The Sad Case of Kristin Helms

I heard a radio interview recently with the mother of Kristin Helms, an Orange County 15-year-old who committed suicide in 2006 after a 29-year-old man from Texas broke off their relationship. They met on the Internet.

The story is perplexing because Kristin's parents, by her mother's account, were not ignorant, or negligent, or disengaged, or aloof. And yet, their daughter, at the age of 14, was able to initate and sustain a relationship with a man twice her age that turned sexual and eventually led to her deep depression and suicide.

(Read background from the LA Times or listen to the KFI interview here.)

Kristin met Kiley Ryan Bowers through his webpage the summer before her ninth grade year. He in turn helped her set up a profile on MySpace.com and they began regular correspondence that included sending each other explicit photos. Kristin's parents weren't completely hip to the teen Internet scene - but their son was, and with his help, they discovered her MySpace profile (this was in the early stages of their relationship), deleted it, and took away her computer for five-and-a-half months.

But Kristin found a way. At El Toro High School, where access to MySpace was blocked, she was one of apparently many students who figured out how to beat the filter. The online relationship continued, and intensified, until in December 2005, Bowers traveled to California, met Kristin outside the Helms' home late one night, took her to a motel, and had sex with her. Five months later, Bowers broke off the relationship. From there, an emotional downward spiral began. Kristin became severely depressed, and last July, she killed herself.

We don't need to speculate about what happened. About a month before she died, Kristin shared everything with her mother Danielle, confessing that she'd kept up the relationship behind her parents' back. In the radio interview, Danielle described their relationship as close and open. Kristin did not fit the profile of a troubled kid. She got good grades and was pleasant at home - "an absolute joy to have as a daughter," Danielle says. Mrs. Helms purposefully worked from home for 18 years in order to be with her kids and acknowledges others would consider her "overprotective."

Yet, her daughter got involved sexually and then became suicidal over a 29-year-old from Texas. So the tougher question is why - and how? Bad enough that Kristin was seduced, but how could a breakup with a man she'd only physically encountered once drive her to suicide?

For one thing, Mrs. Helms rightly points out that girls are emotionally vulnerable and prone to flattery - the exact thing that makes them easy targets for men who are skilled at crafting writtten messages. "We always worry about our sons and pornography on the Internet, but the written word is incredibly powerful for the young ladies out there," she says. Her recommendation? No computers in bedrooms - and beyond that, parents need to remain vigilant about family computer access when parents are asleep or away.

But how could a 14-year-old feel such an emotional deficiency that she would risk her innocence on an Internet relationship, and give herself to a 29-year-old she'd never met? The powerful reality is that even 14-year-olds can experience deep emotions. "She was only 15 years old, just a child," Kristin's mother said at the sentencing hearing. Well, not quite. Kristin was not a child, nor an adult, but an adolescent, capable of experiencing bewildering adult emotions, even being in love. Trying to explain why the breakup had taken such a toll on her, Danielle says Kristin told her, "Mom, I had no idea I would get so emotionally attached." In other words, Kristin was secretly confronting emotions that she didn't know how to handle. Yet not every adolescent or pre-adolescent crush is love, either. An astute parent must learn to distinguish between drama and red flags of genuine emotional need.

We ignore the depth of our kids' emotions at our peril. For whatever reason, Kristin - and doubtless millions of other 14-year-olds like her - was desperate for the attention, intimacy and affirmation that Kiley Bowers gave her from four states away. The academic achievement, the attention of her parents, the relationships with her school friends were not filling her emotional tank. So what probably started as a harmless chat session or e-mail to Bowers' Geocities webpage paved the road for sex, and ultimately suicide.

Danielle Helms is taking the appeal to parents. "I know when mothers speak, it goes in one ear and out the other sometimes because we're always warning our children. And I want to be an example to the children and the parents. And if the kids can see that this is a real-life story, where we lost our beautiful, smart, incredible daughter, they might look at me and say, 'I'm going to be more careful.'" Powerful message: exercise vigilence, because the Internet is a predator's playground.

But my hope for the other would-be Kristins out there is that we not only protect, but nurture girls in such a way that the nagging unworthiness that plagues so many of them can be vanquished. Mary Pipher writes about this need in her landmark book Reviving Ophelia, observing that sometime prior to age 13, most girls' childhood exhuberance is crowded out by a crippling self-consciousness and nagging sense that they are not "enough": not pretty enough, not smart enough, not loveable, not intrinsically valuable. As a result, they begin to conform to a mold that isn't really them. They live to meet everyone's unhealthy expectations and not for their own good. Eating disorders, depression, promiscuity, and abuse are some of the symptoms.

It is, of course, during the pre-adolescent years that we can build a healthy sense of self in girls and then continue to bolster and reinforce that through high school. The real question isn't where to put the computer; it is what's missing in a girl's heart that she would look for love there?

"Mom, I had no idea I would get so emotionally attached."