Friday, November 11, 2011

The Story Of Angie Varona


If you have never heard the story of Angie Varona, head on over to ABC and listen to what she has to say. Angie is 18 years old and for the past four years has been the most Googled teenager in the world who is not a celebrity. When Angie was 14 she took a whole bunch of photos of herself in bikinis and lingerie and sent them to her boyfriend. She stored them all in a Photobucket account. The account was hacked and every photo made its way to the internet where they have been used for porn sites and other ads. The pictures have been altered to make her look naked and there are numerous sites on the internet all devoted to her. The problem is that she did not want any of this attention and at school she was bullied and called some pretty nasty things. Random strangers would call or e-mail her that they were going to rape her. She had to quit two schools and ended up being home schooled just because of the constant attention. Because of the stress she also started taking drugs and contemplated suicide because she knows the images will be there forever.

"When you're 14 you don't realise that the things you do really do matter at that point. No one ever thinks that, yeah, I'm going to take these pictures and it's going to end up all over the Internet. You just do it for yourself."

Currently if you search Google for images of her, you end up with 65,000. Her parents tried to stop the spread of the photos but were unable to do so and since there was no nudity it was not considered child porn.


My one question about all of this is whether doing a national interview is the right way to bring this to an end or if this will just result in more hassles and notoriety.


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