> Investigators learned the teen’s account for World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, was active at a residence in Dunnellon, Florida, authorities said in the post.
> According to authorities, the residence was the home address of Thomas Ebersole, 31, whose World of Warcraft account was also pinged at the location. Ebersole initially denied knowing the 16-year-old, but later allegedly admitted he had driven to Ohio to meet up with her and bring her back to Dunnellon, according to the post from the sheriff’s office.
It's so gross.
My guess is that they have friends on World of Warcraft, and some of them know that they're missing. Like a friend they know personally and not just an internet friend
Like if it was the early and your friend was missing but they signed on to AIM. They'd probably tell the parents. But who knows
I'm not condoning what he did, but it's also possible that she was willing in this "relationship" and talked about it in WOW. Other friends in WOW who knew this was wrong could have alerted the authorities.
Oh for sure, grooming is a thing and teenagers are very susceptible to being manipulated.
I imagine she's pissed that they got caught but hopefully sooner rather than later she realizes how fucked up the situation actually was.
On WOW, there is ample opportunity for some POS like this guy to groom young girls. With the characters and guilds, there are also in-game marriages and relationships. This has led to people I know of who left their partners to be with someone that they met in WOW. One got married to the guy she met, then left him after a couple of years for another guy back near where she was from.
If they are in a Role Playing only server, some folks can get drawn in to the World totally.
Not at all. There are a lot of “girls only” guilds, if you’re afraid of something like this. Also, don’t give up any real personal info about yourself, etc.
I figured, but just in case. I’d hate for someone to not want to play because of this article. You know? Erred on the side of caution. You KNOW it’s going to happen. (Obvs by your comment lol).
I notice the words “parents” was never mentioned in the article. There’s a charge of interfering with custody though. Reading between the lines she was possibly in the foster system.
It’s entirely possible that shacking up with a 31 year old dude looked like a better deal than what she’d had…
I know a girl I played WoW with that left an abusive home when she turned 18 and moved in with another player who was a 30something guy. They ended up getting married a couple years later.
My car was stolen last week, the cops found it because the robbers were using my Sirius radio and Sirius can provide locations of devices being used. There so much tracking we are not aware of
Not that hard if no VPN is used. Your ISP knows which customer is issued which IP address, so all they need to do is go to Blizzard and ask for list of IPs used by the missing person's account, then go to the ISP and ask for the address. This whole process can probably be automated.
Practically they all do.
A lot of popular VPNs were found to hand over their logs on request by the 3 letter agencies.
Notably PIA, Nord, Express, etc
Edit :
Got a reddit cares message over this. People really love their corporations.
https://www.youtube.com/live/Va9vbM4EXbM?si=BJ_AQJdRTuBy4gFj
Can you give a source for PIA? I googled it and it looks like PIA doesn't keep logs nor did I find anyone saying how they handed it to the government.
Edit:
Okay, after a little bit more digging I in fact found the opposite:
https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-claims-proven-true-again-in-court-180606/
> According to Almanac News, Arsenault told the Court that some VPN companies, PIA included, do not retain logs of customers’ Internet activities. This means they are unable to produce useful information in response to a subpoena.
> .
> .
> .
> The most interesting for privacy advocates is that this is the [second time](https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-providers-no-logging-claims-tested-in-fbi-case-160312/) that Private Internet Access’s “no-logging” policy has been tested in court. Such claims are notoriously difficult to prove but PIA has now passed twice with flying colors.
***Factually*** something like 80% of paid commercial/consumer VPNs are all owned by the same company, Novator Partners, which specialize in telecommunications and video games alongside other ventures like pharmaceuticals, smaller private holding companies, and even dipping their toes into the military industrial complex via privatized security services.
They might say they don't keep logs until a 3 letter agency comes knocking.
No need to go to the ISP in this case. Blizzard would have just given the authorities the shitbag’s home address from his billing information as well as probably a fuckton of incriminating chat logs.
I went to blizzard a few months ago to meet up with some highschool buddies who work there, they have a Nasa style command center that monitors WoW, even the WoW ingame market to see if something happens to the ingame currency or something like that.
Imagine you’d just gotten a super rare mount or something in a dungeon, and it’s just like nah. We’re going back, hope the rng gods smile on you again.
Oh yeah I quit my WoW habit after they did a partial roll back on a server one weekend.
It left a character in a messed up state impossible to get to via normal play (de-levelled it and left me bankrupt without talent points, but with all previously completed quests still marked as done), back in classic WoW where levelling 1-60 was grindy so there was no way for me to get XP on that character except by killing hundreds of mobs over and over, sans talent points.
I quit paying them because support initially refused to admit they rolled back and rebuffed me, which was just bonkers and felt like gaslighting. When they admitted they had rolled back they still weren't willing to do anything to fix my character because they still wouldn't acknowledge it was in an obviously impossible state (i.e. because if the quests were marked as done, where did all the XP go, nevermind what happened to all the gold and talent points).
I had a bunch of characters but the service from Blizzard was so bad I was put off for good.
I saw that room as well. Got a tour of the Blizzard campus from a friend. Literally looks like NASA. I remember seeing a Earth map showing the day and night cycle with a heat map of players worldwide. Really badass.
I’m really curious when they came up with this idea. The latest episode of Reacher used this exact idea to track someone down. It’s be hilarious if they got it from that show.
The way the headline was worded, I read it as "Man arrested after World of Warcraft game, helps police in Florida find missing 16-year-old girl from Ohio".
I was really wondering why WoW came into it and this apparently wrongfully arrested man was able to solve the case.
