Online Dating Predators

...Even after all we now know about embellished online dating profiles the predators continue to prey. I was a victim of the Match.com serial rapist whose fabricated online profile mirrored his fabricated life. He specifically created pictures to post on the website to match his made up career and took it to the next level with fake ID's and a staged apartment. He had everything he needed to lure women in to accept "dates" with him and then keep them interested just long enough to drug and rape us.

Numerous documentaries, news reports and over 10 years later men are still using the internet to meet women and victimize them. Most recently a California man Sean Banks was sentenced to 37 years in prison for raping two women he met on Christian Mingle and Match.com and as with my rapist Jeffrey Marsalis he maintained his innocence until the very end. Irrelevant now because both will be spending the next few decades in prison, potentially the rest of their life!

In 2011 a woman sued Match.com after she met and dated a man through the website and was sexually assaulted on their second date. The man had a violent history involving sex assault cases and if the website had a screening program for all members the victim claimed she never would have been violently attacked.

Match.com had released the following statement: "Members should check out safety tips on the site, that it is their sole responsibility for screening other members and that what happens on dates is not the responsibility of the company". This is the same statement released when notified of my attacker Jeffrey Marsalis' numerous sexual assaults using the same website to meet women. It's lame legalese as far as I'm concerned.

The victim was not suing for a monetary settlement, only asking that Match.com screens its members against the sex offender registry. As a direct result of the lawsuit Match.com released a statement that ..."they will agree to check new members against the sex offender registry". Prior to the lawsuit eHarmony already had a system in which they checked the registry and other sites planned on doing so. This is an excellent way of protecting women from registered sex offenders but if the men haven't yet been convicted then it won't catch new offenders. In this case we can only trust our instincts and set up check in times or any other plan a woman feels comfortable with when planning on meeting a man for the first time.

A Week of Reflection

This Saturday I will be celebrating my 1-year anniversary of moving to Burbank putting into motion a year of expected and unexpected challenges and accomplishments. At the top of that list is this blog as I never imagined not only writing down but posting my thoughts and experiences for everyone to read. It's one of those decisions I made after mindful reflection. BTW if you know me you know I consider the important choices very carefully before acting upon them but once I do I put everything I have into it. So as a result I wanted to reread my first blog post and share it with you again and hopefully to my new followers too.

...I never could have imagined I would be where I am today that week before Christmas 2005. After hanging up the phone I had some idea that things would change but as the week played out it just got bigger and bigger. It’s all occurred to me now as I sit here, almost 3,000 miles from where I grew up, living with a great guy that I met years before in college but never dated. I have everything I ever wanted and then some. What I knew I wanted was to be in a solid, loving, supportive, trusting relationship and what I didn’t know was to start my own business. The path I took to get here was not an easy one and developed out of a single nights encounter with a monster. A man considered to be one of Pennsylvania’s worst date rapists and possibly the worst this country has ever seen.

In March of 2004 I met him on Match.com after reading what I now know was his completely fabricated profile. At the time online dating was still in its infancy and although I knew to be cautious it wasn’t used at the time or known to be for wide ranging “hook ups” and a lot of profile embellishment, that came later. Online dating was so new you would have to take a break from it after a few months because you were seeing the same men pop up during criteria searches. Back then the site features offered secure emails at first, then if you chose to offer your exact email address and phone number those were the steps you took. This is how our communication progressed to a lengthy phone call and plans for a Friday night date. We chose a public meeting spot walked to a bar and chatted and laughed over drinks. The conversation was easy and it was a warm early Spring night so we walked to another bar for an atmosphere change. He had at some point described the rooftop view from his apartment just a few blocks from where we were and moved our conversation there. At that time he asked if I would come down to his apartment and continue chatting. The drink he offered me there was drugged and after taking a sip I have no conscious memory until the next morning waking up in his bed nude, very sick and confused...

From Victim to Survivor

I never could have imagined I would be where I am today that week before Christmas 2005. After hanging up the phone I had some idea that things would change but as the week played out it just got bigger and bigger. It’s all occurred to me now as I sit here, almost 3,000 miles from where I grew up, living with a great guy that I met years before in college but never dated. I have everything I ever wanted and then some. What I knew I wanted was to be in a solid, loving, supportive, trusting relationship and what I didn’t know was to start my own business. The path I took to get here was not an easy one and developed out of a single nights encounter with a monster. A man considered to be one of Pennsylvania’s worst date rapists and possibly the worst this country has ever seen.

In March of 2004 I met him on Match.com after reading what I now know was his completely fabricated profile. At the time online dating was still in its infancy and although I knew to be cautious it wasn’t used at the time or known to be for wide ranging “hook ups” and a lot of profile embellishment, that came later. Online dating was so new you would have to take a break from it after a few months because you were seeing the same men pop up during criteria searches. Back then the site features offered secure emails at first, then if you chose to offer your exact email address and phone number those were the steps you took. This is how our communication progressed to a lengthy phone call and plans for a Friday night date. We chose a public meeting spot walked to a bar and chatted and laughed over drinks. The conversation was easy and it was a warm early Spring night so we walked to another bar for an atmosphere change. He had at some point described the rooftop view from his apartment just a few blocks from where we were and moved our conversation there. At that time he asked if I would come down to his apartment and continue chatting. The drink he offered me there was drugged and after taking a sip I have no conscious memory until the next morning waking up in his bed nude, very sick and confused...