Here's a scenario you may not have considered. My ex-husband left 2 1/2 weeks before our daughter was born. He saw her once when she was 3 1/2. He had come to court asking for visitation (Get this! He wanted to take her with him back to FL - we live in NY - to spend two weeks with him and his new family! This is the first she had ever seen him, and I never met the new wife!) as blackmail/punishment for my attempting to collect child support. I even had a letter from him that said he would drop the visitation request if I gave him a notarized statement that he wasn't the father! Well, the judge wouldn't let him take her with him, I supervised a visit that afternoon (the only time they ever spent together), he never showed any further interest in seeing her. It may have had something to do with the judge telling him that my statement wouldn't be enough, that a paternity test would have to be done.
Soon after, he started threatening to kidnap her. While I didn't exactly go into hiding, I also didn't make it easy to find me. My number wasn't listed in the phone book for example. My daughter's school always knew to be especially careful about who to release her to. The last thing I would have wanted was for her picture to show up on any school website. Then there's the ex-boyfriend who put me in the hospital when I tried to leave him. I haven't seen him in years, but I would really rather not increase the chances of him finding out where my family and I are now. This would have been especially true when my daughter was little. (I finally found a GOOD man, and am happily married.) This could be a two edged sword of course. Kidnapped children may be found by someone seeing them on a website. But there are also too many valid reasons why a parent wouldn't want to advertise to any interested party: Here I am! Here are my children! Be they ex-spouses, ex boy-girl friends, other estranged family members, etc. There are many crazy people in the world, and too many of us meet our share. Should the affected children not be able to play school sports or otherwise participate in school events because their parents refuse to sign a consent to video them? Diane -----Original Message----- From: Peter MacGregor [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 10:51 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [wdvltalk] Re: Video WebCast I'll second that, Diane I've done a school website for a Primary School in East Sussex (about 100 kids 4-11) and the Headmistress even had some photos of school sports activities specially taken with all the kids looking _away_ from the camera - or in class with their faces turned down towards their desks, or taken from the back of the room! The result in this case is that you see lots of kids - but no-one can see if they are a happy bunch or not. (I thought that would be important for parents wanting t choose a school and said so). To me they look as though they are terrified of looking up in case the teacher get's mad at them! They have even made me sign an undertaking not to publish the URL of the site on any of my publicity material or client lists! Since it was only one site of a number I've done, I didn't worry too much. I know there are some nasty people out there that prey on little kids, (and I won't say what I'd do to them - very slowly and very painfully, being a parent myself) but I really think this is PC gone too far. How can anyone possibly make contact with any child through this site? Individual kids (nor the teachers for that matter) don't have their own email at school, they are not named anywhere on the site and apart from hanging around outside the school no-one couldn't contact them. Anyone hanging around would soon get the strong arm of the law on their collar as the Police Station is just 100 yards along the road and one of the uniformed PCs is always hovering around at start and finish times - plus there is a school crossing patrol lady as well watching what's going on. Every child has to be collected by an adult known to the teachers every day (school rule). If the known adult doesn't arrive, the child stays at school until the teachers are satisfied the person collecting them is authorised to do so. Peter MacGregor At 11:06 26/08/2003, you wrote: >I've found this discussion interesting, mainly because here in the UK most >education authorities are advising schools to ban the use of video and >still cameras at school events, because of the legal repercussions. They >ask that the parent of every child in every video/photo give written >consent before their children are filmed/photographed. Some parents are >hotly in favour -"I don't want my child filmed by parents I don't know". >Others think it's going too far - "Why shouldn't I film my child's >football match/ netball match/ sports day?" > >Public sports centres, especially swimming pools, are already banning >photo phones as well as cameras. > >Dianne Reuby<>< >http://firstwebbuilder.co.uk >http://freesitebuilder.co.uk > > > > >____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____ >To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: >mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Send Your Posts To: >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >To set a personal password send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the >words: "set WDVLTALK pw=yourpassword" in the body of the email. >To change subscription settings to the wdvltalk digest version: > http://wdvl.internet.com/WDVL/Forum/#sub > >________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ > >You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To unsubscribe send a blank email to %%email.unsub%% ____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Send Your Posts To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To set a personal password send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words: "set WDVLTALK pw=yourpassword" in the body of the email. 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