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An Arkansas mother has been charged with harassment for accessing her 16-year-old son’s Facebook account and posting messages.
The mother, Denise New of Arkadelphia, was hit with the misdemeanor charge March 26, after her son, Lane, filed a complaint with the Clark County Prosecutor’s Office. According to reports, the younger New accused his mom of hacking into his Facebook account, changing his e-mail and Facebook passwords and posting slanderous Facebook messages about his private life.
However, Denise New told the Associated Press her son had left himself logged on to Facebook on her computer, and that she locked him out of his account after reading he had driven home at 95 mph one night because he was mad at a girl. She also reportedly admitted to changing his passwords.
“The things he was posting in Facebook would make any decent parent’s eyes pop out and his jaw drop,” she said. “He had been warned before about things he had been posting.”
While authorities would not describe the Facebook posts the mother is accused of making, the prosecutor’s office explicitly linked the charge to the posts’ content.
“The misdemeanor charge in this case is based solely on allegations about the content of certain statements by the accused,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. “The fact that the accused allegedly made these statements on a social network computer site does not affect the nature of the charge and is not relevant to the charge.”
New faces a hearing on the charge May 12.