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4-30-98 Dennis Prager began his show in a pugnacious mood, refusing to take back his criticism yesterday of the Department of Justice's web page encouraging kids to inform on their parents who tell ethnic jokes. P says he's been deluged by email on the matter by people who see nothing wrong with the web page. Monitoring a parents' speech is a worse evil than the offending speech, says P. Near the end of the first hour, a man relayed how his son had been told that he should never be touched when he does not feel like it. The father says he used to hug his kids all the time, but now his son has been scared and brainwashed by his teacher. Prager says that a major national newspaper has asked him to write an essay about the following story from the 4/30/98 New York Times:
Surprising Lack of Reaction to Shocking Online Confession
By AMY HARMON
BOWMAN, N.D. -- For nearly a year, Elisa DeCarlo had been logging on to the Internet daily to type messages to an online support group about her battle against alcohol. It did not matter that she did not know where most of the 200 or so other participants in the group lived, or even their names. All that mattered was that they were there for her, and she for them, in a fight that some days sapped all of her strength and sense of humor.
But the morning of Monday, March 23, sitting in her usual bathrobe attire, drinking her usual cup of coffee as she scrolled through the previous day's e-mail, Ms. DeCarlo, 38-year-old comedian in New York City, lost faith in her virtual community.
Along with the typical postings from members about their weekends was a message from a man she knew as Larry. In graphic detail, Larry described how three years ago he killed his 5-year-old daughter, Amanda, here in the southwestern corner of North Dakota.
In the message, posted at 12:50 p.m. on March 22, Larry recounted how, overcome by a bitter custody dispute with his ex-wife, he had set fire to his home and trapped his daughter inside.
"The conflict was tearing me apart, and the next night I let her watch the videos she loved all evening, and when she was asleep I got wickedly drunk, set our house on fire, went to bed, listened to her scream twice, climbed out the window and set about putting on a show of shock, surprise and grief to remove culpability from myself," Larry wrote, according to archives of the support group's e-mail, available to any member on the Internet. "Dammit, part of that show was climbing in her window and grabbing her pajamas, then hearing her breathe and dropping her where she was so she could die and rid me of her mother's interferences."
The e-mail message struck Ms. DeCarlo as horrifying, but she grew further dismayed over the online debate that followed.
While some members of the support group were appalled by Larry's account, others rushed to his defense, trying to assure him that he was experiencing a fantasy driven by guilt over his divorce. Others tried to comfort him by telling him that the crime was long past.
It seemed to Ms. DeCarlo that the nature of online communication -- which creates a psychological as well as physical distance between participants -- were causing her friends to forget their offline responsibilities to bring a confessed murderer to justice.
On March 24, in the midst of of what is known on the Internet as a flame war, Ms. DeCarlo was one of three members of support group to notify the law-enforcement officials.
Bowman police said Larry Froistad, 29-year-old computer programmer in San Diego, called them March 27 and confessed. Froistad has since been extradited to Bowman, a town of about 1,800 people, and he is scheduled to be arraigned on murder charges Friday in the courthouse. The courthouse is a few blocks from a slab of concrete and rusted plumbing where his daughter died in a fire that was ruled accidental at the time.
The support group, run by Moderation Management, a nonprofit self-help organization based in Woodinville, Wash., for people who are problem drinkers but not alcoholics, is one of hundreds such groups on the Internet.
For many of those who knew him through the ether, Froistad's unbidden declaration is testimony to cyberspace's singular capacity to invoke trust among strangers. But the e-mail transcripts in the wake of the confession also provide a glimpse into the interpersonal and moral predicaments raised at a time when an increasing amount of social interaction is taking place in electronic arenas, devoid of cues like tone of voice and facial expression, and structured around their own sets of rules and mores.
"My position here is that we, as a list, have two responsibilities here -- to ourselves as members of this list community and to the larger community beyond," read an e-mail March 26 by Frederick Rotgers, a psychologist who helped found the list two years ago and administers it as a volunteer for Moderation Management, a non-profit self-help organization for people who are problem drinkers but not alcoholics. "That may sound radical to some, but I believe it is an essential feature of the Internet, and one that we must protect if it is to continue to be a source of great support for people who are in need."
Prager thought the man who turned in the confessed murderer did the right thing. In his third hour, P discussed the 50th anniversary of the modern state of Israel. Thursday April 30, 1998 Dennis began the show discussing a New York Times article about a man who was part of an Internet support group for addictive behavior. During one of the discussions this man confessed that the reason for his alcoholism is that years earlier he had murdered his four-year-old daughter during a heated custody battle with his ex-wife. He set the house on fire and heard her screams as she died. Someone from the Internet group reported this man to the authorities and he was arrested. The person who reported him was ridiculed from other members of the group for betraying the trust of a member and that he took away the benefit of members feeling complete trust, which they say is critical to any addiction recovery discussion group. Dennis said whereas he agrees with the law that lawyers, clergy and therapists should have this trust (for past offenses only if someone confesses that he is going to commit a crime even lawyers, clergy, and therapists should report him) that it does not go for other members of society and that this man who turned in the murderer did the right thing. He should be commended. In the last hour Dennis brought up the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel. It has been 50 years since the UN granted Israel its statehood and was declared by then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Dennis asked the listeners why they felt so much attention has been given to this tiny state. Dennis said that it is about the size of New Jersey and has a population of just a portion of Los Angeles County.
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