- ANDERSON, S.C. (AP) -- Investigators, lawyers and counselors are seeing a new
home wrecker in a lot of marriages -- the Internet.
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- Adultery, sparked by on-line talks and
communication, is leading more and more couples astray. Private investigator
Dan Garrett sees it up close. One of Garrett's clients had e-mails from
his wife detailing plans to meet a Florida man she had talked with on the
Internet.
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- A woman was divorcing her husband, Garrett
said, because he spent his free time on the Internet, chatting with his
lover.
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- Garrett, of Greer, says about 15 percent
of his cases involve affairs that started through computers.
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- "It's middle-age crazy," he
said. "They get bored and complacent. They get a computer. They start
playing solitaire and then go to chat rooms. The next thing you know they're
meeting someone at the Red Roof Inn."
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- "It's just another modality of meeting
people," said Gayle Peterson, a marriage counselor in Berkeley, Calif.
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- Peterson says the computer offers instant
intimacy and a place to share your problems. Gradually, it siphons off
energy from a marriage and sabotages it, she said.
-
- The Internet is also an anonymous place
where people can log-off if they get nervous, said Esther Gwinnell, author
of "Falling in Love with Strangers," a book about forming intimate
online relationships.
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- "It's such a different situation
from everyday life," Gwinnell said. "You really have the opportunity
to be who you want to be."
-
- Sometimes behavior becomes obsessive,
like checking for e-mail from your special stranger throughout the day,
Gwinnell said.
-
- She said there are no warning signs that
an affair has sparked. Soon, they're falling in love with the person they
are messaging, she said.
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- Divorce attorneys also have seen a boost
in marriage break ups because of Internet liaisons.
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- With home computer communications, courts
don't consider there to be a reasonable expectation of privacy, and computer
records are now regularly used in divorce cases, said Sandy Ain, a Washington
divorce attorney.
-
- Ain said he's had cases where children
have discovered their parents were cheating by accidentally pulling up
their on-line conversations.
-
- Garrett's client, who found his wife
was going to meet her cyber-lover in person for the first time, had an
investigator follow the couple to a hotel in Commerce, Ga. The investigator
later testified.
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- "Used to be, a husband or wife would
say they think their spouse met someone at work, now they think they met
on the Internet," Garrett said.
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