Having been burned by an embarrassing and disturbing sexual assault incident, Match.com has agreed to conduct background checks on its members. According to the article in the Daily Pilot a woman was raped on her second date with a Match.com partner. As it turns out, the assailant had six prior sexual assault convictions. So much for meeting the man of your dreams.
Most online dating sites promise to some extent that you will meet your soul mate. They boast of special filtering systems so that one prospect will be accurately matched with another, according to mutual tastes and behavior. So with the promise of the perfect romance, even marriage, as the lure, it is difficult for a dating site to require background checks, just in case Mr. Perfect is an ax murder or, as in this case, a convicted sex offender. How one filters out gold diggers may be another story.
In this economy, there are the usual gold digging predators, looking to con the unsuspecting, the overly romantic, the terminally naive and gullible out of their money. And then there are the sexual predators. They know how to work the Internet and the dating sites. They are good at pushing buttons on the unsuspecting. After all, people are on dating sites with high hopes and the desire to escape the lonely nights and find a decent relationship. This is a natural impulse and it’s a shame that some, more than a few, want to take advantage of the hopefuls that are out there.
But then life is what it is and in this poor economy and with the sensibility being what it is, the truly romantic are perceived as fair game by far too many. At least Match.com is taking steps to help prevent such a terrible incident from happening again.
