I want to speak out against Pregnancy.org. Its a parenting website that also has forums to post to. After being a member there since 2002 I had a heated debate with a "friend" on the site. It got nasty and she and another member decided to gang up on me. It began with sending me nasty emails, which the administration of Pregnancy.org themselves traced to a particular member. I was told to keep quiet about the situation and not speak of it to other members, it would be handled internally.
They received a 3 day temporary ban but in the meantime THEY had already spoken to other members on the site about the situation and blinkies in support of their cause ran rampant around the site. I was also told if I had ANY further problems to contact them immediately.
After the emails failed to scare me off the guilty parties began calling my home at all hours of the day and night. I was dealing with a high risk pregnancy at the time and one such call (someone pretending to know my husband and attempt to make me think he'd been cheating) caused me such stress I could have gone into premature labor.
I contacted my phone company, who offered to trace the line provided I file a police report, which I did. I once again went to the site administrators after a post tipped me off as to who had been making the calls and they failed to do anything about it, and once again telling me to keep my mouth shut. And this time I was warned if I didn't there would be consequences. Well once word leaked that the police were involved the calls stopped. But the harassment didn't end there.
Next I began having problems with my email account. I would try to log-in and get a message that my password was invalid. I found out later one of the two members had contacted my ISP posing as me and changed my password repeatedly and I was sent a transcript of the session. My sister in law also contacted me, saying she had been getting nasty messages via Yahoo Messanger and how did they get her address? Once again I went to the Pregnancy.org admins, begging them to take some sort of action. They did nothing but once again tell me not to talk about it because they didn't want a fuss.
Next problem became my online banking. Same problem as my email, the password kept getting changed. Only this time I had no way of finding out who it was. I learned later a key-logging program had been placed into my system. There was also some question as to whether or not these 2 people accessed my credit report. When brought to administration's attention they said they would require contact with the police, my phone company, ISP, etc for "verifiable" proof. The emails they traced themselves, copies of the transcript with my ISP and other information weren't enough.
Finally a time came for me to spill the beans to the other members. After months of being harassed and being told it would be handled and then nothing being done, I felt the other members deserved to be protected from these two people. The very same day I let the "cat out of the bag" so to speak I was given a temporary ban and warned not to say anything further. This happened a few times and most recently just days ago, when after being goaded and outwardly pressured to talk about the situation I did and now I am not allowed back at Pregnancy.org until August, while the guilty parties and friends of theirs are allowed to go free.
Pregnancy.org has a history of favoritism with its members and the actions of the 2 involved are 10x more severe then things that have gotten other people banned permenantly. However Pregnancy.org maintains they are protecting themselves and that I need to just shut up. They are not only exposing their membership to people they KNOW are dangerous but allowing the victims to take the fall.
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