MARIETTA, Ga. (CN) - A mother claims in court that her 15-year-old daughter was raped by a man she met on a Quest Personals adult chat line after the company refused her request to remove the girl from its list - and that her daughter is far from the only victim.
A.C. claims her daughter is just one of many girls who were sexually assaulted by adults they met through Quest Personals, which has no effective age verification procedures.
She claims at least 18 other underage girls who used Quest Personals in 11 states have been raped since 2006.
A.C. and her daughter, also identified as A.C., sued First Media Group, its affiliates First Media Startup dba Quest Personals and First Media Holdings, and FMG managers Kenneth Hood and Grant Hood, in Cobb County State Court. They also sued A.C.'s assailant, Wayne McDonald.
First Media Group, based in Toronto, is one of the largest North American providers of Internet and phone dating services. Quest Personals alone has more than 1 million active phone members in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, according to the complaint.
"As with many mainstream personals markets, FMG's market is geared toward making it easy for people to talk and meet for chat, romance and sex," the complaint states. "Personals are expressly geared toward heterosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians and homosexuals. Parts of the Quest Personals web page steer married consumers to sites that cater to extramarital relationships. On information and belief, Quest does not charge female users of the system, so as to ensure a larger female to male consumer ratio.
"FMG's Quest telephone system launched sometime in 1988. It was intended to be a simple, yet effective way to bridge the gap between busy people looking for a new way to connect. It uses a technology known as 'Interactive Voice Response' or 'IVR'. The IVR lets users record a custom 'personal ad.' It also allows them to respond to the custom ads of other users. It has a 'chatline' component to allow callers to talk on the telephone line simultaneously via voice messages or to talk one-on-one in a 'secure, private connection.'
"The Quest Personals voice chat telephone system contains a disclaimer that users are required to be eighteen years or older. The voice chat telephone system, however, is naively self-policing and contains no method or security process or device to verify or ensure that users are actually eighteen years old or older.
"The FMG defendants, Grant Hood and Ken Hood, are aware of the dangers and hazards posed to underage minors who use the Quest Personals voice chat telephone system. The management of the FMG defendants, Grant Hood and Ken Hood, are, and have been aware, of reports of rapes and other sexual attacks and misconduct by sexual predators against children using the telephone and/or Internet personals markets.
"The Quest Personals voice chat telephone system poses a danger and hazard to underage minors.
"The Quest Personals voice chat telephone system allows sexual predators to gain the trust of underage users, who can then be persuaded or induced to meet older Quest Personals users. The Quest Personals voice chat telephone system, currently without adequate age verification procedures, allows sexual predators to prey upon underage minors.
