8-16-2009 National:
The actual threat is negligible.
Take one newly pervasive communications medium that makes some people apprehensive. Add concern about sexual exploitation of children that makes everyone apprehensive. Stir in a few highly publicized cases of pedophiles luring innocent young kids to horrible fates via email or Facebook. Season with echoes of Hansel and Gretel. And what comes out of the oven? Full-blown hysteria that every child with an Internet connection faces substantial risk from sexual predators.
The hysteria may be real. But the actual threat is negligible.
Last year, the attorneys general of 49 states created the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to investigate sexual solicitation of children by molesters who troll for targets using sites popular with kids, among them, MySpace and Facebook. The 278-page report concluded that there's no real problem.
The task force, led by Harvard researchers, looked at reams of scientific data dealing with online sexual predation and found that children and teens were rarely propositioned for sex by adults who made contact via the Internet. In the handful of cases that have been documented-and highly publicized-the researchers found that the victims, almost always older teenagers, were usually willing participants already at risk for exploitation because of family problems, substance abuse, or mental health issues.
The report concluded that MySpace and Facebook "do not appear to have increased minors' overall risk of sexual solicitation." The report said the biggest risk to kids using social networks was bullying by other kids.
"This study shows that online social networks are not bad neighborhoods on the Internet," said John Cardillo, whose company tracks sex offenders. "Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are inhabited mostly by good people who are there for the right reasons."
Not all the participating attorneys general agreed with the report's conclusions. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal charged that "thousands" of convicted sex offenders are members of social networking sites.
That may well be true, but most "convicted sex offenders" are not predators who molest children. In most states. "sex crimes" include exhibitionism, voyeurism, public urination, transvestism, even ownership of a vibrator. In addition, in some states 18-year-old men have been convicted of statutory rape, a sex crime, for having sex with their fully consenting 17-year-old girlfriends.
Meanwhile, in the small number of cases where child molesters have connected with children online, most of the encounters have followed a predictable pattern: online contact, leading to telephone contact, ultimately leading to face-to-face meetings. But notice that those who are up in arms about the supposed hazards of social networking sites seem unconcerned about the key role that the telephone plays in the sexual exploitation of children. Why is that?
I think it's because the telephone is an old technology fully integrated into our culture. The Internet is still new, and kids use it more than adults, which makes many adults nervous that something nefarious must be going on. But according to the attorneys general report, next to nothing is. ..Source.. Michael Castleman
June 2, 2010
Sexual Predators: NOT an Internet Threat to Kids
September 21, 2008
OH- 'To Catch a Predator' host coming to Canton
9-21-2008 Ohio:
Editor's note: ''Dateline NBC''s Chris Hansen is known for grilling Internet predators on his show, "To Catch a Predator." This article was written in the spirit of the show.
PLAIN TWP. Chris, take a seat right over there.
I'm a reporter with The Repository, and we are doing a story on your visit to Stark County.
Why will you be here?
Is it to discuss your ''Dateline NBC'' specials "To Catch a Predator" and Internet safety?
We have the press release right here.
It says Chris Hansen will be a guest of the 2008 Women's Board Care Connection program — a free event at 7 p.m. Thursday at First Christian Church in Plain Township.
Chris, you're not coming alone, are you?
The release says Massillon police detective Bobby Grizzard also will share his experiences with Internet crimes.
Is it your intent to educate parents about the dangers their children face online?
(Hansen) "The best defense is what you teach your kids at home."
You said parents should limit the time their children spend online so they have less time to loiter in areas they could get into trouble.
But don't take away computer use, right?
You said children are less likely to tell their parents they've been approached online by a stranger if they feel they'll lose computer privileges.
(Hansen) "If you don't know that person in person, you don't know him."
Is that what you told your two teenage sons?
Yes?
(Hansen) "People online want to trick you, and if you don't know them in person, you shouldn't be talking to them online."
You said parents should be aware that if their child gets a Web camera or cell phone delivered to them, these are danger signs. That a stranger wants to befriend them.
(Hansen) "They start relationships that way."
Chris, your relationship to viewers began with a camera.
You said, "To Catch a Predator" began as a compelling way to tell about efforts of an Internet watch group, Perverted Justice.
It turned into much more, didn't it?
(Hansen) "I think we knew anecdotally kids were propositioned on the Internet. But we didn't have a handle on how frequently it was going on.
"We were pretty blown away by not only how many people came, but who came. We had guys from all walks of life."
You said the program evolved to include police because it became clear these guys got away with their actions.
A parallel investigation with police, Perverted Justice and NBC began in California.
And 12 investigations later, you've written a book, "To Catch a Predator: Protecting Kids from Online Enemies Already in Your Home."
