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School Web Site Shut Down After Bad Link Found

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By RONNIE BLAIR | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 25, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY The Gulf Middle School Web site was shut down today after a link to a gay-pornography Internet site was discovered, school officials reported.

Initially, school district officials feared someone had hacked into the Web site. Later in the day, they determined that the reason, while still troublesome, was not so sinister.

The link on the Gulf Middle site at one time connected to a legitimate educational site, said Summer Romagnoli, a spokeswoman for the district.
Recently, the company that operated the site was bought out and the Internet domain name was picked up by the more objectionable site.

"We reminded all of our people to go in and check their links," Romagnoli said.

Assistant Superintendent Tina Tiede said she checked links Friday on some of the other school Web site. She didn't find any problems.

Stan Trapp, the Gulf Middle principal, planned to send an automated telephone message to parents to let them know about the Web site was being taken down.

The discovery of the pornography link happened just a few days after Gulf Middle students who went to the school resource officer's MySpace page found a link to a sexually explicit dating Web site.

The link was through one of Officer John Nohejl's  MySpace "friends;" that is, other people who link to his page.

The Florida Attorney General's cyber-crime unit is looking into whether any crime was committed when the "friend" linked Nohejl's MySpace Web page to the sexually explicit site, New Port Richey Police Lt. Jeffrey Harrington said Friday.

"We made the Attorney General's Office aware of it," Harrington said. "We're waiting to see what they come up with."

Both Nohejl's supervisor and the principal knew the patrolman had a MySpace page, Harrington said. School resource officers routinely set up such Web pages to provide students an additional route to reach them, he said.

Noheil would have screened all of his friends' pages before accepting them and linking them to his page, said Bonnie Lang, president of the Florida chapter of Kids Come First.

She said, however, that any of those friends can change their pages "at any time and we're not gonna know" without constant rechecks.

"Why should he be responsible for what someone else puts on his page?" Lang said of Nohejl. "He had nothing to do with it, I can tell you that right now."

Sandi Copes, spokeswoman for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, said there was no formal investigation under way on Friday.

The agency learned about the situation with Nohejl's MySpace page through news reports, she said. The cyber-crime unit was subsequently in contact with New Port Richey Police, Copes said.

Florida law prohibits disclosure of actual criminal investigations, she said.

It is not unusual for unwanted links to pop up on personal pages posted on sites such as MySpace, Copes said. Children often have links to thousands of so-called "friends" and "there is no way" a child actually knows that many people, she said.

Reporter Ronnie Blair can be reached at (813) 948-4218 or rblair@tampatrib.com. Reporter David Sommer can be reached at (727) 815-1087 or dsommer@tampatrib.com.

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