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US teenager gets 15 years for Internet sex scandal
Updated: 2010-03-01 13:20
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A Wisconsin teen convicted of using Facebook to blackmail dozens of classmates into sex has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Nineteen-year-old Anthony Stancl of New Berlin showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down Wednesday.
Stancl pleaded no contest in December to two felonies, including repeated sexual assault of a child.
He apologized during sentencing, saying he has learned to understand what his victims went through.
He had faced a maximum 30-year sentence.
Stancl is accused of posing as a girl on Facebook and tricking more than 30 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves, then using the photos to blackmail them for sex.
Stancl then reportedly threatened to post the photos or videos on the Internet if they didn't engage in some sort of sexual activity with him. At least seven of them have said they were coerced into sex acts, which Stancl documented with a cell phone camera.
About 300 photos of underage males, some of which were as young as 15, were found on Stancl's computer, police in the teen's hometown said. Stancl had originally come under police scrutiny in November 2008 after a bomb threat temporarily closed New Berlin High School.
Meanwhile, use of sites like Facebook and Twitter is on the rise according to marketing and media information company, Nielsen.
Globally, the average social-networking user spent more than five and a half hours on sites like Facebook and Twitter in December, according to data released by Nielsen. That marked an 82 percent jump from December 2008 when Tweeters and Facebookers surfed their favorite sites for around three hours the entire month.
（中国日报网英语点津 Julie 编辑）
Todd Balazovic is a reporter for the Metro Section of China Daily. Born in Mineapolis Minnesota in the US, he graduated from Central Michigan University and has worked for the China daily for one year.
