Popular dating website Match.com is to screen for sex offenders after a Hollywood producer was assaulted while on a date set up via the service.
Carole Markin sued the online dating site when she found out her attacker had been convicted of sexual battery. Instead of demanding financial damages, she only asked for a court order requiring the site to check its members’ background to weed out convicted sex offenders.
“If I save one woman from being attacked, I’m happy,” Miss Markin, a 53-year-old film producer who lives in Los Angeles, said. “I went into this lawsuit to protect other people, and it worked.”
Robert Platt, an attorney for the site, said Match.com has begun checking its members against state and federal sex-offender databases in the US.
After seeing proof that the checks were taking place, Miss Markin dropped her lawsuit.
Last week Alan Wurtzel, 67, pleaded no contest to assaulting Miss Markin. He could face a year in jail, five years of probation and a lifetime registration as a sex offender when he is sentenced September 19.
Prosecutors said that on their second date last year, Wurtzel drove Miss Markin to her home and followed her inside where he sexually assaulted her while holding her down.
Later she Googled his name and discovered his previous conviction.
Miss Markin waived her anonymity to speak about her ordeal on NBC’s Today Show in America in April this year.
She told host Meredith Viera: “He jumped me. Then he overpowered me. He’s a big guy. He’s a foot taller than me and weighs a hundred pounds more than I do. I was afraid.
“I don’t think people go on websites thinking they are going to get themselves into unsafe situations.”