Online Predators

I think, what people whine about, "they are being set up", on the Dateline thing and some other operations to nab them is good, helps thin out the heard of evil monsters.
I can't fathom, anyone thinking doing this operation is wrong, unless they have pedophile tendencies, I have no idea, but people that defend these creeps and their doings,whining about "their" rights, has to be out of their freaking minds themselves. Just venting, so excuse me if I have offended anyone here, it was not intentional.

Love to y'all,
Roe

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jennie said:
Looks like Dr Phil jumped on the bandwagon . . . pursuing online predators! Check out Dr Phil show for May 22nd, if interested.

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Did you see the show? What do you think about it?

I think Dr Phil's show (called Pedophile Sting) did more harm than good. The editing of conversations between the undercover investigator and the criminal did nothing but educate viewers on how to groom a child to be a victim of sexual crimes. The rest of the show only served to frighten viewers. Shame on Dr Phil. The identity of the criminal (child rapist who also is into child porn) was never revealed . . . so why did Dr Phil air this show . . . couldn't have waited until the criminal is put behind bars, then aired the show (revealing his identity and edit the graphic content)?????

The MSNBC Dateline programs were done appropriately.

Thumbs down for Dr Phil. His licenses should be pulled.

Sweety Bunny, my perpetrator was a woman! The reason you rarely hear about women pedophiles is because there's an abundance of children, grandchildren, neices and nephews.

I heard on the radio, one of Jerry's talk shows, that women are surfacing as pedophiles. The talk show host wasn't specific.

If they know of this "one woman", hopefully she's been put away for life!

"Vomit" on all of them?? Please remind me to NOT tell you what I did to my perpetrator in therapy (IMAGINED) during a session. I'll tell you how it started, though. My T told me to imagine that I had shoved her off a cliff but in my imagination, she kept coming back up the cliff. I did this three times. On the fourth one I got her, but not by shoving her off the cliff again!!

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Rainbowzz said:
If anything I think that myspace should be running a warning or at least a faq on their site explaining the possible dangers, and information on how to keep safe.

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I agree completely. It should be required reading before profiles are created or chatting or blogging allowed.

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Rainbowzz said:
I also beleive we need to take greater responsibility for the types of activities we engage in online. Though the things that happen can be scary, there are precautions we can take such as not disclosing personal trackable information, not giving our website out to others we do not know or trust,putting netnannys on the computer to block out websites, sitting with our children and explaining if potentially harmful websites come up, education education education!

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Agree!

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Rainbowzz said:
There ARE good meetings via the internet as well.

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Good points!

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Rainbowzz said:
The thing i think needs to be done on the internet is much like there is an adultcheck verification for some not-so-classy- sites if you all know what i mean, then why couldnt there be a way to register anyone over the age of 13(obviously with parental consent) so that when they go to various websites, they need to provide their verification number to the site before they can register. Sort of like a central database(perhaps run by a not for profit or some other reputable company)so that it is easy to track who is where and who is not, without infringing on privacy.

but thats where it gets sticky - at what point are we protecting and at what point are we infringing on privacy?

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That's an impossible system. Parents need to be responsible. There will never be a completely save environment for kids, not in the real world or the cyber world. Most importantly, the law enforcement officials need to spend more time and money catching these criminals.

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Rainbowzz said:
do you think the massive globalization of the internet lends itself to this kind of thing?

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Absolutely. The United States' statistics are scary enough. Some other countries' cultures may have an excuse if they allow children (under 18) to marry adults. I'd consider that uncivilized and sick. Should some countries not be allowed on web communities because of their laws and customs?

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Maven said:
If you eliminate communities, you'll also take away peoples' access to support.

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Good point.

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Maven said:
Parents need to do what they can to protect their kids. Too many parents let their kids keep the computer in their bedroom, and don't monitor what their kids are doing online.

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Absolutely agree!