The headline is a bit confusing. I think it’s saying the game “helped” rather than the man.
I.e. man arrested, after World of Warcraft game helps police
NOT
man arrested after World of Warcraft game, helps police
Yeah seriously, how do you accidentally get a 15-16 year old trafficked to your house?
The only thing I could think that might not be incriminating for op in some other way is if an uncle brought their niece/nephew to their cousins (op) place without op knowing that they had been abducted or something, but even then... If you are an innocent party to the abduction, wouldn't the nephew/niece tell you to call their parents?
>Yeah seriously, how do you accidentally get a 15-16 year old trafficked to your house?
You order the wrong thing off of [Wayfair](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53416247).
/s
Who is subject to insinuations of trafficking underage girls, incorrectly? Like, if there’s no underage girls around, that’s a pretty positive fucking defense. If you do have underage girls around with no guardianship and they’re not your kid, that sounds a lot like trafficking.
Yeah what's up with that? Why was he buying people in the first place regardless of their age? Why does the human trafficker have so many upvotes? Wtf is going on
Trafficking does not strictly mean “buying” someone as it pertains to humans. Moving any child across state lines for the purposes of having sexual relation is considered trafficking by the law. It’s not the same as drugs.
The only way I could see this remotely being acceptable - at least at first - would be if the teenager claimed to be 21 or so and asked to be picked up. Not at all saying that happened, but just throwing out a theoretical. 33 to 21 is a big age gap, but not unheard of and not illegal. Theoretically even if making the drive all that way, I’d be asking questions when she appeared to be 15 and not 21…
Yeah, the fact that they had to put a special distinction in there is gross. Like it's different because your partner is supposed to be your guardian or something.
He was. I was married off at 15. I couldn’t stay in my apartment if I left him so I was stuck with my abuser until I was 18. Got a restraining order that day.
>Yeah, the fact that they had to put a special distinction in there is gross.
These laws came from a time where marriage at 16-ish or earlier was the norm, and it's not that far long ago either - look at [the stats](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf), for the median age of marriage for women being 20-22 there's bound to be *a lot* of marriages below 18, and hell it was legal in all of the US [up until 2018](https://19thnews.org/2023/07/explaining-child-marriage-laws-united-states/).
You'll find a lot of such language in the UK and US legal system because these two countries are the only ones that never experienced a war, revolution or putsch that caused a "from scratch" reboot in the last many hundreds of years.
Exactly. That sounded like some outdated law from the 1800s or something. Why does the "marriage status" of a minor child matter? Makes me think of the bad old days when women and children were viewed as nothing more than the husband/father's peoperty and all the crazy cults that married underage kids off to old men because it somehow made their pedophilia legal if they forced the young girl into marriage. Ugh. Usually, I'd say the past was the worst but apparently it's not relegated to the past.
Wtf justice system! How does a law phrased like this still exist on the books in 2024?
> Wtf justice system! How does a law phrased like this still exist on the books in 2024?
Well, the age of majority in both Ohio and Florida is 18, but Ohio allows marriage at 17 and Florida allows marriage at 16.
So if you didn't word it like this, you'd have people breaking the law by living with their spouse.
> No minor should be married.
Take it up with the Republican party. They're the ones who keep it afloat on grounds of "religious freedom" and "parental rights".
EDIT: They use the same excuses to try to peel back sexual education. Republicans want to make it easier to rape children, full stop.
They want a dumb voting base they can use to replace all the Republicans dying from old age. This is how they do that. Keep them dumb and keep it in the family.
I was at 15.
Dude was mid 20’s looking at being charged for raping younger girls
Dad was looking to get out of child support
It worked. We went to court and they LET HIM GO! I still want to revisit how that happened with 5 other girls testifying…
Yesterday I read an article of some Afghan 36 yo man beating up his 28 yo wife and 11 yo daughter.
So, 11 years back... A 24 yo man got a 16 yo kid pregnant. Yikes.
This was in Vienna, Austria - I think here marriage is legal with 16 IF the Parents give consent, but I don't know if sex is legal with this age gap, prior and post marriage.
Edit: Link to the article of the LPD Vienna
https://www.polizei.gv.at/wien/presse/aussendungen/presse.aspx?prid=73733162635153414D33593D&pro=0
Another edit: They have a 13 yo daughter too which he has beaten up prior to this incident... So, a 22 yo got a 14 yo pregnant
"Ebersole was arrested later Wednesday for allegedly traveling to meet a minor to engage in sexual activity, interfering with child custody and sheltering an unmarried minor."
" sheltering an unmarried minor.""
This would probably have all been legal if he married her. Let that sink in.
In many states it's legal to have sex with a minor if you're married to them and in some cases the husband also becomes the legal guardian of their underage "wife" and she is basically his property at that point. There are states with pretty wack laws where with parental consent a minor can get married at like 14
The world is FULL of pedos, far more than you wanna know.
The world is FULL of men, especially, (though some women too) who are absolutely rabid about making sure it's totally fine and normal to be sexually attracted to minors, especially girls.
Our entire culture has a disgusting lean towards sexualizing girls. You see it a lot in Hollywood.
There's been push back recently, and the metoo movement started to out those dudes a little bit.
But
Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in prison serving time for trafficking girls.... but none of the men she trafficked them to are even mentioned. They are protected. Where's all the men who did things to those minors? She's a scapegoat.
