Kids have been running away from home since before Huck Finn, but computer-assisted disappearances have thrown parents into the twilight zone. A child may know not to talk to strangers at the mall, but in the faceless, anonymous world of online, talking to strangers is the whole idea. And sometimes those strangers can be predators. In the last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has recorded about a dozen cases of cyberspace pedophiles courting minors, While online services provide easy mechanisms to block chat-room access, many parents don’t know the safeguards exist. But would-be pedophiles know what parents don’t. “These guys are very manipulative. They sense the vulnerability and they play upon it,” says NCMEC president Ernie Allen.
Daniel’s parents believed their son had been lured by just such a phony friend. Damien continued to call the Montgomerys for a few days, finally revealing that Daniel was with him in San Francisco. They had reportedly met in a chat room for gays and lesbians. Damien said Daniel told him his devoutly Christian parents didn’t accept him. “He talked about how spoiled Daniel was,” Bill Montgomery told reporters. “Then he says what terrible parents we must have been.” The Montgomerys weren’t encouraged by the optional biography Damien supplied to AOL. His motto: “He who dies with the most boys . . . wins.”
The Montgomerys asked America On-line for Damien’s real name and address, but the company wouldn’t help without a court order. “The privacy restrictions prevent members from getting information about each other,” says AOL’s Pam McGraw. The police said Daniel, who ultimately e-mailed his parents that he was OK, was simply a runaway. It wasn’t until the Montgomerys went to the press that the authorities took the case seriously. And so did Damien. Apparently scared by the attention, he shipped Daniel to the San Francisco airport around midnight on June 3. Airport police found him asleep in the terminal at about 3:40 a.m. By June 5–his 16th birthday–Daniel was home. Damien, it turns out, was not a pedophile but another teenager. An FBI spokesman says he doubts charges will be filed.
Daniel says people shouldn’t blame AOL for what he did. “The risks are everywhere; the opportunities are everywhere,” he told The Seattle Times. “I’m still going to talk online.” That kind of talk scares Lisa Noble, who believes her daughter, Tara, 13, ran away from her St. Matthews, Ky., home on May 30 to meet an adult, online boyfriend. Noble says she even removed phone cords from the house to keep Tara out of the chat rooms, but nothing worked. Although Tara could have found just as much trouble with an old-fashioned pen pal, Noble blames AOL “probably 90 percent” for Tara’s disappearance. “I can’t tell you why; I just do.” When a child vanishes into cyberspace, the answers frequently defy words.
