ShareThisTUCSON, Ariz. - Somewhere in the halls of Sahuarita Middle School in Tucson walks a boy who already is a deadbeat debtor.
He isn't old enough to qualify for credit. But at the house his family was evicted from recently, someone used his name and Social Security number to rack up a $950 unpaid bill with Tucson Electric Power.
The boy's mother -- a financially troubled woman with a string of criminal convictions -- says she doesn't know how the bill ended up in her son's name.
Experts say it sounds like a case of perhaps the most insidious form of identity theft, in which parents with bad credit hijack their offspring's personal data to obtain credit cards, loans or utility service.
Such crimes, which appear to be on the rise in Tucson, are seldom reported to law enforcement. They often don't come to light until years later, when victims come of age and apply for student loans or car loans.
That's when they learn their financial reputations have been ruined by those who were supposed to love them most.
The financial abuse -- which can leave similar emotional scars as child molestation -- puts kids in the painful position of having to report their parents to police in order to clean up their credit.
And such crimes are hard to prevent, experts say, because Social Security numbers are only linked to names, not birthdates. That leaves credit grantors with no foolproof way to verify the ages of credit applicants.
"It's like stealing candy from a baby," said Debbi Carroll, a certified identity theft risk manager in North Carolina.
With ready access to their children's personal data, parents are in prime position to carry out the crime and to cover it up -- for example, by intercepting credit card offers that come in the mail once a bogus credit file is established.
Some parents are addicts or compulsive spenders, others are "just plain irresponsible," Carroll said. Some may be driven by economic desperation "if it's cold and they've got kids to keep warm and they don't have enough income to pay the bills."
Whatever the motive, she said, "It's an awful thing to do to your child."
How often the crime occurs -- is unclear.
Arizona has long been recognized as the identity-theft capital of America, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which tracks rates of ID theft per 100,000 population. The Grand Canyon State has held the dubious first-place title for several years running.
The rate of child identity theft in Arizona -- reports involving victims 19 and younger -- is more than twice the national average, 15 percent compared to 7 percent nationwide among those who reported their ages.
But many of those cases involve children whose identities were stolen by strangers and reported by parents. The FTC doesn't track how many kids were victimized by parents.
"It's very hard to get a handle on it," said Joanna Crane, the FTC's identity theft program manager. Crane said the federal agency sees such cases from time to time, but said a solid figure is tough to come by because of the lag time between when such crimes occur and when -- or if -- they are reported.
Maria Grijalva of Tucson dealt with a half-dozen or so young victims last year at Consumer Credit Counseling Services, a nonprofit agency where she works as a debt counselor.
"It was shocking," Grijalva said, recalling the high school graduates, barely of legal age, who came in for help after learning their parents had ruined their credit.
"When they tried to get student loans, they would find out they had three or four accounts in collection, utilities, credit cards, maybe a vehicle loan," Grijalva said. "Nobody verified to see if their Social Security numbers belonged to a 14-year-old or an 18-year-old."
Earl Conner of Tucson, a landlord who rents out several houses locally, said he's come across two cases in the past year in which tenants seem to have used their children's identities to get utility services.
One involved the boy who attends school in Sahuarita, said Conner, 72. He said he found the $950 delinquent electric bill in the child's name in a pile of trash the family left behind.
"As a parent, I was outraged," said Connor, who brought the bill to the Arizona Daily Star's attention. The newspaper isn't naming the family for the child's sake.
The boy's mother -- who has criminal convictions for false reporting to law enforcement, disorderly conduct and contributing to the delinquency of a minor -- told the Star she has no idea how her son's name came to be on the family's electric bill.
She said it might be the landlord's fault, but Conner said he had nothing to do with it.
Grijalva, the debt counselor, said none of the teen victims she counseled was willing to take her advice on how to fix their credit. She urged them to file police reports, which would compel credit-reporting agencies to remove the negative information.
"They don't want to do it because it's their parents and they don't want them to go to jail," Grijalva said. "Emotionally, it's really hard."
San Diego psychologist Charles E. Nelson, a board member of Identity Theft Resource Center, a nationally recognized California nonprofit that aids victims and collects information on the crime, says kids whose credit is ruined by parents suffer some of the same emotional fallout as those molested by a parent.
While sexual abuse is more serious, victims of both crimes feel a similar sense of betrayal that can make it hard for them to trust others or form relationships, said Nelson, who counsels such victims as part of his practice. Another similarity to sexual abuse, he said, is that, in two-parent households, the non-offending parent often has some inkling of what's happening, yet doesn't intervene to protect the child.
Linda Foley, co-founder of Identity Theft Resource Center, said the organization is working on a proposal that would give police and credit bureaus access to a "minors list" which would not include names, but would list all Social Security numbers belonging to those under age 18.
Child victims of identity theft often are haunted for years by the crime, Foley said. Besides being unable to get loans, they may lose out on housing and job opportunities and be forced to pay higher insurance rates.
Foley said she's heard all sorts of rationalizations from parents who engage in such behavior.
"They'll say anything from, 'I was trying to make sure you'd have a good credit history when you turned 18' to, 'I was going to pay it all off and you were never going to know.' "
Some blame the victim.
"There's, 'You wanted shoes, you wanted food, you wanted a warm house. Where did you think the money was going to come from?' That one is really hard to swallow," Foley said.
(E-mail reporter Carol Ann Alaimo at calaimo(at)azstarnet.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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