|
For most lonely hearts trolling Match.com for a love connection, the biggest risk tends to be discovering that Prince Charming is just a swampy frog.
But some women who use online dating services have faced real danger when their suitor turns out be a sexual predator or rapist.
Jeffrey Marsalis, a 33-year-old Philadelphia drifter accused of drugging and sexually assaulting seven women, is currently in jail and faces trial on eight counts of rape and other related charges.
At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, five of the alleged victims claimed that they met Marsalis through Match.com between 2003 and 2005. Last January, Marsalis, a former Drexel University nursing student, was acquitted by a jury on similar charges of raping women whom he'd met over the Internet.
The smooth-talking lothario was a master of guile when it came to luring the women. In e-mails or on the phone, Marsalis claimed he was a CIA agent, a confidential adviser to the president, a doctor or an astronaut-in-training. (He posted pictures of himself wearing medical scrubs, a suit and an astronaut's uniform on his Match.com profile, according to law enforcement sources.)
Consensual Sex — or Rape?
When the women agreed to meet Marsalis in person at a restaurant or bar, he allegedly used the same technique on all of them: After the women left their drinks to go to the restroom, they'd describe later feeling sick and falling in and out of consciousness with vague recollections of being sexually assaulted and waking up in his bed.
"I couldn't say no," said one woman in her testimony at the hearing. "I was unable to do anything in the five seconds I was conscious."
In other accounts at the hearing, one woman described becoming pregnant and convincing Marsalis to help pay for an abortion, and another woman recounted spending the weekend with him, even after he had allegedly attacked her.
Those reactions led Marsalis' defense lawyers, Kathleen Martin and Kevin Hexstall, to claim that the sex was consensual. "It wouldn't be buyer's remorse if one of these girls went running to the police, but not one of these girls called 911 or talked to a detective," Hexstall told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Another online Romeo is one of Rhode Island's top 10 fugitives. In April 2005, Ronald Fischer was convicted in absentia on two counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of second-degree sexual assault after he jumped bail on charges of raping women he'd met online.
On his Match.com profile, titled "Romantic at Heart," the 47-year-old anesthesiologist claimed to be 40 years old, and 6 feet tall with an athletic build. He also boasted about his 60-foot-yacht, "The Lion King."
The truth was a lot messier. When Cheryl Gingerich accompanied him to his boat, it was soaked and she spent an hour helping him clean out its interior before Fischer pushed her onto his bed and forced himself on her.
While sexual predators seem to be increasingly going online to find their victims, the sites are taking precautions. MySpace.com, the social networking site, recently hired former Justice Department prosecutor Hemanshu Nigam to help patrol its site and educate its users.
True, an online dating service does criminal background checks on users and seeks to verify that married people don't post a profile. Match.com allows its 15 million members to block people permanently and to make sure that they no longer receive messages from undesirables.
Online Daters Need to be Cautious
But the Internet is desirable turf for sexual predators. "It's clear that [it] allows a very efficient concentrated search effort at relatively low cost and low effort," said John LaFond, author of "Preventing Sexual Violence," even though "most sex crimes are still perpetrated by people who know each other," he said. "There doesn't seem to be much stranger danger, but it does make the headlines."
Rape crisis counselors advise online romantics to be very careful about their choices. "It's a matter for women of always being on their guard," said Walker Thornton, at the Sexual Assault Resource Agency. "You go on there as a careful, responsible adult. There are ways to alert yourself when the person you're talking to seems suspicious and they're not who you think they are, in terms of age or availability."
| 
