You gotta give Anthony Stancl an A for effort when it comes to leveraging Facebook for gay hookups. But the affair is turning into a lesson on how not to use Facebook to score sex from your list of friends.
The 18-year-old Milwaukee area high school student took things a bit too far, according to prosecutors, who have now filed a host of sex-related charges against him.
Stancl, like lots of folks, saw Facebook as a way to touch people — as in, get laid. In doing so, he convinced 31 classmates to send nude photos and videos and then went about attempting to close the deal. As in transition the cycberspace conversation into face-to-face good times.
The trouble, according to prosecutors, is that Stancl posed as a girl to get the guys. Once he had the photos or videos, he allegedly blackmailed the guys into sex by threatening to expose them and circulate their photos. To make matters more interesting, Stancl scored with at least seven of the guys and took cell phone videos of the encounters.
According to the criminal complaint, Stancl first contacted the students through the social networking site Facebook, pretending to be a girl named Kayla or Emily.
The boys reported that they were tricked into sending nude photos or videos of themselves, the complaint said.
Thirty-one victims were identified and interviewed and more than half said the girl with whom they thought they were communicating tried to get them to meet with a male friend to let him perform sex acts on them.
They were told that if they didn’t, she would send the nude photos or movies to their friends and post them on the Internet, according to the complaint. Stancl allegedly used the excuse to get the victims to perform repeated acts, the complaint said.
Seven boys were identified in the complaint by their initials as either having to allegedly perform sex acts on Stancl or Stancl on them. The complaint said Stancl took photos with his cell phone of the encounters.
If it weren’t for the ages of the some of the players involved — as young as 15 — the entire matter would seem to be an overreaction by zealous prosecutors reacting to some embarrassed guys who don’t want to be known as giving it up for a guy.
But now Stancl faces a host of serious charges: Five counts of child enticement, two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of third-degree sexual assault, possession of child pornography, repeated sexual assault of the same child, and making a bomb threat.
It’s probably not the best way to reach out to your Facebook Friends list.
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