Dialing Up Danger

Phone party lines are gaining in popularity again. People call a number and can enter phone chat rooms. And what do they talk about? Anything you can imagine, as well as things you probably wouldn't. Children calling in to these lines may be putting themselves in danger...

You can find party line phone numbers on the web. There are local numbers listed for towns all over the Delaware Valley. When you call in the rules are spelled out in a disclaimer.

But when adults called in to listen, young people on the party line said they were 17, 16 and 15 years old. Teenagers gave out their phone numbers and address over the party line. When the information was checked, the addresses and names were correct.

In one conversation, a man repeatedly tells a 17-year-old girl that he's had sex with her. The man whispers: "Let me come over. I know where you live." Over and over, the girl shouts: "No" and asks, "Who are you?"

The man then tells everyone in the phone chat room where she lives and gives her phone number. An investigative reporter talked to the girl. She still doesn't know the identity of the man. But he knows who she is...

"The couple of times that I did listen in to see what it was like, I heard several adults on there saying things to children that were inappropriate."

This mother says her 14-year-old daughter ran away from home after meeting people she first came in contact with over a phone party line. When she listened in on a party line chat room, she heard the same things we heard: Profanity, graphic discussions about sexual acts and direct requests for sex.

Ripple Communications operates these party lines in our area. Their disclaimer does warn callers.

"We're telling you there are bound to be bad people on here as well as there are good people." Ripple Communications says it can block phone numbers from accessing its service at a parent's request. Some see party lines as another wake-up call for parents to pay attention to their children.

This service is advertised as absolutely free. But be careful, some calls within your area code are long-distance. The party line could also be making money off your calls.

A federal law makes it possible for party lines to collect fees from phone companies the longer they can keep you on the line. It seems that as soon as the general population became aware of the dangers of internet chat rooms and began to take action to protect kids from the dangers there, the trouble moved elsewhere.

Right now, the search is on to find Raquel Pauls, an 11-year-old girl from Wilmington, DE. She disappeared after meeting up with a man she had spoken to on a telephone chat line.

The bottom line is that parents should do their best to know what their children are doing and should do everything they can to make their children aware of the potential dangers of giving out personal information on both the internet and the telephone.

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Author: 6 ABC-AP/Editor