Prevention 101

It's quite simple really.

Don't do the crime and then you'll have nothing to complain about.

"Online molesters do not appear to be stalking unsuspecting victims but rather continuing to seek youths who are susceptible to seduction"

From: "Online Predators and their Victims"

How many people remember the days of Rookiee? He explained best how it all works. How he and his pedo pals didn't lie about what they were, how old they were, or what they were after. The other pedofreaks explain which victims they target. The importance of this study is that it confirmed what we already knew and that many people who don't understand what the dregs of society are up to don't..... The stereotypical image of an internet predator doesn't fit with reality. Take a look here if you have any doubts about that. In fact.....this is what the study said:

“Most Internet-initiated sex crimes involve adult men who are open about their interest in sex,” Wolak adds. “The offenders use instant messages, e-mail and chat rooms to meet and develop intimate relationships with their victims. In most of the cases, the victims are aware that they are talking online with adults.”

and

"most online sex offenders are adults who target teens and seduce victims into sexual relationships. They take time to develop the trust and confidence of victims, so that the youth see these relationships as romances or sexual adventures. The youth most vulnerable to online sex offenders have histories of sexual or physical abuse, family problems, and tendencies to take risks both on- and offline, the researchers say."

We talked about how they choose their victims here

The paedophiles themselves tell us that they specifically target and prey upon disadvantaged families.

Bill Evans explains:

How many times have you seen posters here talk about having y/fs from happy, loving homes? Those boys don't need to turn to someone outside the family for support. I have had a couple of y/fs from those sort of homes, but we never had the kind of close friendship I usually develop with kids from dysfunctional familes.

The kids from good homes are just along for the fun, but kids from dysfunctional homes, or no home, want a whole lot more...

Or as Descartes put it:

BLs who have no criminal record can work with boys, but probably not the boys that they would dream of working with. The BLs who have boy-filled lives aren't taking a bunch of adorable boys on fun camping trips in the woods.

They are working with boys who are extremely poor, who have serious physical and/or emotional problems and who are far from being the object of most BLs' fantasies.

Exploiting a Minor is a Major Offense Project Safe Childhood

If it weren't so tragic

"And I watched as they invented a whole new problem.....isn't that cool? If you're running out of things to do to sex offenders invent a new problem.......we have internet predators -- oh my goodness -- it's an epidemic -- these internet predators oh my gosh they're reaching their hands right through the screen and grabbing your children. Except that the federal government commissioned studies on the incidence of internet predators and they came up with exactly the opposite of what the government wanted to hear -- that it really isn't that much of a problem -- that mostly it's teen on teen goofing around and that most of the men on the internet are not lying about their age. And the girls who are falling for this are girls who unfortunately come from dysfunctional families and are reaching out to anyone for that love....But that's not what the legislators wanted to hear, so the American Public didn't hear it either."

---- Cheryl Griffiths

This suppressed study - available here - and kept top secret from the American public on the world wide web.... tells quite a different story than Cheryl and Derek Logue's distorted interpretations. It says that 97% of solicitations were by strangers, 48% by minors, 24% were regarded as "very or extremely upsetting or frightening" and 49% were not reported. The study also concluded that the offenders only pretended to be teenagers 5% of the time and still "identities are easy to disguise on the internet so the solicitors may not have been the age or gender they claimed to be"

While we know that children who have previously been abused make the easiest targets, Cheryl seems to regard it as acceptable as long as it is they who are the targeted victims.

"most online sex offenders are adults who target teens and seduce victims into sexual relationships. They take time to develop the trust and confidence of victims, so that the youth see these relationships as romances or sexual adventures. The youth most vulnerable to online sex offenders have histories of sexual or physical abuse, family problems, and tendencies to take risks both on- and offline, the researchers say."

Some recommendations include:

"Be clear about why sex with underage adolescents is wrong. Offender and potential offenders need to hear a clear message that nonforcible sex with underage adolescents violates the social responsibility adults have toward youth for objective mentoring and custodianship"

Contrary to Tikibug's assertion that the government has no right to tell someone when they are old enough to have sex, and Walter Howard's claim that children "need to be taught how to love" This study says:

"Youths need candid, direct discussions about seduction and how some adults deliberately evoke and then exploit the compelling feelings that sexual arousal can induce. Even young adolescents should be given basic information about the inappropriateness of romantic advances from adults. This information should include reassurances that it is normal to have strong sexual feelings but wrong for adults to provoke or exploit these feelings, especially with youths who are inexperienced in coping with sexual desire and intimate relationships"

Another key finding;

"A considerable number of online child molesters also possess child pornography and child pornography production is an important element in many cases, including situations where offenders solicit victims to produce sexual images of themselves"

Nationwide, federal prosecutors have indicted 2,289 defendants in online child solicitation and pornography cases this year. But I suppose Cheryl Griffiths would agree with the bold idiocy of Zman when he said

They could be protecting the country with their hacking skills or something, yet they want to go after defenseless child predators

The Justice Department's Project Safe Childhood has launched a new National Public Awareness Campaign. They've produced some amazing videos, not only aimed at educating potential targets of predators but also aimed at those who offend, a very nice warning of the consequences of preying on vulnerable children.

To stop this problem from becoming more pervasive than it is, we need three elements coming together. We need education, we need prevention, and we need enforcement. Project Safe Childhood pulls all those elements together to make sure we are keeping America's children safe.