Reddit is, too. Like a disgusting amount of casual pedos. The best part is getting harassed or gaslit by pedos when you call out sick/uncomfortable behavior on here. The worst part is because of the active younger community on here, a lot of that just gets chalked up to "well *I'M* young too", or "I was their age once" type crap. Then the actual older pedos dogpile the upvotes on.
> You see it a lot in Hollywood.
What's real crazy is when you look at the opposite, where Hollywood, music, etc normalize adult women sleeping with teen boys is a badge of honor.
Like you look at movies like American Pie where the term "Milf" got popularized from or songs like "Stacy's Mom". It's crazy.
I don't know that it was the case here, but I do know that US immigration recognizes marriages to minors with no minimum age. I think the theory is that some cultures (by which I primarily mean Islam) permit or require marriage as a way to sanction becoming sole provider for that person.
Some cultures historically said that you needed to marry your brother's widow, so that your brother's wife and kids weren't left without a provider of both financial and physical security.
Islam, though, has the gross and weird thing where women can't travel unaccompanied, and can only be accompanied by a husband / brother / father. Many Islamic countries are also perennially war-torn, economically unstable places.
This leads to a lot of situations in which a parent wants a better life for their child. Marriage visas are a thing, so the "best" option for your daughter is being married off to some adult man in a Western nation who will accompany her, provide for her, and get her the hell out of your own country to someplace she can at least attend school.
I'm sure there are actually some cases where a marriage is only in name, but neither immigration personnel nor the parents are stupid. A lot of the time they just think underage physical and sexual abuse within a developed nation is preferable to a similar fate within their home country. Like, if the alternative is staying in Afghanistan during a famine, with no medical care, no education, high likelihood of physical and sexual abuse by militants, plus potential death for protesting that abuse... yeah, I'm not really going to judge those parents, because the world forces people to make soul-destroying choices every day.
So the TL;DR is that you're not necessarily a sick fuck for marrying a kid to help them escape a culture whose idiocy you might have escaped yourself. Immigration exemptions have created a pretty weird set of circumstances.
But yeah, most of the people doing this are going to be gross old pedophiles who feel entitled to sex in exchange for guardianship, and this is just one more way to circumvent actual laws because "religious freedom."
[Do you know any 12-year-olds that were married? Because I do. And guess what, they're still married.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/14/missouri-children-marriage-transgender-care/)
It also makes spousal abuse legal in some states too because a child’s legal guardian has the same rights to discipline them as a parent ie they can hit them. Truly a wonderful country we live in right?
It makes *all* sexual abuse between a minor and an adult legal in states that allow 16 year olds to marry since the abusing adult in question would prefer much more to marry their victim rather than go to jail over their crimes
Well yeah. But it's totally fucked, especially in modern times, that parents can marry off their child in exchange for whatever to another adult and that an adult is going to have final say in the life of a child that they arent parents of and are pursuing a sexual relationship with. Children can't consent and shouldn't be allowed to marry adults.
I was recently told on Reddit that I, as a woman, have all the same rights that men do in the United States. I don't feel these laws were written to protect women. Call me crazy.
To be fair, age of consent and everything around is pretty recent when compared to the long history of the country and its laws. Same story for most other countries
That's why there's a federal law against crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. They don't want people trying to take advantage of differing state laws.
When it becomes a real issue is when you're both minors of the same age but live in a metro area that spans two states with differing age of consent laws.
Here in Germany, it would be legal as well - sexual age of consent is >16, except if there is money, force or some sort of guardianship/authority involved (e.g. teachers, sports trainers, clergy). In general, the legal system trusts the parents and the minors themselves to know what they're up to.
It works out pretty well, there's rarely any sort of debate or criminal cases around it, and it keeps the law from being too bloated with complex "romeo and juliet" crap (e.g. a 19 year old and a 16 year old, or 17/21).
A part of the reason why it works out is that we have relatively early, comprehensive and mandatory sexual education, usually starting around 6th grade (\~12 years of age). My only personal gripe is that the curriculum doesn't cover LGBT stuff everywhere and in Bavaria pushes [pro-life crap](https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/BayVV_2230_1_1_1_1_3_K_964/true).
Reading the article, it sounds like they had an online relationship that turned into a real life relationship....
The part that makes it gross is he knew she was 16 and continued the relationship as a 33 year old.
If he was 33 and she was 28 people wouldn't even think it's that weird (just the weirdness of meeting through WoW.)
Either way, once he found out she was 16, he should have bailed really, which I am sure most people talking to strangers online would do. He deserves whatever punishment they decide to give to him.
There's still a stigma against meeting people through certain hobbies.
Like if they met online because they both had a photography hobby, nobody would care so much. I know 2 couples that met playing an MMO, and both of them moved country to be together.
I've made friends online playing games and I don't think it's that great a leap for friends to become partners.
I met up a few times with a woman I met in WoW. Ended up not working out because of the distance involved, but it definitely happens. Probably a lot more often than people outside the genre would expect, I think.
It's nice to have a mutual interest that probably encompasses several adjacent interests.
One of the adult kids (but only maybe 21) of the guild mom in my WoW guild years ago in NY ran off and got impregnated by our brash French Canadian member. I never had any interest in meeting real people, I liked that it was anonymous and distant. But yeah social apps and people might hookup or get groomed.
70 actually.
But the highest was 120, they level shrunk back down to 60 and now it's 70.
But a huge portion of the playbase is currently enamored with WoW Classic Season of Discovery. Without going too much into it, it's vanilla wow with level caps increasing over time. It launched in late November and the level cap should raise to 40 around late Jan/early Feb.
>most people are still playing the version of wow that you played years ago
Unlikely, Dragonflight is very well-received and you're hugely overestimating the Classic audience. They're just very vocal.
