Teen Blackmailed Classmates Via Facebook

In one of the more sordid accounts of online predation we’ve read recently, the Associated Press reported on Thursday that a Wisconsin teen used a fake Facebook profile to blackmail his classmates into giving sexual favors.

Eighteen-year-old high school student Anthony Stancl is accused of creating a Facebook profile belonging to a nonexistent teenage girl and then, between approximately the spring of 2007 and November of 2008, using it to convince more than 30 of his male classmates to send in nude photos or videos of themselves.

Stancl then told many of them that unless they engaged in some sort of sexual activity with him, he would put the photos or videos on the Internet. At least seven of them have said they were coerced into sex acts, which Stancl allegedly documented with a cell phone camera.

There were about 300 photos of underage males, some of which were as young as 15, on Stancl’s computer, police in the teen’s hometown of New Berlin, Wisc., told the AP. Stancl had originally come under police scrutiny in November, after he issued a bomb threat that temporarily closed New Berlin High School.

The emergence of the case comes at a time when social-networking safety is back in the spotlight. After a subpoena from the Connecticut attorney general, the News Corp.-owned networking site MySpace handed over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders that had profiles on the site, and pressure mounted for Facebook to do something similar.

What’s important to keep in mind, lest this incident set off more hysteria about the dangers of teens and Facebook profiles, is that this sort of activity could have happened over an instant-message client, another social network, or an online message board.

It’s true, however, that the Internet can cloak a criminal in anonymity or a fabricated identity–in one particularly tragic case, a woman posed as a teenage boy on MySpace and allegedly harassed a 13-year-old girl to the point of suicide.

A recent report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force concluded that threats to minors online are more complicated than the stereotype of a lone adult seeking out vulnerable teens: in the case of Anthony Stancl, for example, the sexual predator was one of the victims’ own high-school classmates.

Teen accused of sex assaults in Facebook scam

By CARRIE ANTLFINGER, Associated Press Writer Carrie Antlfinger, Associated Press Writer – Thu Feb 5, 6:28 am ET

MILWAUKEE – An 18-year-old male student is accused of posing as a girl on Facebook, tricking at least 31 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves and then blackmailing some for sex acts.

“The kind of manipulation that occurred here is really sinister in my estimation,” Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel said Wednesday.

The students go to New Berlin Eisenhower High School in New Berlin, which is in Waukesha County about 15 miles west of Milwaukee.

Anthony Stancl, of New Berlin, was charged Wednesday with five counts of child enticement, two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of third-degree sexual assault, possession of child pornography, repeated sexual assault of the same child, and making a bomb threat.

Stancl’s attorney, Craig Kuhary, said Stancl plans to plead not guilty to the charges and hopes to reach a plea agreement with the district attorney

“It’s too early in the case for me to make a statement, other than the fact at some point we are going to go into events that had taken place earlier that might have had some impact on what he did here,” he said. He wouldn’t go into specifics.

The incidents allegedly happened from spring 2007 through November, when officers questioned Stancl about a bomb threat he allegedly sent to teachers and wrote about on a school’s bathroom wall. It resulted in the closing of New Berlin Eisenhower Middle and High School.

According to the criminal complaint, Stancl first contacted the students through the social networking site Facebook, pretending to be a girl named Kayla or Emily.

The boys reported that they were tricked into sending nude photos or videos of themselves, the complaint said.

Thirty-one victims were identified and interviewed and more than half said the girl with whom they thought they were communicating tried to get them to meet with a male friend to let him perform sex acts on them.

They were told that if they didn’t, she would send the nude photos or movies to their friends and post them on the Internet, according to the complaint. Stancl allegedly used the excuse to get the victims to perform repeated acts, the complaint said.

Seven boys were identified in the complaint by their initials as either having to allegedly perform sex acts on Stancl or Stancl on them. The complaint said Stancl took photos with his cell phone of the encounters.

Officers found about 300 nude images of juvenile males on his computer, according to the complaint. Prosecutors said the victims were as young as 15.

A preliminary hearing for Stancl has been scheduled for Feb. 26. The maximum penalty if convicted on all charges is nearly 300 years in prison.