MolesterSpace

Before he did a watered down AM drive time program with the crown prince of obnoxious douches (Danny Bonaduce -- his name even says it!), the gleeful wit and wisdom of Adam Carolla was inscrutable. My favorite observational bit was the game of "Germany or Florida", where callers would submit tales of criminal misbehaviour from the news that featured any blend stupidity, nudity, injury, and socio-moral corruption, and he and the rest of the on-air gang would try and guess where it took place. According to Carolla, all deviant behavior was centered in either Florida or Germany, and the two were such wellsprings of such that it would be difficult to know which was which if you took out the names and locations. Ever since then, I've noticed how the majority of those kind of stories come out of Florida...and this is one of them.

Fifteen year old Alyssa Frank was found safe in the Florida Panhandle a day after she disappeared with an at-large high risk sex offender she met on Myspace.com.

William Joe Mitchell, who is 46, met the girl online and cultivated a relationship. Frank believed Mitchell was 24, which is clearly understandable. Teenage girls have the good sense to stay away from people who are in their forties, but making friends with folks almost almost a decade older sounds okay to me. Really, how different are 15 and 24 year olds anyway?

Found appropriately at a Wal-Mart, Frank told officials that Mitchell said he was going somewhere for about 5 minutes, and that if she drew any attention to herself he was going to kill her. Officials believe his intent, however, was to drop her off. It is thought the pair also crossed into Alabama, which would generate possible federal charges against the middle-aged interweb Cassanova.

Alyssa snuck out of her house around 3 a.m. Monday and was reported missing a short while later. "Alyssa contacted some of her friends and said that she was running away," local sheriffs said before she was found. "When they asked, 'Well, why are you running away?' She told them 'for love.'" Not guilty! Love is a totally understandable motive for any crime. Why do you think they call rape a crime of passion? Well, that's what the Sigma Deltas call it.

The genteel Mitchell had 14 prior arrests on charges including burglary, aggravated assault with a weapon, grand larceny, bomb threats, extortion and offense or offer of lewdness and lewd and lascivious behavior. What's not to love?

Ironically, Frank ran away just a day after a new Florida law took effect, making the state's sex predator penalties some of the toughest in the nation. Why would that state have such strong laws, unless...? Nah, must be a coincidence. The law requires offenders to register e-mail and instant message handles with authorities, information that will be shared with social networking sites like Myspace.com. The state also tripled the maximum sentences to 15 years for soliciting minors for sex and possessing child pornography.

Thankfully, young Frank is safely at home, where her parents can continue to neglect her and not teach her basic common sense, like beware of interweb predators. Maybe letting stupid children get duped by web creeps is a good way to thin the herd. Parents that don't reinforce the threat of the slime of the world and teens without the insight to retain that info are only going to get what's coming to them. Besides, I don't recall any 13 year olds who went cross country with a two time loser and later went on to become a rocket scientist, but maybe that's just my faulty memory.

The interweb is an adult place, where adults, not children deceive each other for sex crimes and psychological damage -- and that's the way it should be. August of 2000 was a blast, but thank God for restraining orders.