(Hansen) "I think, at the end of the day, (the shows) raised awareness and created a dialogue that didn't exist before."
That dialogue continues this week.
Seating is limited to this free presentation, so tickets are required.
Call (330) 363-6402 or register online at www.aultman.org.
The Women's Board of Aultman Hospital is sponsoring the one-night event.
HANSEN LIVE
WHAT "To Catch a Predator" host Chris Hansen discusses Internet safety
WHEN Thursday, 7 p.m.
WHERE First Christian Church at 6900 Market Ave. N in Plain Township
WHAT ELSE Massillon police detective Bobby Grizzard, who specializes in Internet sex crimes, will share his thoughts.
CONTACT For a free ticket call (330) 363-6402. A ticket is required.
TEEN SPEAK
Teenagers use abbreviations to communicate online. Here are some of their words:
LOL — Laughing Out Loud
PM — Private Message
ASL — Age, Sex, Location
POS — Parent Over Shoulder
PIR — Parent In Room
S2R — Send To Receive (photo)
LMIRL — Let's Meet In Real Life
TTYL — Talk To You Later
Source: The Women's Board of Aultman Hospital ..News Source.. by BENJAMIN DUER
June 23, 2008
AK- Alaska police patrol Web in search of child predators
6-23-2008 Alaska:
CYBERCOPS: Officers all over the state being trained to find, fight exploitation.
FAIRBANKS -- Two days after Christmas last year, Marc Poeschel slipped into a Yahoo chatroom.
Using the screen name "freakkid99701," the University of Alaska Fairbanks police officer posed as a 14-year-old girl whose mother was at work.
A 33-year-old husband and father of four contacted Poeschel's pubescent persona, sent nude pictures of himself, told Poeschel he likes to teach young people "self love," and set up a meeting.
The next day, the father of four drove his Dodge Neon to the UAF campus, bringing with him KY Jelly and warming lubricant. But instead of engaging in an encounter with an underaged girl, the man was snagged by authorities.
He didn't know it at the time, but the man had been chatting online with a foot soldier in the growing army of cybercops in Alaska.
Hundreds of Alaska's law enforcement officers are being trained to catch Internet predators and child pornography collectors thanks to a $300,000 federal grant that arrived last fall.
The officers belong to the Alaska Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a statewide crime-fighting network designed to train police and educate the public about child exploitation on the Internet.
Almost 50 workshops on Internet safety were held in the state during the first three months of this year, according to Ron Tidler, the Anchorage police sergeant in charge of the task force.
EARLY EFFORTS
Poeschel first went online hunting predators in the late 1990s, not long after a toddler in Fairbanks was killed by his uncle while being sexually molested.
The case outraged many people, including Poeschel, who by then had carved out a niche for himself as a cop who knew computers.
Poeschel said he wasn't positioned to investigate crimes against children at the time, but he was free to explore the digital side of crime-fighting. he went online, posing as a young girl, and before long, a child predator made contact with him, he said.
Poeschel went to his supervisor and to the District Attorney's office only to learn that Alaska had no laws to prosecute would-be Internet predators.
"It ended up being dropped completely," Poeschel said.
It wasn't until 2005 that online enticement of a minor was made a crime in Alaska, laying the groundwork for Internet predator investigations.
GAINING EXPERIENCE
Posing as a young girl online is no problem for Poeschel, who is exposed to teenagers regularly on the UAF campus. Poeschel also promotes Internet safety in junior high and high schools. He said he listens to radio stations favored by young people and pays attention to how teenagers talk in cyberspace.
"I'll check Billboard to see what's popular," he said.
Poeschel's online personas are a work in progress.
"I don't script," he said.
He occasionally takes notes, writing down things like "dog" if he has mentioned it during a chat with a potential predator.
About 90 percent of the people who contact Poeschel's alter ego are turned off when they learn she is underaged, Poeschel said.
"Ten percent will hang in there," he said.
GROWING PROBLEM
The task force has generated a handful of cases in Fairbanks, and prosecutor Jenel Domke is bracing for more.
"I think we are going to see more and more cases because I think this has become more and more of a problem," she said. "What the Internet does is it allows individuals to be anonymous. The child doesn't really know who they are talking to on the other end.
"Some children, after they have talked to someone on the Internet a few times, to them that person is no longer a stranger, even though they really don't know who they are."
CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
Child pornography is another problem being addressed by the Alaska Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
"You've got this underground network of file-sharing on the Internet," trooper Sgt. David Willson said.
The task force has access to technology that can more or less scan the wires for people downloading and sharing child pornography.
The software can pinpoint the child pornography collector down to his or her neighborhood, according to Tidler, the task force commander.
"It's not just how many people out there have it," Tidler said. "It also breaks down by who has the most."
