Morgan Jones, the 27 year old Alabama WoW player that was arrested last year on charges of kidnapping a 14 year old girl has been sentenced to nine years in prison. He was sentenced for the apparently lesser charge of travel for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct. Upon release he will be monitored for a further 50 years to make sure he doesn’t make a habit of having sex with children.
Now before I get a little bit annoyed at the focus of around 90% of the news coverage on this particular issue let me just say that I completely agree with the sentence that he received and think he is an awful awful man. Any guy that drives across the country to help a 14 year old run away whilst also getting her drunk and having sex with her is, to put it simply wrong in the head.
There have been two particular problems in the way that the media has focused on this case; the first is that the man and girl in question met online in World of Warcraft and that this is relevant to the fact that he is a sick and twisted individual. The second is that at no point is any blame really placed upon the girl’s parents for not watching what their child is doing on the internet.
The fact that he plays WoW is no more sinister than someone enjoying a sport or a TV show and should not be a massive point of contention in the media. It certainly wasn’t treated as such in the trial and anyone who references it as evidence of his warped mind deserves a kick in the nads.
What annoys me even more however is that the parents have not accepted any responsibility for the fact that their child was having cyber-sex with Jones in an online game and then proceeded to run away with him and have the non cyber variety. Surely anyone with half a brain would keep an eye on their child’s browsing habits and make sure this sort of thing couldn’t happen. At least with an issue like this being publicised not only in gaming media but national media too more parents will keep an eye on their kid’s internet usage. Hopefully preventing, or at least reducing the likelihood of things like this happening to anyone else.
Via: Kotaku
iTunes
There seems to be a worldwide culture of blame nowadays. Just recently someone tried to blame Fight Club for themselves blowing up a building.
This reminds me of that woman who tried to blame her child jumping off a roof on him imitating a wresting game, but it wouldn’t have happened if the parent was paying attention to their kid, and not going shopping. This is exactly the same. The idea of games as a harmless, child’s activity has to stop, and people have to be educated about the very real problems of online interaction. I’d wager that the parents of the girl wouldn’t let her use chatrooms like that, but have managed to ignore or not understand their daughter’s online use.
@TheGyro
I wrote an article about that kid jumping off the balcony for social studies! Neat!