Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Online hookup: 16-year-old found safe with 42-year-old

Baraka_Guru · 01-01-2010, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Barrie boy, 16, found safe in Orillia with woman, 42
No charges will be laid after pair meet following online relationship

Toronto Star

A 16-year-old romantic, looking for comfort and kinship online, meets an older woman who shares his love of role-playing video games.

He doesn't fit in at school, she's disenchanted with her marriage.

They connect through World of Warcraft, in the fantasy world of Azeroth.

For the next year, as their Internet courtship goes on, he's looking for a simpatico soulmate; she's looking for, what? Escape?

Their role-playing romances blur into reality when the woman flies across the continent to meet the boy, who, both enthralled and defiant, disobeys his parents and runs off with his elder admirer for a romantic rendezvous.

On one hand, it's the stuff of schoolboy fantasy.

But for the family of Andrew Kane, the Barrie teen who ran away on a two-day sojourn with a 42-year-old Texas woman, it was a living nightmare.

"I don't know how to explain it to you, but perhaps this will show you not only the commitment we have to each other, but also that your fears of her are ill-found," Andrew wrote to his mother in a letter left behind in the boy's bedroom.

Heartfelt and earnest, the letter acknowledges his mother's fears and pleads for understanding.

"This letter tells me he's concerned that I'm going to be worried," said Marlene Kane, the boy's mother.

She found the note shortly after hearing the front door of the family home close around 1:50 a.m. Wednesday. She ran, frantic, shouting her son's name up and down the dark and empty streets.

Barrie police asked for the public's help to locate the teen, who was believed to be with a woman named Lauri Price, a married, mother of four from Houston, Tex.

They alleged Price rented a gold 2009 Toyota Corolla from Pearson airport on Monday and drove to Barrie to meet the boy the next day.

The pair were located Thursday at an Orillia movie theatre.

"She was under the impression he was 20," said Barrie Police Sgt. Robert McLeod, adding that Andrew apparently lied about his age and Price only became aware of it after being informed by police.

Both Andrew and Price were cooperative McLeod said, and no charges will be laid in the case.

Kane, a stay-at-home mom who, at 43, is a year older than the woman with whom her son was linked, sounded exhausted and desperate Thursday afternoon, a few hours before Andrew was found.

She said she became aware of the online relationship in September 2008 after reading chat logs.

"We've talked to Andrew about it many, many times and discussed the dangers of Internet relationships," she said. "We got him into counselling, but he said she was his soulmate."

Kane said she and her husband, Gerard, did everything they could to discourage the relationship, but nothing worked.

Tuesday evening, around 5 p.m., Kane said Andrew asked her and his father to drive him to Midland – about 55 kilometres north of Barrie – to meet Price, who he said had travelled from Houston to see him.

"He didn't try to hide it at all," his mother said, adding she kept open lines of communication with him.

It's not a crime for a 16-year-old to have a relationship with a 42-year-old, "but the circumstances are certainly unsavoury, at least from a moral standpoint," said Sgt. Robert Allan, of the Barrie Police.

Price apparently has a history of online relationships.

Brian Stewart, of New York, said he had an online relationship with her over the same Warcraft game in 2008, but never met her in person.

"She was very sexual, emotional and `clingy' during our months of in-game contact," Stewart wrote in an email to the Star.

Attempts to reach Price were unsuccessful.

With files from Gail Swainson and Tamara Baluja

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/...-with-woman-42

Basically, what we have here is a teenager forming a romantic relationship with a woman who's about the same age as his mother.

The woman flies out to meet him, and the teenager runs off against his parents' wishes.

Police hunt them down in fears of an abduction, but they are found at a nearby theatre...no charges are laid. It's not illegal for an adult to have a relationship with a 16-year-old.

I'm not sure how well this is sitting with me. This has been fairly prominent news, but I'm wondering how it would have been handled differently if the genders were reversed: a 16-year-old girl and a 42-year-old man. Would this have been handled as a vicious "Internet predator" case? Would the older man be viewed as a "sick monster"? If it were a man, would he have been charged with something?

Bear in mind that the kid had the woman convinced he was 20, but we've heard stories of this before where girls do the same thing to older men.

Is this a valid relationship? Or should the woman be charged with something?

Is there a double standard between older men and women who form relationships with minors?

Parents: how would you react to such a thing if it were your kid?