Babies Teach Empathy

In November 2011, a 15-year-old Nova Scotia girl was gang-raped. After someone used their cell phone to circulate a photo of the sexual assault, Rehtaeh Parsons endured more than a year of cyberbullying and harassment until she couldn't take it anymore. Rehtaeh was taken off life support on April 7, 2013 – three days after she tried to hang herself.
 
Rehtaeh's mother wrote on her Facebook tribute page, "Rehtaeh is gone today because of the four boys that thought that raping a 15-year-old girl was OK and to distribute a photo to ruin her spirit and reputation would be fun. All the bullying and messaging and harassment that never let up are also to blame. Lastly, the justice system failed her. Those are the people that took the life of my beautiful girl."

How can we prevent tragedies like these? An anti-bullying program that is gaining national attention centers on babies teaching empathy to young children. Roots of Empathy is a social and emotional learning program for K-8 students which started in Toronto. The mission of the program is to reduce aggressive behavior as a way of decreasing bullying. In 2007, the program was introduced to US schools, and has spread to California, New York, and parts of Washington.

Baby Claire visits a kindergarten class once a month, and a Roots of Empathy instructor also visits the classroom to help the students recognize Claire's development and label her feelings. The students then discuss why Claire is happy or sad, and how they have similar feelings.



A 2011 study of 270,000 students compared those students who participated in social and emotional learning programs like Roots of Empathy, with those who didn't. The study found that the students in these programs not only had increased social and emotional skills, but they also had an 11 percent increase in standardized achievement test scores.

Claire's mother says, "The tone of the room changes when Claire comes in, and I think kids start to think about how it feels to be treated a certain way, because they don't like it when she gets upset."

Wild Wild Web

A convicted child sex offender in Ireland, identified only as "XY," was released from jail after serving half of his sentence for 15 sexual offenses committed in the 1980s. Upon his release, he discovered his photograph and threatening comments on the Facebook page "Keeping our kids safe from predators."  One of the posts said, "Put him down like an animal."

XY sued Facebook for harassment, breach of privacy, and breach of human rights, claiming that, "By publishing this material about me, the defendants are providing a vehicle for others who may have criminal intent to gain information about where I live and to stir up hatred against me."

Facebook's attorney argued that Facebook was "walking a fine line" between the rights of its users and the privacy of others. He asked, "Will it give the plaintiff any benefit to shut down this site and deprive 4,000 users of their freedom of expression, the vast amount of which is legitimate debate on sex offenders?"

While the U.K.'s High Court acknowledged that the man's name, physical appearance, criminal record, and whereabouts were already public information, the ruling "simply requires certain modest steps to be taken by the operator of a social networking site to ensure that, pending the substantive trial of this action, the plaintiff is not exposed to further conduct which I consider, to a high level of arguability, to be unlawful."

Within hours after Facebook complied with the order, a page with a similar name appeared. 

In the U.S., state laws banning sex offenders from using social networking sites are getting mixed reviews. The federal court in Nebraska struck down a state law that made it a crime for certain registered sex offenders to use social networking sites or chat rooms, and allowed monitoring of their computers and Internet usage.

But an Indiana federal court upheld a state ban on convicted sex offenders accessing social networking sites used by children because the law was narrowly drawn so that certain sex offenders are "only precluded from using web sites where online predators have easy access to a nearly limitless pool of potential victims."

One thing is clear: we have not heard the last from the courts on balancing rights of privacy against free speech, especially when dealing with the emotionally-charged issue of child abuse.

Flirting With Disaster

Skout is an app designed for flirting between adults. Users exchange photos, messages, and virtual gifts. It has GPS that allows people to connect with strangers that are nearby, and its popularity is growing with millions of new users each month.

Its growth also attracted $22 million in financing from one of Silicon Valley's leading venture capital firms which cited Skout's safety and security protocols as a major reason for the investment. For example, the GPS location feature is an opt-in and approximates a user's location within half a mile. Skout also monitors the app for illicit and violent behavior, nude photos, inappropriate sexual messages, profanity, spamming, and copyright infringement.

After learning that children were using its adult app, the company started a separate service with parental controls for 13- to 17-year-olds. 

However, the minors’ app and "creepinator" technology were not enough to keep out child predators who have been accused of sex crimes against children they met using Skout:  a 15-year-old Ohio girl, a 12-year-old California girl, and a 13-year-old Wisconsin boy were sexually assaulted by adult men posing as teenagers on Skout.

Skout's founder calls these cases "a five-alarm fire" and says, "The entire company is re-evaluating everything it's doing."