Lists are generated and used to obtain search warrants so that computers can be seized.
That's how authorities say child pornography was found on a computer belonging to a 22-year-old Fort Wainwright infantryman not long ago.
Peyton Merideth is the Fairbanks police detective who worked the case, which involves 90 charges of possession of child pornography. The criminal trial is scheduled for August.
"There's plenty of cases," Merideth said. "It's finding the time to work them." ..News Source.. by Anchorage Daily News
November 12, 2007
The Net is a circuit of safety concerns
11-12-2007 National:
Notice the use of these terms: sexual predators, sex offenders, online predators, registered sex offenders. The failure to distinguish between these terms and these offenders will keep lawmakers blind as to how to solve these sexual offenses. eAdvocate
If you watch TV or read the news, you know sexual predators hang out on the Internet, looking for underage victims.
Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" features men being lured by the promise of meeting underage girls. Several state attorneys general recently have called on social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook to ban registered sex offenders and make their sites safer. Newspapers have been filled with stories about the dangers children face when they post too much personal information. And victims have testified recently at congressional hearings.
Notice the coupling of the "To Catch a Predator" series and "Social Networking Websites" and "ban registered sex offenders (RSOs)," all together implying that RSOs are causing the online predation. Whats wrong with that folks ask? Simply this, it is not RSOs that have been caught preying online, it is NEW PREDATORS who have never before committed a sex crime. The failure to recognize this means legislation directed towards RSOs will not solve the problem of online predation. Neither the media nor legislators will recognize this! eAdvocate
Some worry that parents are falling victim to "predator panic" and overreacting to unlikely dangers, unintentionally turning children off to safety messages altogether.
"One of the misunderstandings that we think is widespread is that what sex offenders are doing is picking out kids (online) and stalking them and deceiving them and abducting them and raping them," says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
"That's not what's going on."
Abductions by strangers are so rare that many experts can't name a single case in which a predator attacked after only seeing a child's profile online.
'Grooming' their victims
In most cases, predators seek out vulnerable teens — those who post sexually suggestive pictures of themselves, talk about sex online or frequent places where hook-ups are made, Finkelhor says. They spend weeks, even months, forging a relationship and gaining the teens' trust.
Usually, those who become victims eventually agree to meet the perpetrator face to face; often they know that the person they're meeting is older. But by the time they meet him (usually it's a man), they often think they are in love. It's a process called "grooming," Finkelhor says.
"It's the kids who respond to somebody and start talking about sex that puts them at risk — or kids who use sites to communicate with lots of people they don't know, or put very sexualized images online," he says.
The Internet allows predators "to form supportive relationships with emotionally vulnerable teens," says Nancy Willard, author of Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly.
Though there are no comprehensive national annual figures on Internet crimes against children, Finkelhor says, overall sex crimes against children are down, with the notable exception of child pornography. Sexual abuse cases were down 51% from 1990 to 2005 — from 22.8 per 10,000 to 11.3 per 10,000 children, he says.
Feeling safe doesn't make it so
Studies show that most teens feel relatively safe online. A Pew Internet & American Life Project report last month showed that though children, especially girls, who posted pictures of themselves on social networks were more likely to be contacted by strangers, only 7% of online teens said they had ever had an interaction with a stranger that made them feel scared or uncomfortable.
And a report out last year by Finkelhor's center found that from 2000 through 2005, the number of children ages 10 to 17 who received unwanted solicitations online declined from 19% to 13%.
But calls to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's hotline have been on the rise, says president Ernie Allen. In 2005, there were 2,660 reports of online enticement of children; in 2006, there were 6,374. In the first eight months of 2007, there were 9,533. Some of the increase can be attributed to greater Internet use and increased awareness of the hotline, Allen says.
He agrees that education is a key to Internet safety. But he says the Internet does make it easier to prey on children.
"Just like in the physical world, those people who seek to prey upon kids go to where the kids are," Allen says. "We don't think the sky is falling, but there (are) adults hiding behind the relative anonymity of the Internet to try to achieve what they either can't achieve or can only achieve with great risk in the physical world. America's moms and dads really need to catch up."
Though it's good to educate children and parents about dangers, some experts worry that the message may backfire.
"If you are petrified of predators but are not worrying about cyber-bullies, loss of reputation, spending too much time online and the other less frightening but more likely dangers of online use, then you are misplacing your energy," says Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org. "You're petrified of something that's probably not going to happen and failing to pay attention to the dangers that are far more likely."
Allen says messages should be balanced, but parents do need to stay aware of the problems. "The good news is that the vast majority of America's kids are much smarter and much more aware. …
"But the bad news is, there are a lot of (predators) out there who are still seeking, overwhelmingly for grooming and seduction. This remains a significant problem." ..more.. by Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY
