Stephanie Hasbrouck, 19, began meeting people from Internet chat rooms in person when she was 15, a habit that led to her life spiraling out of control. STAR PHOTO BY MARY M. RALL

Stephanie Hasbrouck has taken control of her life - a huge feat considering she wanted nothing more than to end it a few years ago.

Hasbrouck, 19, of Fort Richardson has survived suicide attempts, drug and alcohol abuse and rape.

She admits she wasn't always thinking clearly as an Eagle River teenager, but can look back now and see how her life began to go off course and knows she might have experienced far fewer trials had she never discovered Internet chat rooms.

Hasbrouck said she began exploring chat rooms to make new friends when she was about 12, her favorites being regional Alaska rooms featured on Yahoo!

"I guess I found it easier. People couldn't judge me just because they didn't know exactly who I was," she said.

It wasn't long before Hasbrouck had a collection of online friends to replace those she felt were growing distant offline.

"I think at that point in my life, all my friends outside of the Internet were kind of going downhill, so instead of meeting people in real life, I used the Internet to meet people," she said, adding that she found a sense of acceptance online she couldn't find anywhere else.

"I felt popular. I knew I wasn't really in life, so I was like, 'I can go on the Internet and all these people will talk to me,'" she said.

Michael Wilts, Hasbrouck's father, said she developed an insatiable desire to be on the Internet and navigated it with frightening ease, often carrying on as many as 10 private conversations at once.

"It was so easy. Basically all you would have to do is go in there and say, 'I'm looking for people to talk to,' and you'd have all these people talking to you at the same time," Hasbrouck said.

She said she developed a false sense of security online and started to take the relationships to the next level by meeting people in person when she was about 15 - an experience that sometimes had surprising results.

Hasbrouck said one meeting in particular involving an unidentified man who misrepresented himself stands out in her mind. She said she had talked with him online him for about a day before meeting him in person at the Eagle River Carrs grocery store with her 7-year-old sister, Shelby, in tow.

"That was probably the freakiest guy I ever met. He said he was military and that sort of drew me because I was drawn to military guys," Hasbrouck said, adding he had described himself as a six-foot-tall 21-year-old with blond hair.

She describes the man who showed up for the meeting as being about 40, short with dirty blond hair and missing teeth. She said he played off the discrepancies in his appearance as a misunderstanding.

Feeling uncomfortable, Hasbrouck, used her sister as an excuse to leave and never talked to him online again, although he did manage to get her to take his phone number before leaving.

She said such unusual encounters didn't cause her to stop meeting her online friends and estimates she met about 20 people overall, relying on her judgment as to what happened next.

"I had a lot of people ask me if I wanted to leave Carrs and go for a ride," Hasbrouck said. "Sometimes I went with them. It depended on if I felt comfortable with them."

Over time, she developed a number of relationships, some of which were positive and remain her friends today, she said, while others contributed to a lifestyle that became increasingly out of control.

Wilts said many of the adult men his daughter met online would brazenly come to her home to pick her up or would encourage her to sneak out to meet them, hindering his ability to control her behavior.

"We were trying to get her corralled in, but these are dangerous situations where any day you're thinking she's going to end up in a ditch somewhere," he said. "As a parent, you're trying to teach her this is not the way to meet people."

He said many of the men would buy her drugs and alcohol as a means of winning her favor or taking advantage of her.

By the time she was 15, Hasbrouck was resisting her parents' authority at every turn and became a habitual runaway, oftentimes relying on her online network of friends to help her.

Running away following an argument with her parents in April 2002, Hasbrouck arranged a meeting with an online friend at an Anchorage mall. He brought his then 21-year-old friend, Shawn Hager, of Anchorage with him.

"I was starting to run out of places to go," Hasbrouck said, adding that Hager offered to provide her with a place to stay if she ever needed it.

"Lo and behold, that night I couldn't get ahold of anyone to stay with, so I called Shawn," she said. "I had someone drive me over there and everything was OK for two weeks, (but) all of a sudden his attitude changed. He became a completely different person."

She said Hager went from being a "nice and courteous" guy who let her have her space and private use of his Anchorage apartment's bedroom to someone who was volatile and touchy. Hasbrouck said she thought the personality change was odd, but felt she could deal with it and had nowhere else to go.

Soon after, Hager raped her twice in one night, she said.

Hasbrouck said she felt trapped in the house and had to wait a week before she felt safe enough to call for help.

"He had no phone, so the only contact I could have was a half a mile down the road at a payphone," she said. "I pretty much stayed in the house. He told me not to leave. He'd come home, and if I wasn't there, he'd get mad."

Then Hager left for work one day, and she seized the opportunity to call her mother, Sandra, to come get her. Hasbrouck said Hager has since been convicted of second and third degree sexual abuse of a minor, served his time and was released from prison.

But the road back from the attack has been a long and difficult one for her, Hasbrouck said.

She said she sank even further into alcohol and drug abuse, attempted suicide several times, committed self-mutilation and was held for multiple hospital observations before her parents sent her to Desert Springs Medical Center in Midland, Texas, in October 2002 for eight months of intensive treatment to help her deal with the trauma of the rape and her self-destructive behavior.

Hasbrouck returned home determined to get her life back on track.

Wilts said he couldn't be more proud of his daughter, who will be belatedly graduating from high school this year. She married a Fort Richardson soldier, Spc. Nick Hasbrouck, last June.

Ironically enough, Hasbrouck met Nick in an Internet chat room, a habit that didn't completely cease when she returned from Texas, although she says she spends increasingly less time online and still experiences personal trials.

"I have a hard time trusting people," Hasbrouck said. "When I met my husband, for the longest time, I couldn't trust him."

Still, Hasbrouck said she is pushing forward with her life and expects to be moved by the Army to Fort Campbell, Ky., in the upcoming months and hopes to enroll in nursing school.

"Once we get there and get settled, I'd like to start taking classes at a college and start getting a job and kind of go from there," she said. "Hopefully one day I'll have kids."

Hasbrouck said it feels good to look toward the future and hopes parents and young people will learn from her experience.

"Now I know it was dangerous. I honestly feel lucky that I got out of every situation," she said, adding she's forever changed from the experience.

Next week: What steps law enforcement is taking to make the Internet safer.

Reach the reporter at mary.rall@alaskastar.com.

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, May 11, 2006.