Victim terrorized by Facebook requests from inmate ex-husband

An Oregon woman is terrified and bewildered that her former husband, convicted of kidnapping her, keeps popping up on her Facebook page.

Lisa Gesik enjoys Facebook as a diversion from the stress in her life, including the stress from the knowledge her former husband, Michael Gladney, will soon get out of prison. Gladney has been ordered to have no contact with Gesik or their daughter.

But Gladney has managed to have two Facebook pages from behind bars and the social media site has become a place of fear for Gesik.

"I woke up, went to click on Facebook to play a game and there was his picture wanting to be my friend," Gesik said.

In June, Facebook suggested she become "friends" with her former husband who finishes his 7 ½ year sentence in January for kidnapping Gesik and their daughter near where they lived in Newport.

As an inmate at the Columbia River Correctional Institution near the Portland airport, Gladney, like every other Oregon prisoner, isn't allowed free-reign access to the Internet. But there he was anyway on Facebook – not once, but twice. The second time, the spelling of his last name was changed to "Gladknee."

"In June, and I had that shut down. And then he had another one open by September," Gesik said. "He should not victimize us over and over from prison like that. I don't even know how he can."

She thought her ex-husband might have Facebook access through one of the Internet kiosks inside Oregon prisons, but those don't have keyboards. The computers are locked down and are limited to housing and employment websites for inmates who are just about to get out.

Gesik thought that maybe he was using a smuggled cell phone to access Facebook. Guards detected five smuggled cell phones in Oregon prisons last year but none of them were used to access Facebook.

So how does Gladney have Facebook pages? The prison says the answer is simple:

"Inmates that have Facebook accounts in the community have participated in that with family and friends, and they are the ones that are creating and maintaining these Facebook pages for the inmates," said Tonya Sly, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman. "The inmates don't have access to the Internet here."

According to the prison, someone on the outside must be making Gladney's Facebook page for him.

When corrections officers find out about such websites, they notify Facebook, which shuts them down. But it's not soon enough for victims like Gesik who are trying to move on.

There are other websites that post biographies of inmates in hopes of getting people to write those inmates letters. Inmates can only contact those websites through the mail or have someone on the outside do it for them.