Matched with a dangerous criminal?

Last week, Carole Markin sued online dating site Match.com, alleging she was assaulted by a man she met on the site. In her lawsuit, Markin claims the crime could have been avoided if Match.com screened its members against national sex offender registries.

The man Markin met on Match.com may be found guilty in a pending trial of having committed felonies of oral copulation and sexual battery. He has pleaded not guilty and claimed his relationship with her was consensual. Regardless of whether he is exonerated, the Editorial Board believes that Match.com cannot be responsible for investigating its members’ felony histories.

When Match.com agreed this week to the background checks requested by Markin, the dating website made a mistake by relying on incorrect assumptions. The decision to disqualify sex offenders from membership will result in extensive negative consequences.

First, this entire case provides a perfect illustration of what is wrong with sex offender registries. Once published online, they become a way to punish offenders indefinitely, excluding them from a growing list of activities.

Second, Markin’s lawsuit misplaces the responsibility for the crime. Match.com does not bear the responsibility for the alleged assault. If found guilty, the assaulter himself bears full responsibility for his actions.

Third, the language of Markin’s suit promotes the falsehood that only women are the victims of sex crimes. Time reported that Markin’s lawsuit claimed, “Match and sexual predators benefit, while female members ... are endangered.”

For the website, there is no reason to identify and stigmatize everyone who has been convicted of a sex crime. Defined broadly, sex crimes can extend from the trivial public exposure to truly serious and reprehensible crimes such as child molestation and rape.

Fourth, in an age in which sex offender registries are published online, Markin could have independently investigated her date. Indeed, it was just such a search after the alleged assault that led her to discover that she had been matched with a convicted sex offender.

This would have been equally, if not more, effective than relying on Match.com to screen its members. The dating service’s president even cautioned that women should not believe that the new screens will make meeting dating partners online a completely safe process.

Fifth, it is hard to see how the site should be required to research and provide information about a person’s classification as a sex offender if the website does not investigate other publicly available information about people’s criminal histories.

Most people would probably be more hesitant to spend time with a convicted murderer than a person convicted of urinating in public.

Dating strangers is inherently risky. Unfortunately, Match.com’s concession to Markin will not increase dating safety and will shift responsibility for sexual assault from its perpetrators to networking facilitators.