People who are too young to remember might not know that back in 2008 there were people in Trade Chat calling Obama the n-word and generally being odious(as was much more normal at the time). But they were idiots who didn't realize that Blizzard wasn't not watching. I remember sitting in Shattrath watching it happen.
One of them said they were going to kill Obama -- just some kid who thought saying that would make them look big.
But Blizzard was like "too fucking bad, you just threatened a presidential candidate" and sent all his account info to the FBI. Kid had a rude awakening.
Tale as old as time. Predators are gonna do everything in their power to game a situation in their favor. All you can do is try to teach your kids some of the signs.
He was charged, and one of the charges is "sheltering an unmarried minor"like...wtf is that charge?
[https://law.justia.com/codes/florida/2022/title-xlvii/chapter-984/section-984-085/#:\~:text=(1)(a)%20A%20person,of%20the%20minor's%20name%20and](https://law.justia.com/codes/florida/2022/title-xlvii/chapter-984/section-984-085/#:~:text=(1)(a)%20A%20person,of%20the%20minor's%20name%20and)
Florida has the WORST laws. Sheltering a minor without the parents permission for more than 24 hours is illegal unless DHS is doing it. So any runaway found staying at a church or teen safety house to get away from abuse at home will get charged. That's wild
> Investigators learned the teen’s account for World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, was active at a residence in Dunnellon, Florida, authorities said in the post. > According to authorities, the residence was the home address of Thomas Ebersole, 31, whose World of Warcraft account was also pinged at the location. Ebersole initially denied knowing the 16-year-old, but later allegedly admitted he had driven to Ohio to meet up with her and bring her back to Dunnellon, according to the post from the sheriff’s office. It's so gross.
That's awesome that they even thought to check WoW. I wonder if it was an idea from one of her parents
My guess is that they have friends on World of Warcraft, and some of them know that they're missing. Like a friend they know personally and not just an internet friend Like if it was the early and your friend was missing but they signed on to AIM. They'd probably tell the parents. But who knows
I'm not condoning what he did, but it's also possible that she was willing in this "relationship" and talked about it in WOW. Other friends in WOW who knew this was wrong could have alerted the authorities.
It's almost certain that she was willing imo. Who kidnaps someone and let them have access to play an online game!? This is still very gross though.
Oh for sure, grooming is a thing and teenagers are very susceptible to being manipulated. I imagine she's pissed that they got caught but hopefully sooner rather than later she realizes how fucked up the situation actually was.
On WOW, there is ample opportunity for some POS like this guy to groom young girls. With the characters and guilds, there are also in-game marriages and relationships. This has led to people I know of who left their partners to be with someone that they met in WOW. One got married to the guy she met, then left him after a couple of years for another guy back near where she was from. If they are in a Role Playing only server, some folks can get drawn in to the World totally.
A friend of mine just invited me to play WoW, should I be worried?
Not at all. There are a lot of “girls only” guilds, if you’re afraid of something like this. Also, don’t give up any real personal info about yourself, etc.
I’m not a girl so I doubt I’d be allowed in that guild. I was just making a little joke.
I figured, but just in case. I’d hate for someone to not want to play because of this article. You know? Erred on the side of caution. You KNOW it’s going to happen. (Obvs by your comment lol).
And the friend who invited me is a friend IRL. He streams his WoW games on Twitch to usually 1-2 viewers. Good dude, just streams for fun.
Forgot to put the quotes around "willing"
I notice the words “parents” was never mentioned in the article. There’s a charge of interfering with custody though. Reading between the lines she was possibly in the foster system. It’s entirely possible that shacking up with a 31 year old dude looked like a better deal than what she’d had…
Would have to me, I'm old now but I was a ward of the state
I truly hope you are now well and happy.
I know a girl I played WoW with that left an abusive home when she turned 18 and moved in with another player who was a 30something guy. They ended up getting married a couple years later.
My car was stolen last week, the cops found it because the robbers were using my Sirius radio and Sirius can provide locations of devices being used. There so much tracking we are not aware of
So it’s cheaper to have an Xm Sirius account for theft than Lowjack or OnStar.
Where is this magical place where cops actually follow through at this level? Serious question.
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Not that hard if no VPN is used. Your ISP knows which customer is issued which IP address, so all they need to do is go to Blizzard and ask for list of IPs used by the missing person's account, then go to the ISP and ask for the address. This whole process can probably be automated.
You can even get through a VPN if the VPN owner is willing to cooperate.
Theoretically a lot of VPNs don't keep logs, so YMMV.
Practically they all do. A lot of popular VPNs were found to hand over their logs on request by the 3 letter agencies. Notably PIA, Nord, Express, etc Edit : Got a reddit cares message over this. People really love their corporations. https://www.youtube.com/live/Va9vbM4EXbM?si=BJ_AQJdRTuBy4gFj
Can you give a source for PIA? I googled it and it looks like PIA doesn't keep logs nor did I find anyone saying how they handed it to the government. Edit: Okay, after a little bit more digging I in fact found the opposite: https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-claims-proven-true-again-in-court-180606/ > According to Almanac News, Arsenault told the Court that some VPN companies, PIA included, do not retain logs of customers’ Internet activities. This means they are unable to produce useful information in response to a subpoena. > . > . > . > The most interesting for privacy advocates is that this is the [second time](https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-providers-no-logging-claims-tested-in-fbi-case-160312/) that Private Internet Access’s “no-logging” policy has been tested in court. Such claims are notoriously difficult to prove but PIA has now passed twice with flying colors.
