We’re all part of the office grapevine, whether we participate or not. I work at a large newspaper and I’ve always felt that, if my co-workers couldn’t figure out what was going on around the office, they weren’t worth spit as reporters. Also: When you work for a newspaper, you tend to assume that everything is on the record. So, I try to be careful about what say and do.

Our kids are not as circumspect. Of course, we don’t really expect them to be. But we try to encourage them to be respectful and to treat others as they’d like to be treated themselves. Right?

And then there’s Gossip Report.

I’m not linking to them, because I don’t want to support the site. It’s venomous. It’s vile. It encourages teenagers to talk smack about one another and publishes the garbage online. And insists that it’s not responsible, morally or legally, for any of it.

According to Elizabeth Bloch, the company’s 2o-something co-creator, the site is for dishing gossip about “the average Joe.” “We intend for GossipReport.com to be a tool to police social behavior, which is the purpose and value of gossip,” she told me in an email.

Sexual innuendo aside — the gossip threads are called “G Strings,” members are urged to vote the “hottest” ones up to “hit the G Spot,” and subjects are ranked, in part, by how they are “in bed” — GossipReport is a parental nightmare. Kids who get slammed on the site can’t remove malicious gossip posted about them. Their pictures are posted along with the gossip, as is their location (city and state), making the victims — excuse me, “subjects” — pretty easy to find, especially those labeled “slut,” “whore,” and “be-otch.” Members who post the most popular gossip earn G Money as an incentive to take their gossip to new heights (or lows, as is often the case). And if you feel bad about what you’ve written about someone else, you can either add a tiny “I’m sorry” icon to your profile or get the cyber equivalent of a plenary indulgence by doing random acts of kindness.

So…urging kids to hurt their peers? Check! Making it easier than ever to bully someone and get away with it? Check! Avoiding responsibility for one’s actions? Check!

The site, which launched in 2006, is a by-invitation-only platform aimed at “college kids and older,” but accepts all users who say they’re at least 16 years old and offers a workaround to the invite issue right in the FAQ. (Though, really, any site with “adult content” as a search term shouldn’t be soliciting 16-year-olds as members.) Though a detailed warning page recently went up, assuring parents that “Many of our users are posting fun and poignant discussions about social issues,” those positive-sounding, mind-expanding threads are few and far between. (As a member named “Gary” points out in one thread, “who uses gossipreport.com to talk about nice things???”) A search for “celebrities” turns up Dr. Phil and some kid who is clearly not a celebrity.

Instead, there’s stuff like this: “hanna is a skank. ew..sucks to be an ugly slut face!” “yea if i were u i wud totally kick her arse cuz she deserves it! “ And, chillingly, “ive heard shes gotten raped shes not even pretty enough to f#@k!”

Would you want your daughter on there?

Office gossip — while irritating, inaccurate, and often embarrassing — is entirely different. The participants, willing or otherwise, are adults. But, as any parent knows, kids can be cruel. And GossipReport.com rewards them for it.

At Gossip Report, Bloch says, the onus to keep things clean — or, at least, not libelous — is on the anonymous users themselves, she says; her company is protected. “The reason we are protected as a company from potentially libelous or defamatory statements is because we serve as a platform for communication,” she told me in an email. “We do not actually generate the content — it is entirely user driven.” In emails with me and in interviews with newspapers, she’s avoided the question of moral responsibility entirely. Not her problem, apparently.

Celebrity gossip sites are wildly popular — I’ll admit, gofugyourself.com is totally my guilty pleasure — but there’s a key difference between what they do and what GossipReport does. Two of them, really. First: Celebrities are, well, celebrities — people who choose to be in the bright spotlight. And second: Miley Cyrus and Jamie Lynn Spears aside, for the most part the gossip deals with adults, not kids.

The last thing kids need these days is another way to bully someone and get away with it, which is exactly the type of behavior that Gossip Report encourages.

Parent are already on high alert, on the lookout for sites and situations that prey on our children. But what about places that encourage kids to prey on one another?