Each of the four instances involves sexual
assaults which took place between young girls and men that the
families say they met on the California-based social networking
giant. The company is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News
Corporation.
The cases join a year-old Texas suit in which
a girl's family is suing MySpace over an alleged sexual assault by
a man she is said to have met on the site.
The cases involve teenaged girls from New
York, Texas, Pennsylvania and two sisters from South Carolina. None
is above the age of consent in her state.
The suits allege negligence, recklessness,
fraud and negligent misrepresentation by MySpace. "In our view,
MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful
security measures that effectively increase the safety of their
underage users," said Jason Itkin, a lawyer representing some of
the families. "Hopefully these lawsuits can spur MySpace into
action and prevent this from happening to another child
somewhere."
MySpace last week introduced monitoring
software to help parents monitor their children's activities on the
site. It said it would release software called Zephyr which will
enable parents to see the name, age and location which children
claim as their own. It had previously appointed a security chief to
oversee site security.
That security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said
that the company takes security very seriously. "MySpace serves as
an industry leader on internet safety and we take proactive
measures to protect our members," he said. "We provide users with a
range of tools to enable a safer online experience."
Nigam said that families must share
responsibility for the actions of children on the site. He said
that users should apply "offline safety lessons in their online
experiences and engage in open family dialogue."
MySpace's Zephyr software will not be
available until this summer, the company said. It restricts
activities according to the age of a user, not allowing under 14s
to have an account and anyone under 16 can only display their
profiles to listed friends for example, but it relies on people to
be honest about their age in the first place. Zephyr will at least
allow parents to see what age their children are claiming to be,
said MySpace.
