Jonathan Dick, you won’t get your hands on my child!
July 31, 2009 Leave a comment
Teacher indicted on new charges.
You’ll hear me say it again and again, you need to know who is sending text messages to your children and who they are interacting with on Social Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
A middle school teacher arrested for sending sexual text messages to a 15-year-old boy has been indicted on new charges
This middle school teacher and lacrosse coach identified his victims on Facebook and then put his professional experience interacting with children to use by developing relationships with the kids and “grooming” them. Grooming is the term authorities use to describe the how a predator will patiently and methodically work to warp the child’s mind. Their goal of course is to cloud the child’s sense of right and wrong and/or exploit their naivety so that the sicko can harm the child in the sickest, most demented ways. Once Jonathan Dick (the name of the indicted teacher) built the trust of a child, he would start to interact with the child by mobile phone and text messages. This is where he could work under the radar to try and “seal the deal” by pushing to meet with the child face to face. According to a June 2009 study by Nielsen How Teens Use Media, the average teen sends and receives more than 2,800 text messages a month. I know it is a huge task but parents need to know what is coming and going in their kids’ messages – assuming that protecting your child is more important to you than protecting their privacy.
Parents — you need to know who is interacting with your children on Social Networking sites and who is contacting your child on their mobile phone. There are hundreds of thousands of these sickos out there so please don’t think that your child can not become a victim or the prey of another “Jonathan Dick”. It can happen to anyone and the more a parent thinks it won’t happen to their family, the easier it is for the predators.
A reprint from the Washington Examiner…
Associated Press
07/30/09 11:50 PM EDTBEL AIR, MD. — Harford County prosecutors say a middle school teacher arrested for sending sexual text messages to a 15-year-old boy has been indicted on new charges.
Forty-three-year-old Jonathan Dick of Bel Air was indicted Tuesday on 18 counts, including third-degree sex offense and sodomy.
Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly says the indictment involves a 14-year-old boy and the alleged offenses occurred between March 2007 and April 2008.
Dick, a physical education teacher at Fallston Middle School, was charged in March with two counts of solicitation of a minor.
Cassilly says Dick remains held on bond.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda
