October is Cyber Safety month in Ohio. It reminds me of the time I worked on a Federal Internet task force where I experienced first hand the on-line dangers that confront our children. They are extreme. While posing as a child, or an adult with access to children, or as a child picture trader, I learned of things which should scare any parent. Dangerous situations were taking place without parents’ knowledge and were happening within quiet anonymous clicks of a mouse in social networking environments.
In response to parent complaints received by the task force I worked in an undercover capacity in chat rooms or other related places online. I was always surprised by the volume of individuals who would view my profile and send me an instant message. It was staggering and my age or gender didn’t matter to these people. Worse, these numerous instant messages turned perversely depraved within just a few lines of chat. And that was just the text in the instant messages. The pictures and links sent by these individuals were truly x-rated, some horrifying.
The images were not only explicitly foul, but were of children in completely compromised circumstances of abuse. These children were exploited and victimized and often had blank facial expressions with a far off gaze in their eyes typical of victims suffering abuse. Each still photo was a crime scene. These digitized pictures are virally spread out over the internet where they are never removed. As the child victim ages they grow up knowing they are “out there” as a child victim being viewed over and over again.
The individuals sending those images to me did so thinking I was a child. They used them to me to teach me the “fun” we could have when we meet face-to-face. This is all a trick. Regardless of what the child is led to believe, no child has fun when they meet the monster who has been chatting and lying to them. The individuals invested days and weeks of “grooming” me by instant message. Grooming is virtual dating. Wikipedia defines grooming as actions deliberately undertaken with the aim of befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child in order to lower the child’s inhibitions in preparation for abuse or exploitation. During the grooming phase the individual would say all those things to me that kids like to hear to feel special and well-liked. Once the bond was formed and molded, the suspect asks to meet the child out in the real world to do the things seen in the images.
The attempt to meet is quite sinister and occurs under a ruse. The child’s innocence is leveraged against them by the perpetrator. The perpetrator lies about who and what they really are working hard to create an image for the child to believe this is a fun friendship, a sort of mentoring to teach life experiences in a fun way. It is anything but that. Instead it is a sex crime. Usually when a face-to-face meeting takes place it results in criminal physical contact with the child. Knowing that consider these two alarming statistics from a Cox Communication study regarding children and online safety.
· 14% have actually met face-to-face with a person they had known only through the Internet (9% of 13- to 15-year-olds and 22% of 16- to 17-year-olds).
· 30% have considered meeting someone they’ve only communicated with online.
There are simple ways to protect children from such dangers. Things like placing the home computer in the busiest part of the home making parent supervision easier, parents viewing what kids are doing online, making children provide all password and user-names to the sites the children log into, being active with “snoopervision” by logging on to sites as your child to see who interacts with them, password protecting the operating system so a parent must log the child onto the system, using parental controls on web browsers, and not allowing kids to be online in the privacy of their bedrooms for long periods of time.
The best prevention is education. Teaching children how to be safe online will set the tone for their growth in the digital age and guide them in the appropriate use of computers and the Internet. Coupled with strong parental supervision much of the dark side on the Internet can be avoided by the brilliant light of knowledge and parental involvement.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Irish politician Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)
Kevin Owens, President, Founder
Blue Knight Productions, Inc.
www.e-copp.com
Tags: bully, bullying, chat, crimes against children, cyber bullying, education, email, file attachments, instant message, Internet, Internet safety, online, online education, online safety, safety, school bully
