Online Predators Prey on Kids
April 8, 2006 — -- Until the Capitol Hill hearings on sexual exploitation of children this week, no one knew the nightmare that 19-year-old Justin Berry has been living.
Like so many American children, Berry used the Internet to socialize, starting at age 13. But his online connections allegedly turned into more than 1,000 secret and abusive experiences with child predators.
"A few weeks after setting up my Web cam, one of these men approached me online with a proposal he would pay me $50 if I took my shirt off for a few minutes," he testified recently on Capitol Hill during a hearing on the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet.
One in five teens who are frequent Internet users say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation. In the last three years, federal customs agents have arrested more than 7,600 suspected sex offenders targeting children, and there are about 3.5 million sexual images of children online in the United States.
"We have arrested people who are coaches, school principles, police officers, priests, corporate executives, really there are no boundaries," said Brad Russ of the Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
Experts say the Internet has now become a secret weapon for pedophiles -- offering anonymity and providing an outlet for their darkest desires.
A deputy press secretary for Homeland Security, Brian Doyle, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with trying to seduce someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl online. Unbeknownst to Doyle, he was chatting with an undercover detective, Sandy Scherer, in Polk County, Fla.
Undercover Online
During a segment on "Good Morning America Weekend Edition," Scherer talked to eight people online while pretending to be a 14-year-old girl. A 37-year-old man asked for her phone number and wanted to meet with her, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
Judd said Doyle's exchanges included pornographic downloads and talk of specific sex acts. He allegedly provided his chat partner with his government-issued office phone and cell phone numbers, showed off his department I.D. and may have used his official computer to chat.
Doyle was lured by the profiles the Polk. Co. Sheriff's Department posts online to lure child sex predators.
"AOL and many others … have profiles which you can put in chat rooms or you can put on instant message," Judd said. "When you do this, it's not hard for someone to find a 14-year-old girl. … There are chat rooms for legitimate purposes, and what happens is these pedophiles, they go to these chat rooms. And that's how it begins."
Judd said the police wait for the predators to contact them and wait to make a move until the adult arranges to meet them. In Doyle's case, he and Scherer chatted for two weeks on the phone almost everyday, Judd said.
"He downloaded 16 pornographic films to show her, and talked to her about it," Judd said. "He said the films depicted what he wanted to do to her and what she wanted to do to him."
Ken Wooden, a child advocate and creator of Child Lures Prevention, said that the online world adds a new concern for parents who have to make an effort to be vigilant when it comes to their children's safety.
"The problem is that parents are not up to speed with computers," Wooden said. "What they need to do is stress to their kids [that] predators online are more sophisticated and that they're con artists. The children don't have the experience to deal with con artists. They must alert their children to some of the pressure buttons that predators will push."
Wooden said that children going through difficult times at home are more vulnerable to online predators. For example, if a child has parents who are going through a divorce, the predator will ask about that. The predator will also key into what Wooden called "joy buttons," like birthdays and hobbies. Lonely children are also more vulnerable.
The predators can "act as a father figure, to try and befriend the child or fill the void in the child's life," Judd said. "They may be an adult who acts young. Occasionally they send presents. Early in this investigation Doyle sent a box of chocolates."
Things Parents Should Know
Wooden said parents need to keep an eyeball on what their children are doing on the computer. That means getting to know the codes kids may use while chatting online. Here are a few:
ASL = Age, sex, location?
BRB = Be right back.
LMIRL = Lets meet in real life.
CTN = Can't talk now.
TA = Teacher alert.
SA = Sibling alert.
POS = Parents over shoulder.
P911 = Parents coming into room.
Judd and Wooden also offered some tips about how to monitor your child's online activity:
Have a computer password that only the parents know so that kids can't use computer when they're not home.
The computer should be in a communal area, not locked away in the kids room.
Both Judd and Wooden echoed Berry's pessimism about the federal government's ability to deal with online predators. Judd said "we need to have exceptionally harsh federal penalties, and there needs to be an encouragement by the federal officials to local police departments to have a computer crimes unit and it needs to be made easy to prosecute them in federal court."
Wooden said "mandatory sentencing is meaningless without mandatory prevention and government spending on it is minuscule."