A 16-year-old Staten Island girl faces up to a year in jail for sending Myspace friend requests to three people. Melissa Fernino is charged with second-degree criminal contempt, a misdemeanor, because she violated a Family Court order of protection that barred her from contacting a 43-year-old woman and her two adolescent daughters.
The court order, prompted by Ferino's history of "extremely violent threats," has something to do with a soured relationship between Fernino’s father and Sandra DelGrosso. If the charges against Fernino are upheld, it will be a landmark decision that could set a national precedent for what constitutes violating an order of protection on the Internet.
Over the summer Fernino – after the orders of protection were issued – sent three friend requests to DelGrosso and her two daughters. On Myspace, a “friend request” does not contain any personalized greeting, it's merely an automatic request to be “added” to a list of friends on one’s Myspace profile. (What seems to be Fernino’s Myspace profile is at right.)
The judge is allowing the case against Fernino to move forward, ruling that “the MySpace friend requests fall within the court's mandate that, ‘(Ms. Fernino) shall have 'no contact' with (the alleged victims).’” The Staten Island DA's office said, "We're grateful that the judge recognized our contention that these MySpace.com e-mails allegedly sent by Fernino constituted a violation of the order of protection."
When looking for information about "Sandra DelGrosso" online, this 2002 NY Times article came up. At that time, a Sandra DelGrosso of Staten Island, then 37, was charged with taking photos of “eight children, ages 6 to 16, in various stages of undress, drinking alcohol and performing sex acts on one another"; her two daughters, then ages 6 and 9, were allegedly depicted in the photos.