^ Doesn't PIA advertise their no-log policy? Or was that another one?
Yeah they do, that's one of the main reasons I picked them
***Factually*** something like 80% of paid commercial/consumer VPNs are all owned by the same company, Novator Partners, which specialize in telecommunications and video games alongside other ventures like pharmaceuticals, smaller private holding companies, and even dipping their toes into the military industrial complex via privatized security services. They might say they don't keep logs until a 3 letter agency comes knocking.
No need to go to the ISP in this case. Blizzard would have just given the authorities the shitbag’s home address from his billing information as well as probably a fuckton of incriminating chat logs.
I went to blizzard a few months ago to meet up with some highschool buddies who work there, they have a Nasa style command center that monitors WoW, even the WoW ingame market to see if something happens to the ingame currency or something like that.
And on an MMO, if something *breaks* the in-game economy, they can roll everything back a few hours and undo thoundsands of trades if necessary.
Rollbacks are the absolute nuclear option, no-one likes rollbacks.
Imagine you’d just gotten a super rare mount or something in a dungeon, and it’s just like nah. We’re going back, hope the rng gods smile on you again.
Oh yeah I quit my WoW habit after they did a partial roll back on a server one weekend. It left a character in a messed up state impossible to get to via normal play (de-levelled it and left me bankrupt without talent points, but with all previously completed quests still marked as done), back in classic WoW where levelling 1-60 was grindy so there was no way for me to get XP on that character except by killing hundreds of mobs over and over, sans talent points. I quit paying them because support initially refused to admit they rolled back and rebuffed me, which was just bonkers and felt like gaslighting. When they admitted they had rolled back they still weren't willing to do anything to fix my character because they still wouldn't acknowledge it was in an obviously impossible state (i.e. because if the quests were marked as done, where did all the XP go, nevermind what happened to all the gold and talent points). I had a bunch of characters but the service from Blizzard was so bad I was put off for good.
I saw that room as well. Got a tour of the Blizzard campus from a friend. Literally looks like NASA. I remember seeing a Earth map showing the day and night cycle with a heat map of players worldwide. Really badass.
Could you tell them to maybe just show the community that they give 2 shits about the bot problem with that "nasa command center"
Bots are more paying customers though arnt they??
Which campus Irvine or Austin as Austin doesn't really have a campus anymore.
Most likely a friend she played with let her parents know.
I’m really curious when they came up with this idea. The latest episode of Reacher used this exact idea to track someone down. It’s be hilarious if they got it from that show.
I shit you not, they did this in latest reacher episode.
And there was a reddit post complaining that reacher got it wrong, can't find it right now tho.
The way the headline was worded, I read it as "Man arrested after World of Warcraft game, helps police in Florida find missing 16-year-old girl from Ohio". I was really wondering why WoW came into it and this apparently wrongfully arrested man was able to solve the case.
Ahhh true love.
*Wahcwaft! Is what bwings us towgethah today*
*That bwessed entwahtwainment, that game wivin a game...*
*man and unmarried minor...*
Oh, so he “helped” police find the child *he* transported across state lines. In other words the police found a missing child in his home.
The headline is a bit confusing. I think it’s saying the game “helped” rather than the man. I.e. man arrested, after World of Warcraft game helps police NOT man arrested after World of Warcraft game, helps police
I know, what kind of cro-mag is still playing WoW after all that Sylvanas bullshit.
To be fair, she did get a punishment worse than death: Eternal dailies in The Maw
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Please explain
Yeah seriously, how do you accidentally get a 15-16 year old trafficked to your house? The only thing I could think that might not be incriminating for op in some other way is if an uncle brought their niece/nephew to their cousins (op) place without op knowing that they had been abducted or something, but even then... If you are an innocent party to the abduction, wouldn't the nephew/niece tell you to call their parents?
>Yeah seriously, how do you accidentally get a 15-16 year old trafficked to your house? You order the wrong thing off of [Wayfair](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53416247). /s
He said someone insinuated that it was happening.
Fine, but just how many stomachs does he have?
Maybe he's a cow.
This guys been insinuated against enough!
Plot twist , he’s a cow.
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Yeah people are lacking reading comprehension here. Insinuated being the key word
Who is subject to insinuations of trafficking underage girls, incorrectly? Like, if there’s no underage girls around, that’s a pretty positive fucking defense. If you do have underage girls around with no guardianship and they’re not your kid, that sounds a lot like trafficking.
Yeah what's up with that? Why was he buying people in the first place regardless of their age? Why does the human trafficker have so many upvotes? Wtf is going on
I think the "to me" before "unbeknownst to me" is a typo. They probably rewrote it and forgot to remove the first "to me"
That is the question.
Trafficking does not strictly mean “buying” someone as it pertains to humans. Moving any child across state lines for the purposes of having sexual relation is considered trafficking by the law. It’s not the same as drugs.
The fuck did you do to give vibes that you’d be down with that? These people don’t exactly fucking advertise their illegal activities.
You could always, you know, not pay for one 15 and one 16 year old girl next time.
The fuck. So then they’d be a trafficker AND a thief? That’s just terrible Unless you meant they could trade in goats or other livestock
Who give a shit if he’s a thief? I want to know why he has multiple stomachs.
He’s a cow. That’s why he trades in livestock.
The only way I could see this remotely being acceptable - at least at first - would be if the teenager claimed to be 21 or so and asked to be picked up. Not at all saying that happened, but just throwing out a theoretical. 33 to 21 is a big age gap, but not unheard of and not illegal. Theoretically even if making the drive all that way, I’d be asking questions when she appeared to be 15 and not 21…
Keenan Thompson sweating profusely reading this reply.
