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A 24-year-old Ohio woman who worked for the National Youth Advocate Program has been arrested for allegedly having sex on multiple occasions with a boy she counseled.
Court records indicate a concerned mother contacted police on Sept. 27 after finding text messages on her 13-year-old son's phone between the boy and Payton Shires of Mount Sterling, reported the Columbus Dispatch.
The mother suggested "something inappropriate was happening between her son and Ms. Shires after seeing messages asking if he had deleted the videos and asking if his mom had seen the videos or messages."
Upon executing a forensic evaluation of the boy's cell phone, police reportedly found a video of the boy and his counselor engaging in sexual conduct. The boy told detectives that he had sex with his counselor in various places in Columbus on numerous occasions in September, according to WSYX-TV.
Shires reportedly later admitted on a three-way phone call with the boy's mother and detectives to engaging in sexual activity with the 13-year-old.
WBNS-TV reported that SWAT team members with the Columbus Division of Police took Shires into custody Friday without incident.
According to the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, Division of Corrections, Shires was charged on her birthday with third-degree felony unlawful sexual conduct of a minor. A defendant ten or more years older than the victim who is charged thusly and convicted in Ohio can serve up to five years in prison. She may yet face additional charges.
Shires appeared Saturday in Franklin County Municipal Court, where Judge Mike McAllister set her bond at $500,000, reported the Dispatch.
Police told WBNS that Shires, who was licensed to become a social worker in June and has "Child Abuse & Neglect" in her X bio, served as a counselor for the National Youth Advocate Program.
The NYAP states on its website that it offers "flexible, creative, outcome-based solutions to meet the unique needs of the communities we serve and the individual needs of the youth and families involved in our programs and services."
The New York Post noted that it remains unclear if Shires had been assigned to the boy through the NYAP; however, the organization, which has offices in Columbus, said in a statement, "Protecting children is everyone's responsibility. The National Youth Advocate Program is saddened by the situation involving one of our former employees and a young person served by our organization."
"NYAP has reported the situation to Franklin County Children Services (FCCS) and is collaborating with them and the Columbus Police Department on this case," the organization added.
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The Federal Trade Commission issued a proposed, $7.8 million settlement order Thursday related to charges that an online counseling service revealed customers' sensitive data with online advertisers like Facebook.
"In the hierarchy of health information, details about a person’s mental health may be among the most confidential," the FTC said Friday in a blog post explaining the disturbing case.
"[BetterHealth] promised to keep [sensitive health information] private through statements like: 'Rest assured – any information provided in this questionnaire will stay private between you and your counselor.'"
"But from the FTC’s perspective, a truthful statement would have been 'Rest assured – we plan to share your information with major advertising platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat, Criteo, and Pinterest.'"
BetterHelp, an online counseling service, also does business as My Therapist, Teen Counseling, Faithful Counseling, Pride Counseling, Terappeuta for Spanish-speaking clients, and others, the FTC indicates in its pending settlement updated March 2.
People who signed up and paid for BetterHelp services between August 1, 2017 and December 31, 2020 may receive partial refunds thanks to the proposed settlement. The settlement order also bars the company from continuing to share customers' health data for advertising purposes. Third parties that received the data are to delete it.
BetterHelp, despite repeated promises to the contrary, reportedly shared health information from over 7 million consumers with Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, and others for advertising purposes.
Among the most egregious examples are allegedly uploading nearly 2 million current and former clients' email addresses to Facebook to target their friends with ads for mental health services. The company also allegedly disclosed to Facebook 1.5 million clients' responses to an intake questionnaire query about whether the client had been in counseling or therapy in the past.
Similarly, the company allegedly broke its privacy promises by disclosing the IP and email addresses of 5.6 million former clients to Snapchat. Criteo is yet another company to which BetterHelp shared clients' email addresses.
BetterHelp's home page, which boasts it is "256-bit SSL secure," claims 3,822,804 people have received "help" from their more than 31,366 licensed therapists. The popular platform, which claims to be the "world's largest therapy service," regularly runs television and online ads for its service.
The advertisement below was published February 28, according to iSpot.tv.
Unfortunately for patients, the data sharing came from outside an established, patient-provider relationship. The data in question stemmed from an intake questionnaire that "repeatedly pushed" would-be clients to "hand over sensitive health information through unavoidable prompts," rather than the protected interactions with therapists on the platform.
The website also goes into great detail about how they, theoretically at least, protect clients' privacy and security. "We have built state-of-the-art technology, operations, and infrastructure with the goal of protecting your privacy and safeguarding the information you provide," the website says, detailing the steps they claim to take to ensure that privacy.
BetterHelp's privacy page goes into considerable depth, evidently to convince would-be clients that their private data is secure.
The FTC's ruling in this case carries implications for other companies. For example, though an email address might not automatically be considered health information, it can be if the source of that email address is a health-related website like a therapy service, a diabetes supplies manufacturer, or a physical therapy establishment.
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