Amazon.com Review
"Our lips met... I felt a few stray whiskers... and suddenly I realized that this was a grown man who was giving me my first real kiss... Something inside me snapped. Now I didn't want this at all. But I couldn't speak." Fourteen-year-old Katherine Tarbox wasn't sure how things had gone so wrong. She had planned to slip away during a school trip to meet 27-year-old Mark, whom she had corresponded with on the Internet for the last six months. Instead, she discovered that "Mark" was actually Frank Kufrovich, a man in his forties with a history of pedophilia.
Katie.com is Katherine Tarbox's true story of how Kufrovich used the Internet to manipulate and molest her, and how she fought back by prosecuting him under the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and sharing her experiences so that other teens might avoid a similar situation.
The saddest thing about Katie's memoir are the reasons she sought company on the Internet in the first place. Over and over she states that her mother was a workaholic who had little time for her. She was growing apart from her childhood friends and her oldest sister and confidante was always away at school. Like most teens, Katie was searching for someone or something to connect with--a search her own parents tragically didn't seem to recognize. Articulate, strong and brutally honest, Katie.com should be shared between adults and teens alike, not only as a warning against Internet dangers, but also as a reminder that a computer can never be a replacement for a caring, listening parent. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In 1995, first-time author Tarbox was leading an upper-middle-class life of quiet desperation. At age 13, she rarely saw her workaholic mother, who seemed only to care about her daughter's swim-team performance, and got on poorly with her stepfather. Overscheduled, ignored and less than perfectly attractive, she felt invisible in her wealthy Connecticut town. Now, at age 17, she evocatively describes how her first romance permanently altered her life. She first encountered Mark in an early AOL chatroom. While his stated age (23) gave her pause, he seemed the perfect boyfriend: he called her every night, listened to her opinions and encouraged her to relax. When he wanted to meet her at a swim meet in Texas, she agreed--but Mark turned out to be a middle-age pedophile named Frank, who molested her in a hotel room. When her family pressed charges (eventually making her the first person to prosecute an Internet pedophile), her entire town found out about it and, according to Tarbox, treated her like a whore or a mental patient. Her mother was furious with her, her stepfather told her she had ruined Frank's life and other kids avoided her. Eventually, Tarbox left for boarding school and began to write. While she is angry with Frank, she rather disturbingly assumes a great deal of the blame, believing that, at age 13, she should have known better than to engage in the relationship. And while her family appears to have been quite cruel, she feels she betrayed them by causing them social humiliation. Strong, articulate and conservative, Tarbox evokes pity and admiration with her heartfelt account of a precocious girl who was deceived and then betrayed. 10-city author tour. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