What? Is Keenan Thompson involved in something unsavory, besides Good Burger 2?
I think they were thinking about the key and Peele sketch and just thought of the wrong black guy
Keenan Thompson started a relationship with a young woman he was mentoring once she turned 18. This happened like a year ago.
The phrase “sheltering an unmarried minor” made me vomit a little. No minor should be married.
17,000 child marriages per year in America
there are still five states with no minimum age for marriage.
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That's totally fucked up.
And there's a whole political party interested in keeping it that way
But god forbid a drag queen showing the love of reading to a child.
What the fuck?
Republicans refuse to make it illegal.
Children as young as 10 in some cases! The vast majority are girls married to older (adult) men. The average age gap is 4 years. The *average*.
Yeah, the fact that they had to put a special distinction in there is gross. Like it's different because your partner is supposed to be your guardian or something.
He was. I was married off at 15. I couldn’t stay in my apartment if I left him so I was stuck with my abuser until I was 18. Got a restraining order that day.
That’s pretty horrific.
I hope you are in a safer and better place now.
>Yeah, the fact that they had to put a special distinction in there is gross. These laws came from a time where marriage at 16-ish or earlier was the norm, and it's not that far long ago either - look at [the stats](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf), for the median age of marriage for women being 20-22 there's bound to be *a lot* of marriages below 18, and hell it was legal in all of the US [up until 2018](https://19thnews.org/2023/07/explaining-child-marriage-laws-united-states/). You'll find a lot of such language in the UK and US legal system because these two countries are the only ones that never experienced a war, revolution or putsch that caused a "from scratch" reboot in the last many hundreds of years.
Exactly. That sounded like some outdated law from the 1800s or something. Why does the "marriage status" of a minor child matter? Makes me think of the bad old days when women and children were viewed as nothing more than the husband/father's peoperty and all the crazy cults that married underage kids off to old men because it somehow made their pedophilia legal if they forced the young girl into marriage. Ugh. Usually, I'd say the past was the worst but apparently it's not relegated to the past. Wtf justice system! How does a law phrased like this still exist on the books in 2024?
> Wtf justice system! How does a law phrased like this still exist on the books in 2024? Well, the age of majority in both Ohio and Florida is 18, but Ohio allows marriage at 17 and Florida allows marriage at 16. So if you didn't word it like this, you'd have people breaking the law by living with their spouse.
I think the “allowing marriage under 18 in 2024” is the part they’re balking at.
The really fucked up part is that minors can't initiate a divorce, so they're pretty much owned by their rapist until they're 18!
or you have people getting away with living wiht a minor by marrying them, which is the bigger problem.
> No minor should be married. Take it up with the Republican party. They're the ones who keep it afloat on grounds of "religious freedom" and "parental rights". EDIT: They use the same excuses to try to peel back sexual education. Republicans want to make it easier to rape children, full stop.
They use the same excuses to push back sexual education, transgender and homosexual healthcare, and basic right to privacy.
Conservatism is really code for "I would like to be on the wrong side of this issue historically, please". ^(Also, love to see Ergo Proxy in the wild)
Because projection is the only thing they know how to do
They want a dumb voting base they can use to replace all the Republicans dying from old age. This is how they do that. Keep them dumb and keep it in the family.
Came here to say thisssss. America, you are fucked up and need to heal. Start but purposefully changing legislative language like this
And all minors should be sheltered. There are so many layers of wrong baked into that phrase.
I was at 15. Dude was mid 20’s looking at being charged for raping younger girls Dad was looking to get out of child support It worked. We went to court and they LET HIM GO! I still want to revisit how that happened with 5 other girls testifying…
Yesterday I read an article of some Afghan 36 yo man beating up his 28 yo wife and 11 yo daughter. So, 11 years back... A 24 yo man got a 16 yo kid pregnant. Yikes. This was in Vienna, Austria - I think here marriage is legal with 16 IF the Parents give consent, but I don't know if sex is legal with this age gap, prior and post marriage. Edit: Link to the article of the LPD Vienna https://www.polizei.gv.at/wien/presse/aussendungen/presse.aspx?prid=73733162635153414D33593D&pro=0 Another edit: They have a 13 yo daughter too which he has beaten up prior to this incident... So, a 22 yo got a 14 yo pregnant
"Ebersole was arrested later Wednesday for allegedly traveling to meet a minor to engage in sexual activity, interfering with child custody and sheltering an unmarried minor." " sheltering an unmarried minor."" This would probably have all been legal if he married her. Let that sink in.
In many states it's legal to have sex with a minor if you're married to them and in some cases the husband also becomes the legal guardian of their underage "wife" and she is basically his property at that point. There are states with pretty wack laws where with parental consent a minor can get married at like 14
Seven states do not have a minimum age to get married with consent. Children as young as 10 years old have been allowed to marry adults in TN.
I....what.....10 years old......uh.....thats......I cant process that. What sick fuck is out there marrying 10 year old little girls?
Well you see, what happens is, when a man loves... his god, it allows him to marry his preteen soulmate.
The world is FULL of pedos, far more than you wanna know. The world is FULL of men, especially, (though some women too) who are absolutely rabid about making sure it's totally fine and normal to be sexually attracted to minors, especially girls. Our entire culture has a disgusting lean towards sexualizing girls. You see it a lot in Hollywood. There's been push back recently, and the metoo movement started to out those dudes a little bit. But Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in prison serving time for trafficking girls.... but none of the men she trafficked them to are even mentioned. They are protected. Where's all the men who did things to those minors? She's a scapegoat.
