For the sake of your teen

In 2002, a young girl was kidnapped from her home, assaulted, and murdered by a man she met in an online chatroom. He was from San Diego. She was a neighbor of mine, and what happened that awful day 4 years ago still haunts us all.

I remember getting phone calls from people I know, that knew her, asking if I'd seen her. Had I seen any strangers in the area? Did I know anything at all? No, I didn't. They lived less than a mile from us. We are on the hill and they in the valley. But a thick woods separates us and I neither saw nor heard anything that dreadful day.

She was only 14. A 7th grade student at a nearby school, and good friends of a friend of my younger daughter. She had lost her mother just 5 years before this terrible incident took her life, so I can only imagine the excrutiating grief her father felt.

I don't know if she used MySpace or not. Only that she used an online chat and met this monster there. If your child uses MySpace or any other internet community, please be sure and monitor them closely. While it may seem like you don't trust your child or you're invading their privacy, the plain truth is you may save your child's very life.

You can completely monitor MySpace chat. The available program records and tells you if they update their site, communicate with others, and even records both sides of a chat they may be involved with. It records everything your child does there. Do consider this valuable service for the sake of your child. Don't let an internet predator deceive your innocent boy or girl to where they wind up in an obituary.

I hope and pray that other chat programs will soon be monitored in a similar way.

Please remember this girl's family in your prayers this month. They surely need them since this is the 4th anniversary of her passing.