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Maven said:
Live chats, email lists, newsgroups, message boards, MySpace, and other forums could all shut down, and it still wouldn't stop it. Predators will still find a way. All you'll be doing is taking these services away from those who are helped by them.

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Sad but true.

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Maven said:
Not all of these perverts have records (yet), so they're not easily trackable. Statistics say most pedophiles have molested over 100 children before they're caught for the first time.

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Yikes!

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Maven said:
Charging money isn't going to stop anything.

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True statement.

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Maven said:
One's thoughts should be private until one wants to share them.

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Maven, keep typing Enlightened One!

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SeptemberMorn said:

It's been my experience that kids, especially teenage girls, tend to dramatise and exagerate. When they begin having romantic or sexual feelings and write about it in a public place, it's an immediate turn-on for any pervert. Pedophiles will do anything it takes to find out who those girls are!

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Parents should teach kids not to do that.

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SeptemberMorn said:
The reason you rarely hear about women pedophiles is because there's an abundance of children, grandchildren, neices and nephews.

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Huh?

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hillbunnyb said:
My two cents: The internet reveals there's more pedophlia than most people are willing to admit. The true numbers are staggering.

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That really scares me. Is it human nature? Is it mental illness? Is it faulty genes?

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hillbunnyb said:
Still these men came after these kids, writing their dirty lying emails, showing up with condoms and alcohol to hand..... talk about obsessive compulsive disorder, denial, narcissism, dissociative elements, etc......

These creeps give mental illness a bad name.

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I cannot accept these perverts suffer with mental illness. Sigh. They probably do, though. I don't think they can be cured. Lock them up forever.

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Lexicon78 said:
I was talking to my sexual abuse T a few weeks ago and she asked me what I thought the percentage of children who were sexually abused was. I was serious when I told her 75%. Although the real percentage was much less, my percentage that I gave her was pretty accurate for the dirty little town that I was raised in and have since left.

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I have a huge problem trusting any man. I think the statistics are very high.

In the USA there are 3 million reports of abuse annually. Yet they say that the abuse rate is only 12.3 per 1000 children. These are based upon reports that are followed up on. Maybe the recorded 4 deaths per DAY keep the stats down?

I learned in stat courses how to play with numbers...you can get stats to read anyway you want them.

Internet Pornography Statistics (from Jerry Ropelato, Top Ten Reviews)

Pornographic websites 4.2 million (12% of total websites)
Pornographic pages 372 million
Daily pornographic search engine requests 68 million (25% of total search engine requests)
Daily pornographic emails 2.5 billion (8% of total emails)
Average daily pornographic emails/user 4.5 per Internet user
Monthly Pornographic downloads (Peer-to-peer) 1.5 billion (35% of all downloads)
Daily Gnutella "child pornography" requests 116 thousand
Websites offering illegal child pornography 100 thousand
Sexual solicitations of youth made in chat rooms 89%
Youths who received sexual solicitation 20%
Worldwide visitors to pornographic web sites 72 million annually

I agree that the statistics are very high, jennie. It's awful.

On another note:

I'd have to disagree with the idea of banning people onto certain sites just because they have different values, beliefs, or any other various lifestyle differences from us! That is just wrong. Whether we see something as sick or wrong or whatever...that is our opinion, plain and simple. It's like if someone had a religion forum and only the common religions were allowed on the site and not all of the religions of the world.

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_Sky said:
I learned in stat courses how to play with numbers...you can get stats to read anyway you want them.

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Certaintly true, _Sky

I have a gut feeling the numbers (of child predators aka perverts) are so high, that it may be 1:4 of all men are these sickos. I'm not certain it's my paranoia of men that leads me to believe so many men want to hurt/control/use children sexually, but the fact that, it's so shameful to talk about and that our society does not have the knowledge or resources to correct the problem (prevelance of child predators).

I absolutely agree about the freedom of speech concept. However, we have to have the 'street cred' and rely on our gut instincts not to sit and read the negative stuff. There are some sick things happening in the world today, and, by the same token, there are lots of amazing, exciting and wonderful things that people want to share. I am just wondering if the good stuff is passing us by and we pick up on the negative things??

Remember, we have the power, its called the iggy function, failing that, we shouldnt visit sites that offend or upset and if we get a 'pushy' extra keen person that keeps hassling us with pm's or the like - hit delete.

Septy, it's the sex difference in perp personalities: First there's personally knowing the victim which women tend to do versus Second, the anonymous internet fishing that men do....
I know there are women perps, I'm so sorry you had one in your life. I'm GLAD you took care of her in therapy!!!! Was it someone you knew? That's the thing I'm looking at. (My perp was my father. He knew me.)

In talking with women who were used by their older brothers, most of the guys deny it ever happened, as adults when their sisters finally have had enough therapy to go confront them....... "Huh, what?"

It just is so hard for me to believe somebody could abuse his little sister for years and have no memory of it..... the sisters sure can't forget...... There's some kind of really bad short in the system. Even if their heads "didn't remember", their bodies sure would.....

I agree, lock them up, whichever gender, and throw away the keys. If somebody finds a cure someday we can revisit the issue. Blaaaaagh. I just don't get it.

I also think that there just isn't the research being done on female pedophiles. For some reason, scientists have seemed (to me) in the past to think that only the physical abuse that a male can submit a female to, is bad. Of course, with education, everyone is becoming more aware and watchful.

Maybe also, since females have been the main "provider" of nurture, while the incidence or availability of incidents for neglect is more, many ppl don't count neglect as abusive, which of course, it is.

Even failing to buckle a child into a car seat is neglect. Keeping a child up when it's nap time, or past time for bed, is neglect.

Any neglect/abuse that occurs in the home gives fodder for the online predator to capitalize upon, making them "better" than life at home..etc.

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SeptemberMorn said:
The reason you rarely hear about women pedophiles is because there's an abundance of children, grandchildren, neices and nephews.

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Huh?

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My grandmother had 15 grandchildren. Perhaps the best way to phrase your question is to ask how many she DIDN'T rape or molest.

Web filters aren't perfect. Some keywords can be used for legitimate searches. Remember AOL had banned searches for the word "breast," which hurt the breast cancer communities. There are ways around those filters, using special characters; MySpace and other communities also need users to report violations when their filters don't catch a violation.

I don't believe in censorship. If someone hates someone else, for any reason, s/he should have the right to say so. Again, I want to know what people think and feel. It gives me more power over who I associate with.

As for "smut," I have the right to look at smut anytime I want. I'm an adult. What one person calls porn, another might simply call erotica. Who gets to decide what is or isn't porn? I also have the right to choose to participate in adult content if I choose. Child porn is one thing, but don't tell me what I can and can't look at if everyone involved is a consenting adult. I can make the same arguments about religion. Lex is right, we need to be free to our own beliefs and expressing those beliefs, even if others think it's wrong.

Harmful action is what is meant to be governed in the U.S. (can't speak for other countries). Not speech.

And _Sky is right, that you can make statistics read any way you want, and you can find statistics to support your own views. Those stats she posted can be viewed any way you want. How was pornography defined for those statistics? What is pornography?

When authorities arrest pedophiles, they usually find a lot of videotapes, magazines, photos and other content besides what they find on the perp's computers. Child porn isn't just on the computer, and it's traded and sold in the real world.

A predator doesn't necessarily have to approach a child online. If a child posts his or her personal information online, even if it's just the school s/he goes to, a predator can simply use that information to find him/her. There doesn't have to be any conversations or adult content posted.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be restrictions for kids; I'm saying most of them have to be done by the parents. If parents monitor their children's actions online and know who their online friends are, they'll be there if someone sends an instant message to the child to try to lure them. The parent will know what kinds of photos the child puts on his/her page. You can't monitor them 100% of the time--they can get on the computer of a friend whose parent doesn't monitor them--but many parents aren't doing enough. And you should make it clear to your kids' friends' parents that you expect your child to not be allowed to use their computers unless the parent can watch. If you're watching, you'll know who your child talks to and what they're saying, and who's talking to them.

Ya know, we can keep going on and on about the predators and the pedophiles for the next million years, but it's not all them.

It seems once a child reaches the age of 13 they are very interested in sex these days. And their parents don't even bother to check where they've been online or what they've been doing. I see this as a major problem. Why? Because parents are there to guide their children. Do you realize how many parents could care less about their kids or what they're up to? That number is very high. Sure, they can say they care but their actions prove something quite different.

Today while I was on MySpace I was looking for someone to chat with. I, like thousands of others, search the profiles for someone I can talk to and relate to. Not every profile has a picture, either. So in clicking on the person's profile to view it, I came across a 16 year old girl's profile. You know what it said? "I want sex. If you want to have sex with me then send me a message. Sex, sex, sex." You think her parents/guardians are approving that one? Think again. You think that just because she's underage that she's attracting innocent attention or something? NO WAY! You better believe every male or female will be trying to hook up with her! (she was looking for both)

So before you go about just blaming adults you might want to be sure it's totally the adults doing the asking.

(Sorry, I'm just very irritated and quite argumentative at this moment...don't mind me.)

You're completely right, Lex. I don't chat nearly as much as I used to, but I have been in non-adult chats and been hit on in IM, and I'm not a teen, and they had no pic of me. If they'll do that for a 30-something woman, imagine how they'll jump onto a girl (figuratively, not literally--well, that too, if they meet in RL) who's younger!

My 15-year-old niece was on Xanga. I saw some of her friends' (subscribers') Xanga sites, and the stuff some of them posted was not appropriate. Either their parents didn't know, or they didn't care.

I don't know the circumstances, but my niece was recently brought back to her home after running off with or running off to another state to meet up with a 25-year-old man.

I have seen teens posting sexy photos (not necessarily nude, but sexy poses and low-cut tops), saying things like, "Don't I look hot?" and saying they like sex. I've seen photos of girls kissing girls, not because the girls were lesbians, but just because it's "sexy." And look at clothing manufacturers: Some of them make sexy clothes (mini-skirts and tiny tops) for kids as young as 8 and 10! And parents buy them for the kids!!!!!

Some parents say they get exasperated and just give in. I understand it's stressful and sometimes kids get on your last nerves. But you have to protect your kids and teach them right. That's what parents do. And there are places you can go and people you can talk to if it feels like too much sometimes. You don't have to be alone. But you do have to be responsible.

FACT:
Teenagers looking for SEX at such a young age is usually seeking a much deeper longer.... to be emotionally LOVED.

LoVe,
Rhapsody -

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A predator doesn't necessarily have to approach a child online.

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So this makes it okay for kids to be exposed to dangers from these people WHEREVER they are?? I DON'T THINK SO!

It's obvious you haven't had a crime like that perpetrated against you or you'd think different. Just hope you never have kids that something so haneous happens to!

You're too into YOUR personal rights to be objective, I'm afraid.

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my niece was recently brought back to her home after running off with or running off to another state to meet up with a 25-year-old man.

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Proof that her parents aren't taking care of her as they should. They are shirking their responsibility. Otherwise, this neice wouldn't be looking for attention and love elsewhere.

If her parents were doing their job and she still did this, they would have known about it before hand and she wouldn't have had to be brought back. The parents may have just had a lightbulb moment and realized that they needed to take a more active role in their daughter's life!

When a woman gets raped, is she partially responsible for it, then? OMG! I can't believe this!

Hun i dont think thats quite what was meant.. I think what she meant is that there are dangers everywhere not just the internet.

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So this makes it okay for kids to be exposed to dangers from these people WHEREVER they are?? I DON'T THINK SO!