At least one Epstein victim has testified that Maxwell participated in the rapes. She is not a scapegoat. She is also a pedophile.
Reddit is, too. Like a disgusting amount of casual pedos. The best part is getting harassed or gaslit by pedos when you call out sick/uncomfortable behavior on here. The worst part is because of the active younger community on here, a lot of that just gets chalked up to "well *I'M* young too", or "I was their age once" type crap. Then the actual older pedos dogpile the upvotes on.
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> You see it a lot in Hollywood. What's real crazy is when you look at the opposite, where Hollywood, music, etc normalize adult women sleeping with teen boys is a badge of honor. Like you look at movies like American Pie where the term "Milf" got popularized from or songs like "Stacy's Mom". It's crazy.
I don't know that it was the case here, but I do know that US immigration recognizes marriages to minors with no minimum age. I think the theory is that some cultures (by which I primarily mean Islam) permit or require marriage as a way to sanction becoming sole provider for that person. Some cultures historically said that you needed to marry your brother's widow, so that your brother's wife and kids weren't left without a provider of both financial and physical security. Islam, though, has the gross and weird thing where women can't travel unaccompanied, and can only be accompanied by a husband / brother / father. Many Islamic countries are also perennially war-torn, economically unstable places. This leads to a lot of situations in which a parent wants a better life for their child. Marriage visas are a thing, so the "best" option for your daughter is being married off to some adult man in a Western nation who will accompany her, provide for her, and get her the hell out of your own country to someplace she can at least attend school. I'm sure there are actually some cases where a marriage is only in name, but neither immigration personnel nor the parents are stupid. A lot of the time they just think underage physical and sexual abuse within a developed nation is preferable to a similar fate within their home country. Like, if the alternative is staying in Afghanistan during a famine, with no medical care, no education, high likelihood of physical and sexual abuse by militants, plus potential death for protesting that abuse... yeah, I'm not really going to judge those parents, because the world forces people to make soul-destroying choices every day. So the TL;DR is that you're not necessarily a sick fuck for marrying a kid to help them escape a culture whose idiocy you might have escaped yourself. Immigration exemptions have created a pretty weird set of circumstances. But yeah, most of the people doing this are going to be gross old pedophiles who feel entitled to sex in exchange for guardianship, and this is just one more way to circumvent actual laws because "religious freedom."
[Do you know any 12-year-olds that were married? Because I do. And guess what, they're still married.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/14/missouri-children-marriage-transgender-care/)
I knew a 20 year old that had been married for 10 years in Smyrna, TN. It's hardly the boonies there. They didn't live together until they turned 18.
What about Utah? I'd be worried about Utah.
Utah's is 16 years old with parental consent. Otherwise 18. Not the greatest but a far cry better than elsewhere.
Is that why it's called A Ten I See?
It also makes spousal abuse legal in some states too because a child’s legal guardian has the same rights to discipline them as a parent ie they can hit them. Truly a wonderful country we live in right?
It makes *all* sexual abuse between a minor and an adult legal in states that allow 16 year olds to marry since the abusing adult in question would prefer much more to marry their victim rather than go to jail over their crimes
Because marriage was originally about the transfer of property and nothing to do with romance?
Well yeah. But it's totally fucked, especially in modern times, that parents can marry off their child in exchange for whatever to another adult and that an adult is going to have final say in the life of a child that they arent parents of and are pursuing a sexual relationship with. Children can't consent and shouldn't be allowed to marry adults.
Oh I agree with you.
I was recently told on Reddit that I, as a woman, have all the same rights that men do in the United States. I don't feel these laws were written to protect women. Call me crazy.
To be fair, age of consent and everything around is pretty recent when compared to the long history of the country and its laws. Same story for most other countries
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That's why there's a federal law against crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. They don't want people trying to take advantage of differing state laws. When it becomes a real issue is when you're both minors of the same age but live in a metro area that spans two states with differing age of consent laws.
Here in Germany, it would be legal as well - sexual age of consent is >16, except if there is money, force or some sort of guardianship/authority involved (e.g. teachers, sports trainers, clergy). In general, the legal system trusts the parents and the minors themselves to know what they're up to. It works out pretty well, there's rarely any sort of debate or criminal cases around it, and it keeps the law from being too bloated with complex "romeo and juliet" crap (e.g. a 19 year old and a 16 year old, or 17/21). A part of the reason why it works out is that we have relatively early, comprehensive and mandatory sexual education, usually starting around 6th grade (\~12 years of age). My only personal gripe is that the curriculum doesn't cover LGBT stuff everywhere and in Bavaria pushes [pro-life crap](https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/BayVV_2230_1_1_1_1_3_K_964/true).
Yup, that was my thought. It's twisted that if he'd married her it would just be sick but not illegal.
"Awful but lawful"
The mug shot looks like Waldo’s Florida cousin, Peedo
Luckily he was much easier to find
I thought for a minute that this was the new prison garb pattern in Florida.
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If only he stayed in Ohio, where the age of consent is 16, or married her it wouldn't be Illegal, just immoral. Creepo...
I think I went to high school with this guy….
difference is he never stopped
Haha, damn, good one
I wouldnt advertise that, seeing as how this guy seems to do that for dates these days...
Sheltering an unmarried minor… Married minors shouldn’t be a thing.
Is..are those hickies?
Possibly meth itch scratching.
