UCI to step up investigation as sites take down pictures of young athletes
Spread of photos reaches international levels.
UC Irvine prepared to hire an independent firm to investigate if a police dispatcher posted photographs of unsuspecting teen athletes on gay-oriented Web sites even as some of those sites removed photos.
But, two days after an Orange County Register investigation called attention to some sites and photographers, it was obvious that the spread of non-action photos of young athletes had reached international levels.
Featured on an Australian gay-oriented Web site with explicit sexual content is a photo of a well-known Southern California high school water polo player adjusting his trunks next to a headline that the site has drawn 50,000 hits in two months.
The presence of the Australian site, discovered by the Register on Monday, demonstrates how easily non-action photos of unsuspecting high school athletes are transmitted to tens of thousands in cyberspace.
“It’s very disturbing,” said Joan Gould, an international water polo official who is representing a group of Orange County parents. “A kid who’s 14, 15 years old in Orange County who’s had a picture of him put on a Web site in Australia has no control over what happens to that picture, no control where his life is going and what effect his sport is having on him.”
While four gay sex Web sites have removed photos of local high school water polo players since a Register investigation appeared on the Web on Saturday, the presence of the images on the Australian site and others illustrates how difficult it is for parents and coaches to monitor the spread of photos of unaware prep athletes on the Internet.
Some of the photographs on the Australian site that also features non-action pictures of Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps are credited to Scott Stanford and a company linked to Allen Rockwell, another Southern California photographer.
The company is AllenSnaps.com, which Rockwell acknowledged owning in a letter to USA Water Polo. He wrote in the letter that he had shut down the site in November, but it is in operation with the owner listed as a Nevada company.
UC Irvine police chief Paul Henisey said last week his department is investigating information it received that Stanford is Scott Cornelius, a UC Irvine police department employee.
Henisey said on Monday that the university is in the process of hiring an independent firm to assist with the investigation. Cornelius remains on active duty, Henisey said.
“We want to look into the matter,” Henisey said. “We're concerned about it, too. We plan on doing a thorough investigation.”
In a Nov. 29 e-mail to an Orange County parent who had complained about Rockwell’s online images of local high school athletes, Rockwell acknowledged that he and “Scott” had taken non-action photos at high school and age-group water polo matches.
“The only person I know personally is Scott and to the best of my knowledge he has stopped attended all sporting events,” Rockwell wrote. “I will not reveal his personal information to ‘the mob’ (or anyone for that matter) as I do not trust them to not do something illegal and/or violent to him. While this issue is important to the (water polo) community, I think that a person's physical safety is far more important than a photograph on the Internet.”
But the Register has found that as recently as Jan. 2, photos credited to Stanford and “AllenSnaps” continued to be posted on gay porn sites. It is unclear if they posted the pictures themselves or if they were posted by others.
Responding to an online post about underwater cameras last fall,“ Allen wrote, “That looks like it would be fun at waterpolo (sic.) matches. They say most of the action is under water. Smile.
“Maybe next season I'll have to get one of those!”
The post then said, “See my photos at www. AllenSnaps .com.”
AllenSnaps.com is an online service that e-mails subscribers as many as 15 aquatic sports photos a day. The site’s non-action photographs of high school athletes have repeatedly drawn complaints from high school parents.
A post on AllenSnaps.com Monday seemed to shift the blame to others.
“It has been brought to our attention that some users are reposting our images to ‘adult’ or ‘sex’ Web sites and making or inviting inappropriate comments about the subjects of these photos, please be advised that this activity is a direct violation of the photographers copyright and the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998).”
Younglifter.com, a gay-oriented site, has banned photos from Rockwell Web sites as well as other high school sports shots. But in the November e-mail to the concerned parent, Rockwell wrote, “I never saw anything wrong with what I was doing.”
The CIF-Southern Section cautioned its 560-plus schools last fall to be on lookout for suspicious photographers at boys water polo matches after being warned that inappropriate photographs were being posted on Web sites.
Thom Simmons, the section’s director of communications, also confirmed that approximately four years ago CIF officials spotted a suspicious spectator with a camera at the swimming championships and called Long Beach police.
Simmons said police told the CIF that the man had tightly cropped photographs of boys’ pelvic areas. The man was removed from the meet and his photographs were erased, Simmons said.
Contact the writer: sreid@ocregister.com, dalbano@ocregister.com
