By Soraya Grant
Where do you go when you have just
begun to realize the person you fell in love with online was really a
scammer or group of scammers? Talking to family and friends about it
may be difficult, especially at first. General purpose chat rooms are
often a bit rough; many that were set up for "clean" chat
are populated by people who are looking for online (and sometimes
offline) hookups and affairs, people looking for an online fight, and
scammers. Even quality support sites for related issues such as
loneliness or anxiety might simply not have the knowledge to help you
cope with your scam. The people there may mean well, they just don't
fully understand what you're talking about or know what to say.
Scams of the Heart hosts an online
support chat room for anyone who has been scammed, fears they may be
talking to a scammer, or is concerned that a family member or friend
is or has been the victim of an online romance scam.
Our Promises To Anyone Who Uses the
Chat Room
If You Need to Talk About an Online
Romance Scam, We Will Listen
We have no problem
with general, off topic conversations, but if someone comes in
needing to talk about online romance scams, the topic of the room
immediately switches to online romance scams and stays on topic as
long as the person needs to talk. It does not matter if you
discovered you or someone in your life was being scammed today,
three weeks ago, or four years ago. If something has come up and you
need to talk about the scam, you will not be ignored, interrupted
with off topic chatter, or pushed to change the subject. We will be
here for you.
Your Scam Will Be Taken Seriously
Scams of the Heart
members understand that an online romance scam is not a bad
relationship, a cheater, or a crush that turned out to be a jerk. We
understand the emotional, psychological, and often financial
devastation that happens during romance scams. You will not be
dismissed with "get over it" or "oh well you're better
off without him" type comments here.
We Will Do Our Best to Keep the
Common Chat Room Problems Away
Each chatter's ip
address and location is visible to the moderators. They have already
blocked ips from areas with high concentrations of scammers, such as
Nigeria and Ghana, from the room, and have no problem blocking
individual ip addresses from any Americans or people from other
nations who enter the room and attempt to run a scam. It is further
noted in several places on Scams of the Heart's main page, Squidoo
page, and this site that we are not an online hookup or dating site.
People who join are made aware that this is not the place to come if
they are looking for someone to flirt with, hook up with, date, or
marry. We also make it clear on the main page that this is not the
place to come looking for a fight over religion, politics, social
issues, or anything else people like to go into chat rooms and pick
fights about. The atmosphere in the chat room is one of respect for
other people.
We Encourage and Support Healing and Recovery
Joining the Scams
of the Heart chat room does not doom you to be a scam victim and
nothing more. You will find that you, and other members, will need to
focus on the scam at different times, but we are not here to force
you to forever dwell on what happened during and immediately after
the scam. You will find support and encouragement as you learn to
re-establish trust in yourself and other people, strengthen old
offline friendships and make new friends, begin dating again, go back
to work, go back to school, or dive into a hobby or interest.
Scams of the Heart Chat Has a "Here
When You Need Us" Policy
There have been
some very strong friendships formed in the chat room, and we have
several members who come in to chat as a regular part of their week
or day. At the same time, we encourage members to have additional
social circles and other interests. There is no set amount of time
you are required to devote to the chat room to be "accepted"
and we hope you don't give up the things you love or brush off your
family members or offline friends in order to come in and chat. We
will not be offended if you need to come in and discuss scams and
scam recovery for a while but are not interested in making new
lifelong friends. Whether you spend your entire day logged into the
chat room, just come in once to ask about some scam related issues,
or anything in between, you will be treated with the same dignity and
respect as everyone else. Friendships may form, but this is not
anyone's online clique. We are here for anyone who needs us.
We Have a Confidentiality Rule
As with any
quality support group, what is said in the room or learned about
someone in the room stays in the room. We will not reveal the details
of your scam to anyone else on any other web site, over the phone, or
in any other form of communication. Each person owns what happened to
them and it is entirely up to them to decide who else needs to know
about it.
There Is No Hierarchy of Scams Here
At Scams of the
Heart, we do not play any "I was scammed worse than you"
games. Most online romance scams are based in Nigeria, Ghana,
Malaysia, or a country from the former USSR. This makes them the most
common, not the worst or the most important. Some online romance
scams are carried out by Americans. This makes them rarer, not worse
or more important. Regardless of where your scam originated, you will
not be treated as less important than someone who lost more money to
the scammer, spent more time believing they were in a relationship
with the scammer, or spent more money on clothes, airfare, or other
things to please what they believed to be their boyfriend or
girlfriend than you. It does not matter if you were scammed by a
Nigerian ring who tricked you into sending thousands of dollars,
scammers from across your own country who tried to get you to send
them new electronics as "presents," somebody across town
because they just get a kick out of manipulating and hurting people
online, or any other combination of details. We are all equal here.
No comments:
Post a Comment