facebook

　　A corrections officer is facing bigamy charges after authorities said a Washington woman using Facebook discovered that she and a potential "friend" were married to him at the same time。

　　According to charging documents filed Thursday, Alan L. O'Neill married a woman in 2001, moved out in 2009, changed his name and remarried without divorcing her. The first wife first noticed O'Neill had moved on to another woman when Facebook suggested the friendship connection to wife No. 2 under the "People You May Know" feature。

　　"Wife No. 1 went to wife No. 2's page and saw a picture of her and her husband with a wedding cake," Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist told the reporters。

　　Wife No. 1 then called the defendant's mother。

　　"An hour later the defendant arrived at (Wife No. 1's) apartment, and she asked him several times if they were divorced," court records show. "The defendant said, 'No, we are still married.'"

　　Neither O'Neill nor his first wife had filed for divorce, according to charging documents. The name change came in December, and later that month he married his second wife。

　　O'Neill allegedly told wife No. 1 not to tell anybody about his dual marriages, that he would fix it, the documents state. But wife No. 1 alerted authorities。

　　"Facebook is now a place where people discover things about each other they end up reporting to law enforcement," Lindquist said。

　　Athima Chansanchai, a freelance journalist who writes about social media, said Facebook over the years has played a role in both creating relationships and destroying them。

　　"It's just the latest vessel by which people can stray if they want to," she said。

　　O'Neill, 41, was previously known as Alan Fulk. He has worked as a Pierce County corrections officer for five years, sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said。

　　He was placed on administrative leave after prosecutors charged him Thursday. He could face up to a year in jail if convicted。

　　O'Neill and his first wife had issues that went back to 2009. In 2010, his first wife was arrested after an altercation with the woman who later became the second wife。

　　(Read by Emily Cheng. Emily Cheng is a journalist at the China Daily Website。)

　　点击查看更多双语新闻

　　(Agencies)

　　美国政府机关称，一位华盛顿女性通过Facebook发现她和一位潜在“好友”的现任丈夫竟是同一人。这两位女性的丈夫是一名惩教官，他即将面临重婚罪的控诉。

　　根据周四提交的控告书，阿兰•L•奥尼尔2001年曾与一名女子结婚，2009年他搬了出去，改了名字后再次结婚，但没有和原妻离婚。第一任妻子是在Facebook提示第二任妻子是她“可能认识的人”时才首次注意到奥尼尔已经和另一个女人在一起。

　　皮尔斯县的检察官马克•林德奎斯特告诉记者说：“第一任妻子访问第二任妻子的页面，看见第二任妻子和她的丈夫的合照，合照中还有结婚蛋糕。”

　　于是第一任妻子给被告的母亲打了电话。

　　法院记录显示：“一小时后被告抵达(第一任妻子的)公寓房间，她多次问他两人是否已经离婚。被告回答说：‘不，我们的婚姻关系还存在。’”

　　根据控告书，奥尼尔和他的第一任妻子都未曾提出过离婚申请。奥尼尔于十二月改名后，于当月和第二任妻子结婚。

　　据控告书中称，奥尼尔叫第一任妻子不要告诉任何人他重婚的事情，说他会处理好这件事的。不过第一任妻子还是向相关部门报告了。

　　林德奎斯特说：“现在Facebook成了人们发现对方隐私的地方，他们往往会把自己的发现向执法部门举报。”

　　艾茜玛•山三钗是一位写作有关社交媒体文章的自由新闻工作者，她说这些年来Facebook扮演着建立关系和摧毁关系的双重角色。

　　她说：“如果人们想出轨，Facebook是一条新渠道。”

　　皮尔斯县行政司法长官的发言人爱德•特洛耶说，41岁的奥尼尔原名为阿兰•富尔克，在过去的五年里他是皮尔斯县的一名惩教官。

　　在检察官周四对奥尼尔提出指控后，他就被停职了。如果被判有罪，他将可能被监禁一年。

　　奥尼尔和他的第一任妻子早在2009年就有感情问题。2010年，他的第一任妻子在和一名女子发生争吵后被逮捕，而这名女子不久后就成了奥尼尔的第二任妻子。