By Cindy J. Roth
As Jill chats with her friends, an instant message from someone Jill doesn't know pops up on her screen. The messenger introduces himself as Eric, a 15-year-old who attends a nearby high school. Eric tells Jill he saw her online profile and she sounds interesting.
Jill and Eric exchange some basic information about each other and then he asks for her picture. Naively, Jill agrees to send him one, and after he sees it, Eric writes back that Jill is beautiful.
Jill and Eric continue to talk online every day after school. Jill revels in the fact that someone is interested in her, and the mystery of who Eric actually is doesn't even come into question for a teenager who loves the attention she is receiving. Once the trust is established, Eric asks Jill to meet him. Little does Jill know that Eric isn't who he says he is. He's a 55-year-old man waiting to prey on Jill's innocence.
Universal access to computers and more leisure time are increasing the amount of time youths spend on computers. In adolescence, which is characterized by increased sexual awareness and experimentation, teenagers have become prime targets for online sexual solicitations. Local and federal law-enforcement agencies have recently begun focusing on catching online sexual predators and educating children and parents on being wary of strangers they meet on the Internet.
Law-enforcement agencies have found that the best way to catch online sexual predators is by posing as minors in online chat rooms, according to Stephen Treglia, assistant district attorney and chief of the technology crime unit in the Nassau County District Attorney's Office. This type of sting operation, however, is time-consuming, requiring several online conversations before trust is built up and a predator either sends illegal child pornography material to the "minor" or requests a meeting. At that point, a law-enforcement agency can often arrest a predator. But even as one is being arrested, hundreds of thousands of others lurk online, shopping for their next victim.
Research on online victimization reports that one in five children who use Internet chat rooms have been approached by pedophiles. Eighty-nine percent of sexual solicitations are made in chat rooms or by instant messages, according to a 2001 Pew Institute poll. One in five youths aged 10 to 17 received sexual solicitations over the Internet last year, and one in 33 received aggressive sexual solicitations in which a solicitor asked to meet them, called them or sent mail, money or gifts.
A June 2000 Crimes Against Children Research Center (CACRC) survey of youth online victimization reported that half of all sexual solicitations go unreported. Less than 10 percent are reported to law-enforcement agencies, and only about 25 percent of youths participating in the survey said they notified their parents about sexual solicitations.
The majority of teenagers' online use occurs at home, right after school, when working parents aren't at home. With 43 percent of children reporting in a 2000 Time/CNN poll that they have no rules about Internet use in their homes, and that parents rely mostly on personal observation of their children's Internet use to prevent sexual solicitations, there are very few barriers for predators to overcome to reach their targets.
The CACRC survey revealed that one in four youths had been involuntarily exposed to photos of nudity or sexual activity in the past year. Research also found that 29 percent of children aged 7 to 17 would freely give out their home address if asked.
Village schools provide only basic education when it comes to making students aware of the dangers of talking to strangers online or giving out personal information. All three village districts require students to sign Internet use agreements, which, beyond discussing sites students can and cannot enter, caution them not to give out any personal information -- names, e-mail addresses, social security numbers -- online.
Treglia said the district attorney's office responds to all requests from PTAs or principals requesting assemblies on Internet safety. Through these assemblies, students learn to give very little information out about themselves, because any bit of information an adolescent shares with a stranger puts that stranger one step closer to the student's life.
"It doesn't take much for a predator to piece together a little bit of information to track someone down," said Treglia. "If a kid is talking about a game they lost that day and the team they played, [a predator] can just look in the newspaper and find out the name of the kid's team and what town they're from. It doesn't take much."
