Please Help Find a Missing Person: Jenifer Martinek

I think you've missed the entire point of the story of The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf'-----that the boy KNEW he was making a false report when he cried 'wolf'.

In this case, we do NOT know whether the report is false or legitimate.

The argument that 'nobody will care anymore' depends on a false premise: that we know that a particular case is a hoax, yet publicize it anyway.

Again: we don't know if this is a hoax. Thus it is illogical to call for people to refrain from mentioning it.

I'm not sure the question of intent or certainty matters. It certainly doesn't matter to me personally. When I received via email a Group Notice mentioning the alleged disappearance (before seeing this thread), prefaced by the information that the sender heard about all this from a friend-of-a-friend and was merely helpfully passing along the info, I deleted it IMMEDIATELY without reading further because to my mind it came from a member of The Set Of All People Who Pass Along Unsubstantiated Rumors To Everybody They Know, In Between Forwarding Emails Containing 5-Year-Old Jokes And Videos Of Cats Looking Foolish.

It's probably not fair to the genuinely concerned folks who think it might be helpful to "get the word out", to paint with so broad a brush, but this type of stuff has been tainted forever for me. The "Boy Who Cried Wolf" story isn't entirely unfitting either IMHO, albeit the "boy" in this case is the collective voices of many over the years who have wasted so many people's time over nothing.

Agreed - that's my position too. There is a plethora of similarly mischievous stories doing the rounds, because the Internet provides fertile ground for naive, impulsive responses to apparently tragic situations. A healthy dose of scepticism is required whenever this sort of email or notice is received unless the facts can be readily established via reputable sources.

Only recently, I received a heartfelt plea for help which was a variation on a theme that has been circulating in one form or another for the past four years. What troubled me most was that it came from an articulate, intelligent but somewhat Internet-naive friend, whose judgment in other matters I would trust implicitly, yet who had fallen hook, line and sinker for this particular scam.

If people genuinely want to help in the search for missing persons, or with other human rights issues, they could do worse than go directly to the Amnesty International website, or to their country's official missing persons sites (for example, in Australia this would be http://www.missingpersons.gov.au/missing-persons/profiles.aspx)

And, again, I disagree: there is nothing illogical in calling for people to check their facts before sounding the alarm. It is my opinion that it's illogical to pass along information that one hasn't even bothered to verify under the guise of being concerned and doing good.

Yes i have received this in group chat a lot recent.

It may just be me but seems weird that a father is looking for his adult daughter which got kidnapped through a group chat.


Please correct me if i am wrong but would it not be more wise to contact state an local police as well as friends list or cell phone if she had one.


I do not know just seems kinda pointless to be looking in a virtual world for real world person through a group chat.

Well, again . . . given that this young woman has apparently disappeared because she is on her way to rendezvous with someone she met up with in SL, this seems to me a logical place to start.

I don't think the point was ever to organize a massive online search for her, or send out posses in RL. As I take it, the idea is simply to ascertain if perhaps she had spoken to someone in SL about where she might be going, or whom she was planning to meet. Nothing seems more logical to me.

As regards the legitimacy of this notice, I can only repeat that it was sent out in a notice through Amnesty International-E, which is a REAL, accredited AI chapter, and was posted by millay Freschi, who is, in RL, the Virtual Coordinator for the RL organization. Beyond knowing that, I am as much in the dark about the legitimacy of this call or not. But the credentials of the original poster are pretty good.

Should we take this to imply that the woman whom the notice concerns has been adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience?

You have mentioned this notice being sent out through Amnesy International several times in this thread. Also Millay Freschi as the Virtual Coordinator for the organization (I assume "the organization" is Amnesty International) has been mentioned as verification of the authenticity of this story. I can find notthing on Amnesty International website about this missing girl..........nor can I find a Millay Freschi. Would you mind giving a URL to where I might read this notice? And who this Millay Freschi is? Verification might go a long way toward easing some doubt about this whole thread.