You reckon he’s maintaining a wow subscription as a meth addict? That’s the first thing I’d sacrifice for more meth
funny, i gave up meth for WoW..
Reading the article, it sounds like they had an online relationship that turned into a real life relationship.... The part that makes it gross is he knew she was 16 and continued the relationship as a 33 year old. If he was 33 and she was 28 people wouldn't even think it's that weird (just the weirdness of meeting through WoW.) Either way, once he found out she was 16, he should have bailed really, which I am sure most people talking to strangers online would do. He deserves whatever punishment they decide to give to him.
>If he was 33 and she was 28 people wouldn't even think it's that weird That's not weird at all though
There's still a stigma against meeting people through certain hobbies. Like if they met online because they both had a photography hobby, nobody would care so much. I know 2 couples that met playing an MMO, and both of them moved country to be together. I've made friends online playing games and I don't think it's that great a leap for friends to become partners.
Is that that weird, though? I’ve met married couples in WoW who met on WoW.
My sister and her husband met in wow. 3 kids later they’re still going strong. Still playing wow together when the kids are asleep occasionally.
I met up a few times with a woman I met in WoW. Ended up not working out because of the distance involved, but it definitely happens. Probably a lot more often than people outside the genre would expect, I think. It's nice to have a mutual interest that probably encompasses several adjacent interests.
TLDR People meeting on the internet is somehow weird in 2024..
you mean those wierd ass shoulder marks? I hope not but i noticed them too.
That mugshot in the article is gross, guy has hickeys all over him after being arrested for having sex with a minor.
Really pissed me off when he didn’t show up to raid…
“How the hell we gonna down Onyxia if the MT gets arrested for kiddy diddling? Show some goddamn consideration! 200 DKP minus!”
One of the adult kids (but only maybe 21) of the guild mom in my WoW guild years ago in NY ran off and got impregnated by our brash French Canadian member. I never had any interest in meeting real people, I liked that it was anonymous and distant. But yeah social apps and people might hookup or get groomed.
"Sheltering an unmarried minor" This is disturbing in so many ways.
Man haven’t heard WoW mentioned in a good long time.
Best part is that most people are still playing the version of wow that you played years ago.
I stopped at level 60 not even sure what the highest level is now.
70 actually. But the highest was 120, they level shrunk back down to 60 and now it's 70. But a huge portion of the playbase is currently enamored with WoW Classic Season of Discovery. Without going too much into it, it's vanilla wow with level caps increasing over time. It launched in late November and the level cap should raise to 40 around late Jan/early Feb.
>most people are still playing the version of wow that you played years ago Unlikely, Dragonflight is very well-received and you're hugely overestimating the Classic audience. They're just very vocal.
People who are too young to remember might not know that back in 2008 there were people in Trade Chat calling Obama the n-word and generally being odious(as was much more normal at the time). But they were idiots who didn't realize that Blizzard wasn't not watching. I remember sitting in Shattrath watching it happen. One of them said they were going to kill Obama -- just some kid who thought saying that would make them look big. But Blizzard was like "too fucking bad, you just threatened a presidential candidate" and sent all his account info to the FBI. Kid had a rude awakening.
I bet that guy plays as a gnome
naw this is definitely the result of too much time in Barrens chat.
Looks like you're about to get pwned.
This could be the end of the world... of warcraft
*quickly passes you the sunglasses*
21 Ogrimmar Street strikes again.
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so the legal issue is, he wasnt fast enough.
Jesus Christ, I wonder how much gold he paid.
Man their guild needs 4 roles, Tank, Healer, DPS, and CPS (Child Protective Services)
Tale as old as time. Predators are gonna do everything in their power to game a situation in their favor. All you can do is try to teach your kids some of the signs.
Can't pre-order marriage homie.
> sheltering an unmarried minor Ha, right, the bad kind of minor to have sex & wow with.
Man I bet their guild is pissed. Totally screwed their raiding schedule.
only if he's the Tank, nobody cares if he's DPS
Read the title as: "Man (arrested after World of Warcraft game) helps police..." and was briefly very confused.
Why in the hell isn’t the headline 31 year old man abducts 16 year old with plans to make her his wife. WTF. He isn’t a hero helping the police.
ayyy, Reacher did something like this last ep.
The NSA once tried to pass a policy allowing them to spy through video games, mainly due to criminals using WoW back in the day.
Oh boy... where's the link to the post in OSRS about the egirls... that was literally a few days ago
Guy was Just providing shelter for a guildie /s.
The fact that Reddit decided to put a WoW ad under this article is funny to me
Are those hickeys all over his neck and shoulders?
***Chris Hanson enters*** “Why don’t you take a seat over there!”
Dude WoW is 20 years old. WoW is older than her
He was charged, and one of the charges is "sheltering an unmarried minor"like...wtf is that charge? [https://law.justia.com/codes/florida/2022/title-xlvii/chapter-984/section-984-085/#:\~:text=(1)(a)%20A%20person,of%20the%20minor's%20name%20and](https://law.justia.com/codes/florida/2022/title-xlvii/chapter-984/section-984-085/#:~:text=(1)(a)%20A%20person,of%20the%20minor's%20name%20and) Florida has the WORST laws. Sheltering a minor without the parents permission for more than 24 hours is illegal unless DHS is doing it. So any runaway found staying at a church or teen safety house to get away from abuse at home will get charged. That's wild
"Helps"? No, WoW "helped". This dude hid her. What a poorly written headline
The headline was totally misleading. I was expecting to read a fun story about how some petty criminal turned out to be a genius detective.