The issue here is DOPA Ian. Are you really that blind to think that children are not being lured online?
Research shows that predators are using the Internet. Did you know that the US alone is home for 78% of Internet-related crimes. 1 in 5 children are sexually solicited or approached over the internet in a one-year period of time. 20% of violent offenders serving time in state prisons reported having victimized a child.
Ian, predators and child pornographers around the world have been prosecuted.
The availability of child pornography is increasing at an alarming rate. In this day and age a child’s photo can be easily edited. Are you aware that real children’s facial images have been attached to the pornographic poses of others. These children are victimized when those images are distributed.
Child pornography is traded 24 hours a day
The following is nothing like the “To Catch a Predator†aired on NBC Dateline. The W5 report, titled “Save the Children†is an extremely disturbing look at the pedophiles that that are underground, exchanging child pornography, and trading full-length movies of babies being raped.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060310/wfive_savethechildren_060311/20060311?hub=WFive
The law enforcement that are in this episode, are the ones that have to deal with this sad reality on a daily basis. In the episode, a 3 time sexual offender calmly talks about what he has done, insisting it’s the children who want to have sex with him. I couldn’t believe it.
You’ll also see Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie disappointment with the justice system. It’s not enough to just read the article; you have to watch the four part episode.
Again, the episode, which can be viewed at ctv.ca is very disturbing. Maybe it will open your CLOSED eyes!
There also has been a growing number of cases of sexual predators using sites like MySpace to lure children.
Though MySpace added new restrictions to combat the problem of users 18 and older not being able to send messages or join friend lists of users 15 and under, unless they know the youth’s e-mail address or full name. The new restrictions does not prevent predatory, as Predators can lie about their age when they sign up. MySpace has no way of verifying that users submit their true age when registering.
You or I can log on right now and talk to anybody we want and we can tell them that we are 25 or 14, how would they know? They wouldn’t.
If you just do a Google for internet safety you’ll see so much material out there for parents, but it all says the same thing.
We all must take measures to keep our children safe.
Child abusers no longer have to wander around schoolyards Ian. They can log on to the computer and surf on over to MySpace- A haven for pediophiles to use to their advantage. My space currently has 87m accounts, with 270,000 new users being added a day. One forth of those users are minors. Children leave the home and go to school and have access to these social-networking sites. It’s inappropriate for students to be participating in these social networking sites while at school. However, they do access them. My daughter attends a high school where there is no school involvement. Children can log on to networking sites, check their email and surf the web freely.
Internet safety and responsible use is everyone’s concern, however some schools do not appear to be too concerned with the growing concerns over these network sites. Educating your children is not effective enough in preventing youth involvement in these online networking communities. In many cases in which children have been solicited for sex over the Internet, the child was unsupervised. When a web service has become that of a haven to exploit children- like MySpace has then measures need to be taken to protect the children.
Parents cannot asume that children are out of harms way just because they are safe at home. They are not safe if they are on the internet unsupervised.
While some parents may be doing there job to keep their children safe; children are ignoring the warnings. The problem isn’t just unresponsible parents here, it’s the networking sites, schools and peer pressure. If you tell a child not to touch something because it’s hot, they are going to touch it.
Our children are our most valuable asset, but how do we keep them safe when we are not there? Telling little Johny and Susan not to talk to strangers isn’t enough. They don’t want to hear the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Woof.
Supervision is one of the biggest issues here!
The Internet is a valuable tool, but both adults and children must learn to use it wisely and responsibily.
I’m not sure how you can compare internet luring and Sexual exploitation of children to video games, alcopops, A Clockwork Orange, comics, and yellow-backed novels.
