Rape claim forces dating website to vet users

Photo / Chris Skelton

The dating website match.com has been forced to begin checking its clients against criminal databases after being sued by a Californian woman who claimed to have been raped by a convicted sex attacker she met on the site.

The management of match.com, whose almost two million members in the United States pay about US$30 ($38) a month for access to its database of potential life partners, announced the move in an attempt to limit the public-relations damage after the woman said that her attacker, Alan Wurtzel, had "six previous sexual convictions for sexual battery" in Los Angeles, according to a class action lawsuit filed last week. He was able to use the site to arrange meetings with further unwitting victims.

The president of match.com, Mandy Ginsberg, admitted that her decision to begin cross-referencing the names of members with the national sex-offender registry had been hastened by the Wurtzel case being made public. But she added that plans to introduce screening had been in the works for some time.

In the past, the "historical unreliability" of sex-offender databases had prevented her company from using them to vet clients, she said. "But we've been advised that a combination of improved technology and an improved database now enables a sufficient degree of accuracy to move forward with this initiative, despite its continued imperfection."

Her decision has sparked widespread debate in a country where dating is a serious business. Roughly one in five Americans now meets a spouse through online matchmaking sites; the industry boasts US$2 billion in revenue and roughly US$400 million in profits each year.

Companies such as match.com and the market leader, eharmony.com, claim they are not responsible for the veracity of statements made by their members. Users of match.com are "solely responsible" for subsequent interactions with people they meet there, according to the small print.

- Independent