Right-wing Blog Outs Foley Victim

As I've said before, the blogosphere is a blessing and a curse and as with every other scandal hundreds of bloggers are now fishing around for whatever they can find on the Foley story. One right-wing blog has gone too far though and may even have broken the law by outing a victim of Mark Foley's online predatory behaviour since it is apparently an offence to publicly name a minor victim without their consent. Whether the outed victim was actually was 17 or 18 at the time he received Foley's messages in this instance is unclear. (I'll leave the legal debate to the legal scholars).

The blog Passionate America, which I will not link to, claims to have discovered the name of a victim whose pseudonym was found on the ABC news site which has posted name-redacted IM logs but may have missed out on censoring one victim's name by mistake. Two right-wing bloggers then dug behind the screen name and PA has now posted his real name, location and picture for all the world to see. The comments at the Passionate America blog are rightly filled with outrage over this outing and threats that if anything happens to the young man as a result of his name now being public knowledge, there will be retribution.

The blogger claims this was all done to prove that the male was not underage, which he couldn't finally conclude anyway, and which completely ignores the fact that other victims of Foley's were definitely underage. So, what was the point of ruining this young man's life? I don't think that blogger can provide any reasonable answer to that question.

Update: Drudge has now picked up this story (check his front page too for the hugest flipping fonts I've ever seen him use - where's the siren, Drudge?) and is predictably blaming ABC news for its mistake while fully supporting the fact the the Passionate America blog has outed this victim by his real name. Not only that, Drudge states that this victim actually was 18 at the time without providing any evidence to back that up. He then even refutes his own headline!

A network source explains, messages with the young man and disgraced former Congressman Foley took place before and after the 18th birthday.

I think the word 'slimebucket' is appropriate here (along with several others...)