CHATS THAT RING OF DANGER

Abigail Goldman, Las Vegas Sun

Sunday, Jan. 7, 2007 | 7:32 a.m.

Aubrey Jones has run away 10 times in two years. She's a "frequent flier." Jessica Mireles was last seen in April wearing a low-cut top and blue jeans. She has jumped out of second-story windows to escape grounding.

Christiana Hammonds said she was getting a ride to school. The driver brought her back to his house instead. He later pleaded guilty to molestation.

The three runaway 14-year-olds shared a common vice: They called telephone chat lines, and met older men over the phone. By the time their families found out, the girls had long since let front doors slam behind them. Off to meet new boyfriends, though hardly boys.

"We found Aubrey's clothes in a hotel room in the company of a 54-year-old man," the girl's father, Ray Jones, said. "The cops went into that hotel room, came out, pointed at the door and says, 'What you've got right there is a Pandora's box.' "

Parents are warned again and again of the Internet's ills, but there's little discussion about the dangers of telephone chat lines.

What seems harmless - telephone chat lines as tete-a-tetes for strangers and conference calls for the anonymous - can become the low-tech version of that familiar cyber threat: pedophiles or predators manipulating blind chat mediums to woo younger victims.

Across the country, there have been numerous documented incidences of teenagers meeting adult predators through telephone chat lines, or "party lines," as they're sometimes called. These stories read like variations on the same sick theme: chat line encounters that end in assault, rape, murder.

When asked whether she's familiar with telephone chat lines, Terry Lesney, captain of Metro's Crimes Against Youth and Family Bureau, just chuckles. Some kind of anonymous chat service, be it over phone or Internet, factors into about half the cases that come before her bureau.

"They're usually part of a nexus," she said. "They're either chatting over the phone or the Internet. We tell parents to put computers in a common room of the house, but with phones, it's harder to police."

Aubrey Jones was 12 years old when she first called a chat line, the Ultimate Party Line. She got the number from a friend at school and dialed from a small guest house next door to her own. Soon, she was chatting in private with an older man.

She invited him over. He came, stayed a while, and snuck out the door before her parents could find out.

The question of what transpired between the two, this older man and this 12-year-old girl, was eventually answered in a Clark County courtroom. Aubrey's chat-line connection pleaded guilty to rape.

Aubrey's father was sitting right behind him.

"Had I known when we went to court that I was sitting right behind him," Ray Jones said, "he wouldn't have had nothing to say, 'cause I'd have broke his neck right there. I'm just being perfectly honest."

Aubrey's parents now know what happened to their daughter. What they don't know is how to keep it from happening again. Their chronic runaway child continued to call the chat lines, continued to meet older men.

Jessica's and Christiana's mothers ask themselves the same questions. How can we stop it? Who is responsible? How do telephone chat lines even work?

These questions are hard to answer.

While the teen girls were dialing chat lines advertised as costing no more than a local call, it seems reasonable to presume there's a profit in telephone chat, somewhere, for someone. But nobody, not local law enforcement, not missing children advocates, not state telecommunications experts, not phone company spokesmen, could explain how the chat lines work, and where the money is.

Multiple attempts by the Sun to contact representatives from the Ultimate Party Line were unsuccessful.

Aubrey Jones also called Quest Personals, another popular party line.

A call to Quest Personals on Friday offered the dialer brief profiles to more than 300 prospective chatters in Las Vegas - just strangers looking to talk.

Quest Personals declined to speak with the Sun unless an agreement was signed giving the company rights to read any resulting article before it went to press. The Sun declined.

Court transcripts acquired by the Sun from a March murder trial in Fort Worth, Texas, however, closely detail how Quest Personals operates telephone chat lines.

Ronald Michael Hill pleaded guilty to killing 15-year-old Ingrid Smith in March 2004, about two months after meeting the Arlington teenager through Quest Personals, according to published reports.

In the course of the jury trial, lawyers questioned Richard Householder, a senior risk-management coordinator for First Media Group Inc., a parent company of Quest Personals.

For the court, Householder explained that females call Quest for free, while males must pay for the service through credit cards, checks or wire transfers or by dialing a 900 number, which is billed directly to a telephone account.

"It's a way to meet other people and make friends over the telephone," Householder told the court.

At certain times during the day, men are given two minutes of chat time for the price of one - this is called "happy hour."

According to Quest records, Hill spent roughly $1,500 on the chat line, Householder said. But there is no way of monitoring what he talked about with Ingrid Smith. The conversations are not recorded, and the company tracks only its male users, "because they are paying to use the service," Householder said.

The company attempts to keep minors off the chat lines, Householder said.

"When you log into the system, you call our numbers, you are told you must be 18, and if you're not 18 then to hang up," he said. " if you sound underage, your greeting will be removed from the system."

A call to Quest Personals' chat line Friday prompted the caller to choose from four categories of chat seekers: people looking for "love and steady relationships," "casual dates and get-togethers," "the wild side" and "couples and swingers." To narrow the selection, the caller is prompted to enter an age limit or "if age is not important to you, press zero."

Before any buttons are pressed, however, the caller is warned, "We don't prescreen our callers and assume no liability when you meet someone through this service."

Stephanie Parker, executive director of Nevada Child Seekers, a Las Vegas nonprofit agency dedicated to locating missing, abducted and runaway children, recalls five children who went missing last year after meeting an adult through chat lines. Between 300 and 500 children are reported missing in Las Vegas every month, she says. Most are runaways.

"If a parent reports a child missing, it's like, 'How do I look for a needle in a haystack?' " Parker said. "With the chat lines, it's scary. You don't have an address to go to. There's nothing that's monitored. You can't call the company and say, 'Who was on this chat line?' "

Metro's Lesney also has to throw her hands in the air. "There's not much we can do about it," she said. "To monitor them is almost impossible."

To keep your kid off the phone seems almost impossible, too, particularly when they're prone to sliding out the side door when staying at home isn't as appealing as sneaking out. And there's always someone else waiting on the line.

Aubrey Jones ran away for the 10th time last month, but she has since come home. Her mother, Wendy, is relieved but world-weary. There's no returning what has been taken from her daughter, and no filling what's gone in her.

"They're either going to run to it, or run away from it. And these girls are running to it," Wendy Jones said. "They're trying to find a happy ending to a bad story."

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