to bail out of something promising.

"People will reject people they would ordinarily be O.K. with if they met them at a party," said Dr. Stanley Woll, a psychology professor at California State University in Fullerton, who has studied dating services for 20 years. "Here, there is always somebody down the line who is better."

Mr. Teig said he has fallen victim to that, and worries that the illusion of opportunity - those limitless relationships waiting in the wings - makes him too hasty to flee.

"You may have an O.K. date, and rather than invest the energy that you might otherwise, there's a new person writing you a note," he said. "Maybe she'll be better. I have found myself thinking: She was kind of nice, but she's not my only option. I can go back to the bin. It benefits the person you haven't met. It's flawed logic, but it has happened to me."

Dr. Woll also questions whether many people using dating services are promising candidates for long-term relationships. There is no way of gauging whether people are looking for a lifetime mate, a one-night stand, a free dinner or something to do on Saturday. These services are so low-cost and user-friendly that it's effortless to sign on.

In favor of the Internet, Mr. King said, "it is set up to bypass a lot of social norms."

"In real life," he said, "you don't talk to strangers. Online, you are encouraged to talk to strangers. The Internet lets people have relationships they could not have any other way."

And he doesn't deny there are some success stories of couples who met online - just as there are some success stories of couples who met at the post office.

Learn Who's Lying Next to You!

A best friend's well-intentioned advice may not always be the best when it comes to dating. Licensed California Private Investigator and DateSmart founder, Carmen Naimish reminds dating singles to investigate their dates.

A young, beautiful single mother in Northern California believed she had found Mr. Right. She had met a charming and handsome man who appeared to have it all and claimed he wanted to share his life with her. Unlike many singles, they didn't meet on-line. The two were introduced by more traditional means by the woman's best friend.

With the promises of Mr. Right in sight, neither the woman nor her best friend recognized the red flags prominent in Scott Peterson's behavior. Peterson lied--and many believed his lies. Scott Peterson's formal death sentence is scheduled, not for his lies, but for the double murder of the very family he claimed did not exist.

Most men and women desire to find the right mate, to be in love, and to live happily ever after. On-line dating offers a means to achieve these results and, indeed, many have found success using this method. However, people need to be aware that their desires can mask a clear perception, cloud judgment, and result in a less than desirable dating outcome.

"There are red flags that offer clues regarding suspicious behavior, and these red flags are the same whether you've met on-line or by traditional means," Naimish says. If Amber Frey had sought further information on the red flags apparent in her relationship with Scott Peterson, she would have learned early on that he was married and that he and his wife owned a home together in Modesto.

A few red flags to consider - if you answer yes to any of these questions, you should seek more information about your mate:

· Does it seem too good to be true?

· Is there something you can't quite put your finger on?

· Are they secretive or elusive regarding their past?

· Do they blame others for their problems?

· Have they asked you for money or use of credit cards?

In a January, 2005 Wall Street Journal article, Sue Shellenbarger writes "Latest Dating Headache - Many women are surprised to find their earning power has become a magnet for the opposite sex." In other words, if you're a good catch, you're an even bigger target for scam artists. Be careful.

The availability of on-line sources of information may appear to make the investigation process easier but typically does not provide all the answers. "Internet savvy clients sometimes try these methods then contact DateSmart because they've not found the information they seek. DateSmart provides personal service, an analysis of the findings and an explanation of what the information means to you," Naimish said.

Men are equally vulnerable to these dating issues. Single professionals, baby boomers and retired persons, all who have worked hard to own their homes or businesses may not have time to conduct their own thorough research. Many have contacted DateSmart for these services. "Most tell me 'I'm so glad I did,'" says Naimish. Others say, "I only wish I had known about you sooner."

For more information, visit www.DateSmart.com or call 1-888-84-CHECK.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

OUR FIRST PREDATOR OF THE MONTH - Dr. Phil ReAirs Broadcast!

Tune in to Dr. Phil on Friday, August 11, 2006 for a show on con men...and bigamists. This is a re-run of the original show that aired on December 12, 2005.

As a result of the original airing, serial bigamist and online predator - Ed Hicks was arrested in North Carolina immediately after the show aired when a viewer recognized him as the man who had just proposed to her sister.

Hicks was sentenced for felony bigamy in May and received a five-year prison sentence; four years were suspended. He will be out in January 2007!

Post a message on Dr. Phil's message board after the show!

Check the Local Listings for the time and channel in your area.

Man shocked his photo is part of online dating scam

DENVER - Brit Clousing is a software developer and former model. He is also an unwitting participant in an online dating scam.

His picture is being used throughout the U.S. on online dating sites without his permission and until last week without his knowledge.

"It's an off-shoot of the original Nigerian scam," according to Lon Garner of the Secret Service. The original scam, based out of Nigeria, asked people to invest in oil and gas, and then took the money with no return on the investment. That evolved into sweepstakes-type scams where you had to send in money to win. This new version of the scam targets online dating sites.

Clousing found out his picture was being used after a 9Wants to Know investigation that aired last week. Clousing's picture was used to try to bilk a Denver woman out of $6,200.

"I feel badly about those being victimized," Clousing said. "I was shocked."

Another victim contacted 9NEWS because he'd been swindled out of $4,450 in various fees by a woman from Africa. He didn't want his name or picture used, but wanted the information out so it does not happen to others.

The problem the victims have told us is the hope that the online e-mails might actually lead to a solid relationship.

If you're registered with online dating and someone asks you for money, experts say you should hit delete.

If you have what you think is this type of mailing, where someone asks you for money and you haven't made the original contact, send the information to the U.S. Secret Service in Denver. You can contact them at 303-866-1010.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE