[LM_NET] Real information about sexual predators

[Nancy Willard <nwillard@CSRIU.ORG>]

This is testimony from Tuesday's hearing on Protecting Children on the
Internet. I am providing it in full because I really want you to read this!

 http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Testimony&H
earing_ID=1885&Witness_ID=6683

Testimony of
 
Dr. David Finkelhor
Director
Crimes against Children Research Center
University of New Hampshire
Durham, New Hampshire
603 862-2761
david.finkelhor@unh.edu 
 
Online Sex Crimes against Juveniles:
Myth and Reality

Hearing before the U.S. Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Washington, DC
July 24, 2007
 
Whenever any new threats appear on the scene, from SARS to school shooters,
it is crucial to characterize them accurately and as soon as possible,
because first impressions are lasting impressions, and it is hard to change
them later.  We need such accurate and early characterizations not only to
prevent overreaction, but to get people to be focused on the right things to
do to prevent the spread of the danger.

In the case of Internet sex crimes against children, I'm afraid we may
already be off to a poor start.  The public impression of this crime is not
in sync with the reality based on what we now know from the research.

The public impression about this crime is that we have "Internet
pedophiles", who have moved from the playgrounds into your living room
through the Internet connection, who target young children by pretending to
be other children, who lie about their ages, identities and motives, who
trick the children into providing personal information like their names and
addresses, or who harvest it from MySpace; and then armed with this
information, these criminals stalk the children, abduct them and rape them
or worse.

But our research suggests a different reality. Here¹s what we have found at
the University of New Hampshire¹s Crimes against Children Research Center,
based on hundreds of cases retrieved from national surveys of law
enforcement agencies, and two national sample surveys of youth Internet
users themselves, all this research is available now in articles in high
prestige medical and scientific journals.

First, we have found that the predominant online sex crime victims are not
young children, but rather teenagers.  And the predominant crime scenario
does not involve violent stranger molesters posing online as other children
in order to set up an abduction and an assault.  Only 5% of the online sex
crimes against children involved violence when meetings occurred, only 3%
entailed an abduction.

Nor is deception a major factor.  Only 5% of offenders truly concealed the
fact that they were adults from their victims and 80% by contrast were quite
explicit about their sexual intentions towards these kids.

These are not mostly violent sex crimes but criminal seductions that take
advantage of common teenage vulnerabilities.  The offenders lure teens to
meet them for sexual encounters after weeks of very often quite explicit
online conversations that play on the teen¹s desires for romance, adventure,
sexual information and understanding.  These teens are often troubled youth
with histories of family turmoil and physical and sexual abuse.

Jenna was a computer-savvy 13 year old, from a divorced family who
frequented sex-oriented chat rooms under the screen name ³evil_girl.²  There
she meets a 45 year old, Dave, who flatters her, gives her gifts, jewelry,
talks about intimate things and drives across several states to meet her for
sex on several occasions in motel rooms.  When Dave is arrested with her,
Jenna resists cooperating with police.

Many of the Internet sex crimes have commonalities with this case.  In 73%
of these crimes, the youth go to meet the offender on multiple occasions,
for multiple sexual encounters.  Half the victims were described by police
as being in love with or feeling close friendship with the offender.  In a
quarter of the cases the victim ran away from home to be with the offender.
This has lots of implications for prevention.  For one thing, we think it
means that we need to make sure our messages are directed at teens, in
language and format and from sources they relate to.  Teens themselves, not
parents.  We also have to go beyond bland warnings about not giving out
personal information.  Our research with youth suggests that giving out
personal information is not what puts kids at risk.  Nor does having a blog
or a personal web site or frequenting My Space.  What puts kids in danger
for these crimes is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers,
and having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web -- going to sex
sites and chat rooms, and interacting with lots of people there.  

To prevent these crimes, we have to take on more awkward and complicated
topics and start with an acceptance of the fact that some teens are curious
about sex and looking for romance and adventure.  So we need to educate them
-- about why hooking up with a 32 year old has major drawbacks like jail,
bad press, public embarrassment ; and why they should be discouraging, not
patronizing, sites and people who are doing offensive things online,
fascinating as they may seem.

We also need to make it easier for them to report the come-ons and the
sexual picture requests, and we need to empower by-standers to take action ­
that is, friends, online observers in chat rooms, who may see this happening
but today do little to stop it.

We need to task agencies that know about prevention, like CDC and OJJDP and
NCMEC, to help design or at least evaluate scientifically grounded
prevention programs that can then be disseminated to educate youth and
families based on their proven effectiveness.

We need training for law enforcement, so they know how to handle these cases
and the often reluctant kids whom they need as witnesses to prosecute the
offenders.

We also need training for school officials and mental health professionals,
so they, too, can help some of these at risk kids before they get into
trouble.

We need ongoing research to keep tabs on what kids are experiencing and what
law enforcement is encountering, because in this rapidly changing
technological environment the threats and dangers can morph so very quickly.
  
We have to stay on top of them.  We don't want to be responding to
yesterday's problem, or think that we know what¹s going on based on a
single, high profile incident.  So for example, I think we need an annual
assessment of threats to kids in the Internet environment, something like
the annual Monitoring the Future national survey about drug usage.

The prevention challenges here are not easy.  Like discouraging kids from
smoking or drinking, the simple scare tactics often don¹t work.  This
challenge too may require deft maneuvering within the teenage psychology to
get the message to stick.  And in the meantime, we need to be cautious about
promoting messages that turn teens off or that betray a completely
unrealistic take on the Internet and which may only make them less receptive
to authoritative sources that we want them ultimately to trust.  We
shouldn't allow a sense of crisis to mobilize us into misguided crusades.

So we have to do our homework.  We have to do our research.  So much of what
happens online is so hidden.  But if we want to stop these internet crimes,
we have to understand the details of what is going on.  It is as simple and
as complicated as that.


My book for parents, and the materials that are on my site are grounded in
this same understanding (and the research from this center).

It is really far past time for an improvement in our understanding.

Nancy

-- 
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
http://cyber-safe-kids.com
nwillard@csriu.org

Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social
Aggression, Threats, and Distress (Research Press)

Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the
Internet Safely and Responsibly (Jossey-Bass)

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