'Scapers and Your Safe Internet Experience

[ninthdoc]

Hello, all.

I'd like to ask an administrator to sticky this thread. It should be the first thing that anyone reads for any website they go to. I'd like to share with you all why we should never let our guard down, not even on heroscapers.com.

Most people here know that I'm a police officer IRL. I spent 5 years working on cases involving crimes against children. Sadly, twice in the past 9 months, it has been brought to my attention that even in our community, there exist wolves in the fold.

The first time was on heroscapehq.com. Using only methods that were available to anyone who knew where to look online, I discovered that one of our members, who had been attending events at which children were present, was to attend a court session as a defendant in a case in which he had been accused of sexual assault of a child.

The next incident of note, was when several members were contacted by a user who wanted people she did not know to teach her how to play Heroscape. Thankfully, she asked good people, but this could have just as quickly gone south for her.

Most recently, it has come to my attention that an adult user here has tried to contact an person who is under age for the purpose of soliciting something from this child.

I'm being very careful, not to name names or cause anyone embarrassment. This is a great community. Truth has worked very hard to give us a wonderful website that he has struggled to keep family-friendly, sometimes against great adversity, but he has persevered.

Even considering all this, it's still a website on the internet. We live in an age when an under age girl might meet a adult online and travel from the United States to Jordan to meet up with him. We should be watchful and wary at all turns on the information superhighway. I can say that we have an awesome administrative staff who have dealt with these things appropriately.

Regarding what I mentioned above, if you are reading this, you know who you are. If you are a predator, I'd like to recommend that you plague some other community. I'm not omnipotent, but if I find you, I'll pursue you to whatever end I can to protect this community. I've been blessed with having multiple contacts in the law enforcement community across the country. If you're coming here looking for something other than Heroscape-related activities, it would not be wise.

I'd like to let everyone know that I have not appointed myself to any position here. Each of the above listed instances were times when someone else here made the decision, and I believe the right one, to involve me based upon my experience and their knowledge of my job IRL. I have said countless times that I did not sign on to police this community. However, I'll not turn a blind eye to a predator preying upon members and their loved ones here.

Many will have questions about why I have posted this and specific question about: "Who did what?" and the like. I'll not answer these. I'm sorry, but that's the way I have to do this. If you have had contact with a predator, you'll be getting a PM from me. What you do with this knowledge is up to you. My role will be to advise you of a potential threat, nothing more.

Remember, as great as this place and community is, use common sense when interacting with its members. We all know what is safe and what is not.

Thank you.


Edit by funrun on 9/6/07: excellent additional post by Renquist on this page