Friday, February 17, 2006

I'm so confused


Did anyone else watch the Oprah show the other day with the kid who was "molested" by people who paid him to strip and perform sex acts over his webcam?

There's something to be said for the power of persuasion, but at some point don't you have to just admit to yourself that you had sex for money, which incidentally makes you a prostitute, not a victim of molestation.
This same kid, after all this "molestation" went to Mexico and started a subscription amateur porn site via his webcam.
I just kept thinking to myself, this kid is disturbed. Oprah described him as the perfect kid who got lured into the world of internet sex...yeeeaaaah, but this kid lied to his parents, flew to Las Vegas to meet one of his customers and had sex with him there, then claimed to be molested. I don't mean to be insensitive, but, it's not like this was a small child who didn't know better. This kid was in his mid to late teens. There is no way some internet pedophile was going to lure me, at 14, 15, 16 years old into sex acts no matter what persuasive arguments were lobbed at me.

It just doesn't ring true to me. Maybe I'm way off base. What do you think?

3 comments:

Freebird said...

I saw this! I was pretty shocked about it. I had no idea kids did these sort of things with web cams. Only thing that comes to mind for me is that American Pie strip act.

I actually feel sorry for the kid. My take on this is that I think in the beginning he found it a very easy way to make money ($50 to take his shirt off), but then the lure of the money reeled him him. I think he got used to the money and just got himself deeper and deeper into it.

I think he craved the attention too. His parents were divorced, his father lived in another state, and his mom was so darn busy counselling other kids who knows how much time she spent with him.

I think it was all a combination of craving attention/love and making easy money. He started this at 13, a very impressionable age. I think it just all snowballed on him.

Did you see the Dateline where they set up a sting to lure pedophiles. The men kept falling for it time and time again. I remember also seeing an Oprah episode about white suburban teenage girls who works a few nights a week as prostitutes so they can have money for clothes. They're parents don't know anything about it either. I think there's A LOT of stuff going on right now that parents aren't aware of.

Jessica said...

I saw that Dateline, it totally made me sick. This story though, seems like a whole different thing.

cube said...

This is disturbing on so many levels. Oprah puts this stuff out there for her ratings, who knows if it's even accurate. If it is, this kid is now "outed" as a prostitute. He is a minor, where are his parents? Where are his values, his sense of right & wrong.