HOW BIG IS THE THREAT OF PREDATORS ONLINE?

NEWSWEEK REPORT SUPPORTS CSASURVIVOR.NET:

 “IN THE VAST MAJORITY OF SEX CRIMES INVOLVING MINORS, THE ABUSE IS FROM SOMEONE KNOWN TO THE CHILD, OFTEN A PARENT OF A GUARDIAN”

Not so long ago, I had a brief discussion on csasurvivor.net with “Ashley” (check out STRANGER DANGER: MISGUIDED EMPHASIS). She tried terribly hard to convince me that “stranger danger” was an ominious threat as reported by Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator.”

I tried to convince her that sometimes entertainment is masked as news. You should never believe everything you see on prime time. It is all about the ratings. Particularly, predators making house calls when parents are not home. 

And indeed, as reported by Newsweek’s Steven Levy, “The thrill of seeing potential child molesters punk’d has drawn high ratings for Dateline.” I enjoyed it, and had a few laughs, particulary when a Trini got punk’d. “They call him crazytrini85″ who can forget those words on the network special. 

But Levy reports while talking to kids about strangers is important “showing hours after hours of those creepy predators” make it “easy to lose one’s sense of proportion.”

It was reported by Dateline NBC’s Chris Hansen that at any given moment there were some 500,000 child molesters prowling the Internet.

TRUTH:

• no hard statistics backed this figure up
• when questioned on the figure Dateline NBC stopped using it
• the most reliable figure is 5% of Internet users 10 to 17 were ever approached
• most times they were approached by other juveniles
• house calls from predators just dont happen when kids do homework on Google or hang out on MySpace.com
• but some kids did make the dangerous decision to hook up with adults they met online

BUT THERE WAS AN UPSIDE TO THE SERIES, IN THE NAME OF PROTECTING CHILDREN:

• MySpace has introduced new protections (last week) making it tougher for strangers to contact minors
• U.S. Congress recently passed laws that could limit speech for all Web sites (but so far the courts have struck down those laws)
• AOL Time Warner is also implementing new strategies to track child pornography on the Internet

(p. 20 Newsweek July3/July10, 2006)

PARENTS BEWARE:

As I stated in the original post “Misguided emphasis may be placed on people on the street or online. Internet predators and stranger danger may cause us to overlook those closest to us. Nine out of ten sexually abused children are assaulted by family members and close acquaintances. And most often, it happens right in children’s own home.”

Sometimes when we keep looking out the window and around the corner we miss what is happening under our own nose. 

Renee Cummings