Chapter 6: Dealing with Teens

Wednesday morning, I had an appointment to keep. It almost felt normal to get up, shave, and head to the office by eight. This time, though, it was my own office up on 15th Avenue. I have a room and a half in a war-era house rezoned for commercial use. My upstairs co-tenants include two children’s counselors and an accountant. One of the counselors specialized in testing and study habits for ADD and learning disabilities. From what I understand, most of the kids he sees are bright but can’t focus in school. The other counselor works with kids who just need help coping with life. I was amazed at the age range of the kids that came through the front doors—some with parents and some just dropped off out front and sent in alone. My office is on the main floor, so I have a clear view of the entry when my door is open.

Bernie, the accountant in the third upstairs office, helped with my incorporation, does my taxes, and generally keeps me honest in my bookkeeping. Whether he has any clients other than the three he shares the house with, I don’t know.

I have direct access to the kitchen from my office. It’s a nice setup, but we’re all waiting for our landlord to announce that the building will be torn down to make way for a real office building.

I like the space. I need an office where I can actually meet with potential clients, even though I do as much real work in my darkened apartment at night.

Monday night I’d received a referral from the counselor upstairs and he was waiting on the front porch when I got there at eight-thirty. Actually, they. A boy about fourteen and his father. I motioned them into my office and asked if they would like coffee or chocolate or tea or a soft drink. The dad took coffee with sugar and his son, after getting approval from his father, opted for the hot chocolate. Once we had our drinks, we settled in and I asked how I could help them. They fidgeted a bit, the boy looking at his father.

“Son, it’s okay. He won’t judge. You just have to tell him what’s happening or he can’t help.” The boy nodded, took another sip of chocolate then looked up at me.

“I ... I’m being harassed. Online.” It was apparent that there was more than he was saying. After a minute I decided on a way to help him.

“Can you show me an example?” He pulled out his tablet and in a few gestures had a popular social network on the screen. He handed it to me. There were a few of the normal messages between friends, but not as many as I expected kids his age would have. Two out of every three posts, however, were derogatory. There were links posted to everything from “Save the Faggot” to “Gay porn.” There were a couple of messages that were subtly threatening—warnings about where not to walk and where fairies weren’t welcome. It was vile and I couldn’t believe the network had allowed this kind of behavior.

“We’ve tried everything,” the father said. “We reported it to the network, flagged the posts, blocked various users. Every time one goes away, another pops up. Now it’s spreading on video sites and other networks.”

“My friends aren’t posting anymore because they’re afraid they’ll get harassed too.”

“Is it all online, or are you getting real life harassment, too?” I asked. I could deal with taming a cyberbully, but if he was getting pushed around after school, it was a matter for the police.

“No,” the boy said quietly. “I’m just always afraid. I just came out a few weeks ago.” He looked down.

“Is that going to be a problem for you?” his father asked me.

“Not at all,” I said.

“Good. Daniel didn’t want us to interfere, but how can we say ‘it gets better,’ if we don’t do something to make it better?” I nodded and smiled at Daniel.

“What would you like me to do, Daniel?” I asked. “If I can get results, what would you like them to be?”

“I’d just like the flaming to stop so my friends will come around again,” he said. “I’ve been talking to Cora, upstairs, about this for a while now. She said I should talk to you and see if you could make it stop.”

I thought about it a few minutes as I scanned through more of the messages. It was sick. If there is anything I dislike as much as a thief, it’s a bully. I was relieved to see a few messages that I took to be signs of support for Daniel. I was ready to take on the case pro bono, just to get a crack at the bastard behind the cyberattack. At the same time, I couldn’t help but think how lucky this kid was. His father was sitting beside him, ready to fight for him. A strong family could keep a kid from becoming a statistic. I got out a contract, filled out the necessary blanks, and then handed it to the father to fill in name and contact information.

“Daniel, I’m giving this to your dad to fill out because legally you can’t sign a contract,” I said. “But I’m working for you.”

Daniel watched as I used his account to friend one of my own aliases on that network.

“This is me. I won’t be using our connection to post on your page or anything like that. As much as possible, I’m going to lurk rather than take control of your account, which I might have to do later if I find something that I can work with. You can contact me with a direct message if you think of anything else I should know, like a list of any other sites that you are a member of—even if they are embarrassing. I’ll need your aliases and passwords. And if your friends start getting messages, I need to know. Got it?”

He looked at me a little quizzically and then nodded his head. If the kid was registered on a gay chat room or even had a login for gay porn, it could be where his information was leaking out. He understood.

“Yes sir,” he said. “Will you be able to make it stop?”

“Worst case, we’ll have to set up clean accounts for you and only invite your trusted friends. I’ll put some software into place that will block specific kinds of content. If I can’t make a positive ID on the person and turn the information over to the police, I might still be able to make contact and ... uh ... negotiate a stop.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes,” said the father. “Thank you very much.” They left. I was already angry with this scum.

I was finishing up several projects and had to wait for Daniel to send me the rest of the information I needed, so I couldn’t accomplish much for him that morning. I really wanted to wait until I had all the information he could give me before I launched my investigation. There was no sense in strong-arming information out of the net if the boy could just tell me.

I grabbed a bite of Indian food across the street from my office and was stewing over how I was going to dig through the EFC data reserves when Andi called me.

“Dag, I’m sorry to bother you but I’m in a pinch.”

“What is it Andi?”

“I’m over at the University and I’m completely tied up and can’t get back to pick up Cali for her rehearsal. Could you swing by the high school and take her to the theater? I know you have your new job and all, so if it’s a problem, just say so and I’ll have the girls catch the bus. It just takes them so long to get there on the bus.”

“Andi, it’s fine. In fact, it’s just what I need,” I said. It was really a beautiful day out—one of those April days of sunshine that makes you forget how miserable you’ve been all winter. “I’m working from home and I’d love to get the car out of the garage on a day like today.”