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By Michael Ryan
The average pedophile will victimize between 50-150 children before
he comes to the attention of law enforcement. A large and growing
number of predators have gravitated towards the internet, reasoning
that browsing the personal profiles children themselves post on instant
message services and anonymously lurking in chat rooms is less risky
and more effective than hanging around playgrounds and schoolyards.
The number of predators using the internet to groom children for
future exploitation rises every month.
How do internet predators select their victims? Here are some important
factors:
* Almost by definition, internet predators favor children who have
regular (and private) access to a computer. Most victims live in
suburban or rural areas while relatively few live in inner cities.
* Internet predators gravitate towards children who are online for
lengthy periods of time each day, and usually at the same time of
day. Predators seek children whose schedules mesh with their own,
children who are online most days during a consistent time frame.
Think about it... predators have little chance to groom a child
for future exploitation if that child is rarely online or is online
at various times of the day. Children who do not have a lot of activities
outside of school tend to be online longer and at the same times
of day compared to those children who have lots of activities. These
children are more often targeted by internet predators.
* Internet predators prefer children who have instant message accounts.
Although some predators use email, many prefer communicating with
their victims through instant messages. Predators know that while
emails are saved automatically and have to be manually deleted, instant
messages tend to evaporate into the ether once the instant message
window is closed. Parents can keep a permanent record of instant
message conversations by installing instant message monitoring software
on their children's computers. PCSentinel Software ( www.pcsentinelsoftware.com
) is one vendor of such software.
* Internet predators search out children who will speak to them.
Again this seems self-evident, but predators are forced to pass over
children who refuse to communicate with strangers they have not met
offline. Teach your children never to communicate online with someone
they have not met offline.
* Internet predators search out children who are vulnerable and
lonely, sheltered and naive. Predators seek to develop a relationship
with their targets, often posing as children or teenagers themselves,
and then use that relationship to initiate sexual discussion and
activity or lure the child into an offline meeting.
* Internet predators are all the more emboldened if they find out
a child is from a single parent family, having trouble at school
or with the law, or has been experimenting with drugs, alcohol or
sexual activity.
* Internet predators search out children who post personal profiles
on the internet, especially those that provide name, age, photos,
gender, physical description, telephone number, address, etc.
* Internet predators favor targets who own webcams or digital cameras.
Predators often coerce children into using these devices to send
images of themselves to the predator. If a child does not own a camera,
predators sometimes send one to their targets for the purpose of
photographing themselves.
* To be successful, internet predators require children who will
not terminate the relationship at the first suggestion of sexual
activity. Even if a vulnerable child with few friends is uncomfortable
with sexual talk, they will sometimes put up with the unpleasantness
* Internet predators seem to favor victims between the ages of 12-15.
These are the ages where children are discovering their own sexuality
and independence, and also the ages where they are most likely to
be conned into meeting with a stranger without telling their parents.
Younger and older children are also solicited, but as a whole tend
to be harder targets.
Protect your children. |
