Time
It has been an unlikely legal wrangle from the start. First, a 14-year-old Austin, Texas, girl and her mother filed a $30 million lawsuit against MySpace.com, where the teenager claims she met a man who assaulted her. Now, the college student charged with the sexual assault also is considering suing the popular social networking site.
Of course he is considering suing. Remember he lied about his age and MySpace did nothing to stop him so MySpace is at fault. It gets better though. We find out something here that none of the original articles mentioned…The defense attorney for Pete Solis, the 19-year-old Texas community college student charged with sexually assaulting the girl dubbed “Julie Doe” in her lawsuit, told TIME that if the Texas courts accept the premise that MySpace is liable because the two met there, then his client also has a claim, since the alleged victim falsely portrayed herself on the webiste as 15 years old.
Now here we have the real crux of the alleged crime. If she hadn’t lied about her age her profile would have been hidden from this guy. Of course he is still outside the bounds of Texas law which is a three year sliding age scale. The odd thing is that if you look at both of their lies and consider the law then anything that happened would have been legal. And you have to wonder if a one year age difference would have stopped the girl from meeting to boy. He lied by one year and so did she. Her lie didn’t make her legal so homeboy is still a sick bastard but her lie made her vulnerable. I have to say that the blame still lies with her mother for not monitoring her activities more closely and that even if he hadn’t lied the victim’s stupidity likely wouldn’t have kept her from meeting someone a mere one year older.
“He’s been, in effect, just as much a victim — if not more,” says Adam Reposa, the attorney for Solis, who is facing up to 20 years in prison on charges of second degree felony sexual assault. Since the lawsuit against MySpace also names Solis as a defendant, Reposa said he will “cross-file” and also sue MySpace and its owner, News Corporation. “MySpace wasn’t there when they went to Whataburger. MySpace wasn’t there when they went to the movie and MySpace wasn’t there when they climbed in the backseat,” Reposa said. “Meeting on MySpace — if that alone is enough, then we can make the same claim for damages.”
His client wasn’t more of a victim as the girl’s lie still wouldn’t have made her legal. That’s total and complete bullshit and the lawyer knows it. The boy is the victim of a lie as is the girl. The fact remains he thought she was 15 which would have been illegal anyway. He’s still a sexual predator and should be locked up. The fact she lied about being 15 doesn’t change the legality of his actions even if you take his lie into account. He is not a victim in any sense except he thought he was screwing an illegal 15 year old and in reality he was doinking a 14 year old. Sick bastard!
The article goes on to state they are going to make it harder to be on a 14 or 15 year old’s friends list and hide the profiles of 15 year olds. All this will do is make them lie and say they are 16 or 17 which will open them up to people who are not predators but think they are talking to someone they could legally boink. Let’s face it there is nothing MySpace can do to make itself safe for 14 year olds. Parents are the ones that should be doing that and not MySpace. Their latest idea will likely get more kids in trouble and have the exact opposite effect if parents don’t watch their kids.