I think a lot of people are wondering, like me, why there's absolutely nothing to be found that verifies a single thing all these IM's, blogs, and threads are pushing as some sort of issue that needs attention. We also want to know, even if we had talked to this missing girl a few days ago, just how can we help? Email a complete stranger in Brazil (or any other foriegn country)? I don't think anyone here is that stupid. Contact LL? What the hell are they going to do? They won't devulge any information without a courte order. And they'd never tell you anyway....for obvious reasons. Contact the local police? Contact the Brazilian police? What is the point? I see none..........none that follows any meaningful logic.

It's all beginning to look like hoax at best. But, the real fear some (yeah even me) have is that the whole story was made up by someone with less than good intentions......such as "outing" this person's real life identity. I now don't believe that there is even a shred of truth to this story.........something vicious was the intent. And, sadly, all the folks who profess to be so caring have become complicit is this scam.............or even a crime. All that erring on the side of caring is looking more and more like being careless in a very real sense. I only hope that no harm comes to this person (if what I think is a distinct possibility should the motive be what it appears to be).............if it turns out bad then I think there are quite a few people in the SL commnuity who will shoulder some of the blame.

Common sense would tell an intelligent person that perpetuating unverified stories relating to the identity of an individual to total anonymous strangers is extremely dangerous to the real person's safety. Acting before thinking is a common flaw among children........but we are supposed to be adults here. The harm's been done.........this thread should die.

That would seem somewhat unlikely, I agree. While I am a member of AI-E, I don't pretend to have any inside info as to why they sent this out.




Peggy, here are two links to info, the first from AI USA, on the SL group.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/take-acti...e.do?id=1531007

http://amnestyinternational-e.org/default.aspx

And here is an interview that was conducted with Josh Rubinstein of AI, and millay:

http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2009/07/amnesty-internationals-josh-rubenstein-speaking-in-second-life-on-thursday.html

Somewhere, I think in the AI USA site, you can find an announcement of millay's appointment, complete, I think, with her RL name, which I will not be posting here.

The note was sent in-world; nothing about this appears on the AI-E's online info for (I suspect) the very simple reason that, as Innula points out, this is not the kind of thing that AI usually involves itself with. AI-E is itself open membership; you can find the note in their archived notices.


Well, I think I answered the question about "how can we help" just above this post; I'll just quote it again here:



If you don't know Jenifer in-world, or do, but don't have any information that might help, then I think that is pretty much the end of the story; there is nothing more that you can, or should do.


That is certainly a possibility, although there is even less evidence that "harm" is intended than that it is legit: I see no actual proof that the "motive" is bad. As for this thread, I did NOT post the RL name of the young woman in question, although that information is certainly easily available elsewhere.

Hi Scylla,

having read your posts on other threads, I can't believe anything other than you are genuine in posting this.

However, this is just one of those cases where, at best it's a complete waste of everyone's time and at worst it devalues and/or diverts efforts on behalf of not only this "missing person" but many others.

Yes, yes I know I'm going to get flamed to hell and back by the very sincere and helpful people on this board but nevertheless common sense would seem to support me.

If this person really is missing and her father is really worried sick and looking, there are at least 2 more viable options.

1. Firstly LL would be contacted under the auspices of a legally recognised organisation (not necessarly lawy enforcement) and could supply not only registration information, but also any inventry items (note cards etc), friends lists, last log in details etc.

2. The distraught father would not rely on an anonymous email address as the means of communication. We lost the family cat last year and put our phone number on the flyers.

If nothing else I'd expect the posting to be from her father.

Maybe it is genuine and I'm being a ratbag, but if it is and I am, this has got to be the most ineffectual search for a missing person I've ever encountered..

Oh and



You're an idiot.

Hi Scylla,

Obviously, regardless of the posibility of scam, I think people should try to help if they can.

I was just wondering if the following might be more helpful.

1. Have the family and/or a legally recognised body (not necessarily law enforcement) contact LL. I'm not sure of the legal situation but LL will have access to Registration Info, Last Log In details, inventry items (including notecards) and friends lists/group memberships.

2. I do think that the suspicion of phishing might hamper the effort, to that end wouldn't it be better if her father used something other than an anonymous email address as a communication channel? To put it in context, the family cat went missing last year and we thought it worth the risk to put our phone number on the flyers.

Just ideas, but regardless of anything I hope it works out ok.