Beauty bests the bullies

Former Miss New Jersey tells students about Internet harassment.

By: John Patten
   After delivering a video presentation on the dangers of Internet predators, actress and former Miss New Jersey Samantha Hahn warned her rapt audience of Hillsborough Middle School seventh-graders about "cyber bullying" during an assembly Friday.
   "I was harassed for six years of my life," Ms. Hahn, 22, noted. "I was pushed down, I got a concussion, I had things thrown at me because of a rumor and things put online."
   Ms. Hahn and New Jersey Congressman Mike Ferguson, R-6th, spoke to the students as part of the assembly sponsored by I-safe (www.isafe.org), a nonprofit foundation dedicated to educating kids about safe Internet and computer use.
   Ms. Hahn’s story followed an equally disturbing video about 16-year-old Christina Long, of Danbury, Conn., who was raped and murdered in 2002 by an Internet predator.
   The video reinforced Ms. Hahn’s message of avoiding putting personal information online — she even urged the students to skip online chat rooms, shut down their MySpace.com pages and never e-mail someone they don’t know.
   To prove her point, she asked students who had MySpace.com pages what information they posted — when one boy said his page had a picture of himself, listed his age as 99 years old and listed his address as Antarctica, she noted he probably felt safe because of the misinformation.
   But, Ms. Hahn asked the student, what if you got a message from "Charlie," with a photo of a pretty, brown-haired girl, who wanted to meet him at a mall?
   "And let’s say ‘Charlie’ is actually a 48-year-old man?" she said. "He lied to you, you lied to him.
   "You wouldn’t go to the mall and hand out sheets of paper with your name, address, personal information, would you?" she continued. "That’s what you’re doing when you post it online."
   Ms. Hahn also told the students how predators can draw others into revealing details without even realizing it, then use the information to harm them — details about a school mascot or team colors, or the name of a nearby mall, can fill in the blanks.
   Mr. Ferguson re-inforced Ms. Hahn’s message, talking about how laws and Congressional action can’t keep predators from harming others who share their personal information.
   "I challenge you to think about how you use the Internet," Mr. Ferguson said.
   "The Internet is powerful — but you can be more powerful than the Internet if you’re smart and careful," he said.