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I didn't say that. But you can't stop it all. That's just the fact. Kids would be exposed to far fewer dangers online if parents paid attention to what their kids did online.

Incidentally, profiles can be made private on MySpace, so adult content can be kept from children. Only persons added as friends can view the content.

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It's obvious you haven't had a crime like that perpetrated against you or you'd think different. Just hope you never have kids that something so haneous happens to!

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No, I just had a rapist/murderer show up at my house, uninvited, when I was a teenager. I only had him try to get me to go off with him. I knew better than to go off with a stranger. He ended up murdering someone else later. I didn't even have a computer then. He responded to a personal ad. I also had adults seeking sex and prisoners contact me when I had pen pal ads in a couple of teen magazines a couple of years ago. My last boyfriend jumped on top of me and smacked my face back and forth. So don't tell me what I have and haven't had happen to me. You don't know me.

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You're too into YOUR personal rights to be objective, I'm afraid.

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I'm into everybody's rights. I believe in protecting children, but I believe in everyone's rights. I believe in freedom. Just because YOUR experiences make you want to the let criminals dictate your activities as well as everyone else's, doesn't mean I have to.

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Proof that her parents aren't taking care of her as they should. They are shirking their responsibility. Otherwise, this neice wouldn't be looking for attention and love elsewhere.

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Her mother died of cancer. Her father abandoned her as a kid. He's in jail now. She and her brother were shuffled through homes and continue to be. They're not actually my niece and nephew; they're my brother-in-law's grandchildren from a previous marriage. He and my sister tried to raise them and take care of them, but they already had damage done by the time they went to live with them. One became violent and both got into drugs, and are in separate state-run facilities now. Get the facts before you judge.

But right there, you're blaming the parents. That's what I said...it's the parents who should be watching their children, and not expecting others to do their job for them.

ME:
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Those of us who have young children or grandchildren need to take responsibility for what they do. WE need to watch them and take care of them instead of letting the computer keep them occupied in who knows what.

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MAVEN:
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it's the parents who should be watching their children, and not expecting others to do their job for them.

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We agree on this major point

ME:
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Free speach is fine until it hurts someone else or causes harm.

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MAVEN:
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Free speech is a right. You don't have the right to slander someone

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We seem to agree on this point, too. So where did it turn into an argument and why?

As for me getting my information straight, I would have had a better chance had you given it in the first place.

However, I do disagree wholeheartedly with you that a sexual crime has been committed against you. It hasn't. You didn't leave your home with a stranger. No doubt, the experience was traumatic, but you STILL don't know how it feels to be violated in a sexual manner. So don't YOU tell me that you know what it's like, because you don't.

Don't tell me I allow criminals to dictate my activities. I don't let ANYONE dictate ANYTHING to me. I take responsibility for ME. I speak for MYSELF. Where did I say that I want criminals to dictate "everyone else's activities"?? Do I have control over "everyone else"? That would be quite presumptuous, now wouldn't it? What I do is take responsibility for myself and for my actions. I'm anywhere from cautious to descerning of what I say and what I do and where I go. Because I have the right to walk down the street in the middle of the night in the worst part of town, or anywhere else for that matter, doesn't mean I do it. Just because something is my right doesn't mean it is always prudent or right.

No, I can't take care of all children everywhere. Pedophiles existed since the dawn of time and they will exist until the end, but that doesn't mean that I can't scream and holler and raise holy hades from now until doomsday that our children need to be protected!! The Internet is a main place to start since it is the most secretive as well as the most public at the same time.

Yes, parents need to be more responsible for their children, but the people that start places like MySpace and similar sights also have a responsibility to the kids that were their target to begin with. MySpace can't control such a large site? How many members does Psych Central have? Over 1000. We're safe here most of the time. In the three years that I've been here, I have yet to see one predator! Don't tell me that sites that are aimed at kids can't be as well protected as this one because I'm not buying it; not for one second!

Megan and Jessica's Laws