A Facebook friend request sent on a cold day in February 2011 would begin a devastating chain of assaults for a teenage girl.

A volunteer firefighter, Bo Brady Burdick, 20, sent a friend request to a girl he didn't know. She accepted. After a few months of Facebook messaging, they exchanged phone numbers and began text messaging each other. After pressure from Burdick, they exchanged nude photos of themselves. She is 13 years old.

Finally in June, Burdick traveled from his Utah home to visit the girl in Idaho. It was during this visit that he sexually assaulted her and several times after that.

Situations like this should be a call of action for parents. If this girl had never allowed a stranger to be her “friend”, she wouldn't have been assaulted 4+ times.

Parents need to be more aware of what their children do online and develop a protective instinct. The days of “that will never happen to MY children” are over.

Installing filtering software is a great way to begin the battle against predators and unwanted exposure of inappropriate things. Another method is to personally monitor your child's friend requests. Do you know what your kids are doing on the internet? Do you know with whom they are friends? Be informed.

Here are some protective tools to use on Facebook.
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