Case Raises Issue of Sexual Banter on Internet

The online conversation began innocently but quickly turned racy.

Twice last October, 22-year-old Aidin Ghaffari of Woodland Hills chatted over the Internet with someone who described herself as a 13-year-old girl. After she told Ghaffari she was blond with a girlish figure, he wrote her: “We’re gonna have sex, OK?”

They agreed to meet at a Westwood park. There, Ghaffari, a data entry clerk and part-time college student, was arrested on suspicion of sending harmful matter to a minor and attempted lewd conduct. The cyberspace girl turned out to be a real-life man--an undercover FBI agent using the moniker “Cal_Girl” while prowling an Internet chat room in search of adults who sexually prey on children.

As Ghaffari’s criminal trial got underway last week in West Los Angeles Superior Court, the prosecution and defense agreed on key facts of the online conversations Ghaffari had. But they differed sharply over how to interpret what occurred.

At the heart of the case is a broader debate over the nature of online conversations and whether the law involving crimes in cyberspace, which is in its infancy, ought to treat chat room banter just like any other. Should Ghaffari’s sexual advances to someone who claimed to be a minor be taken seriously just because they occurred over the Internet?

“The defendant here is on trial. The Internet and how it works is also going to be on trial,” said Ghaffari’s attorney, James E. Blatt, in his opening statement to the jury of seven women and five men.

He said he would show that conversations over the Internet are inherently untrustworthy because of the anonymity the medium offers.

Blatt also suggested that the FBI agent had gone too far in luring Ghaffari into talks about sex and had used language that made Cal_Girl seem older than 13.

The prosecution is arguing that online chats are no different from exchanging letters or telephone calls.

Ghaffari asked someone he believed to be a minor for sex, and then went to the park expecting to meet her there for a tryst, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Wendy Segall.

“This is not a case of someone playing around on the Internet. This was serious,” she said in her opening statement. She later portrayed Ghaffari as the aggressor and said he believed Cal_Girl to be 13.

In more than an hour of testimony, FBI Special Agent Bruce Applin, who posed as Cal_Girl, reenacted the digital conversation between himself and Ghaffari, who used the nickname “JAMINinLA.”

After finding out that Cal_Girl was apparently 13 and lived in Los Angeles, Applin said, Ghaffari peppered Cal_Girl with more questions: What do you look like? Are you hot?

Cal_Girl replied that she was 5 feet 2 and weighed 110 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes.

“Cool,” Ghaffari wrote, according to Applin. After claiming to be 19, he truthfully described himself: 5 feet 11, 170 pounds, black hair and brown eyes, Persian.

When Cal_Girl said she had “no experience at all” sexually, she typed in the symbol showing a sad face.

“I can be a good teacher,” Applin said Ghaffari responded.

That brought a happy face symbol from Cal_Girl.

Applin said that minutes later, Ghaffari wrote: “We’ll go somewhere quiet so they can’t see me making love to you.”

Two days later, the two chatted again, confirming their intentions to meet the next day to have sex, Applin said. Several times Cal_Girl asked Ghaffari to bring “rubbers” so that she wouldn’t get pregnant, and he replied he would, the agent said.

Applin and Stephanie Green, a 29-year-old FBI agent, testified about how Green posed as a decoy on the morning Ghaffari was to meet Cal_Girl.

At their designated meeting time, Ghaffari walked to the picnic table where Cal_Girl was to sit and circled Green, looking at her several times, she said.

Ghaffari got as close as 20 feet and then walked away, she said. She testified that she figured he didn’t think she looked 13. No words were exchanged between the two, she said.

Applin arrested Ghaffari. He said officers found two condoms in the defendant’s parked car.

Another FBI agent, Timothy Alon, testified that he went into the same chat room and posed as a petite blond 13-year-old girl and that Ghaffari made sexual advances. They agreed to meet at a mall near the Westwood park 90 minutes after Ghaffari was to meet Cal_Girl, Alon testified.

During cross-examination, Blatt established that Applin, who was really 29, had lied about his age on the Internet to Ghaffari and that Applin believed many people lie and role-play while conversing online.

“You couldn’t tell what age they were. You couldn’t tell if they’re male or female,” Blatt said. “That’s the nature of the medium, isn’t it? You can’t tell if someone’s lying to you.”

“Nobody really knows who they’re talking to on the Internet, do they sir?” Blatt continued.

“No they don’t,” Applin responded.

Throughout the first two days of trial, which began Thursday and is expected to end later this week, Ghaffari’s mother, Farny Hatami, sat in the front row weeping.

“He didn’t do anything,” she said outside the courtroom, clutching a crumpled tissue and a reporter’s sleeve. “He didn’t touch the girl. They should only arrest him when he touches the girl.”