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Keep Children Safe with a Site Filter!

Avoid Chat Rooms

Internet chat rooms may provide the greatest opportunity for sexual exploitation of children. Although most child sexual predators are aware that law enforcement is present on the Internet in some capacity, the odds of being caught at any given time are on the side of the predator, who often trolls chat rooms specifically designed for children. Chat rooms featuring subjects that attract children and teenagers, such as music, sports, or fashion, are prime targets of child sexual predators, who often disguise themselves as peers.

Watch Your Child's Internet Activity

The risk of direct exploitation by online child predators is not the only danger posed to children by the Internet. On the World Wide Web, where any organization may publish a Web page that promotes its philosophy and offers products catering to its tastes, organizations such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association provide support groups to bolster and empower pedophiles. One site, called Boys in the Real World, features nude and seminude prepubescent boys and teens and has received more than 250,000 "hits" (visitors) in a 3-month period. Another site has a startlingly straightforward mission statement that calls for acceptance of boy lovers who see no need to change a behavior they feel is natural. What historically has been an isolated -- if not ostracized -- population is forming unprecedented numbers of support groups in cyberspace to advance the acceptance of a lifestyle that embraces child sexual exploitation. Leading experts are concerned that such online support groups validate antisocial and even criminal behaviors. According to psychotherapist Gary Hewitt, who counsels teens with sexual dysfunctions often related to abuse, "The support group sites give pedophiles a real sense of power, and the impetus to go out and molest someone."

Protect Your Child - And Family

Parents should find out what controls are available through their Internet service provider and consider augmenting them with filtering software such as CyberSitter, KidCode, Netnanny, or SurfWatch to block objectionable material. SurfWatch matches a potential Internet destination to a proprietary list of forbidden sites. In addition, the software package looks for objectionable language and blocks sites containing that language. Microsoft, Netscape, and Progressive Networks have collaborated to develop even more sophisticated protective devices that should be available soon. Filtering options are not foolproof -- they may not block all objectionable materials and may prevent access to sites approved by parents. They are simply one step in providing a line of defense against cyberpredators. Parents should be aware that the child sexual predator, or even the child, may find ways to bypass blocking software. Not all children who are victimized via the Internet are innocents who took a wrong turn on the information superhighway. Some have deliberately strayed into the seamy side of the cyberworld. Supervisory Special Agent Kenneth Lanning of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Missing and Exploited Children's Task Force cautions, "Investigators must recognize that many of the children lured away from their homes after online computer conversations are not complete innocents duped while doing their homework. Most are curious, rebellious, or troubled adolescents seeking sexual information or contact. Nevertheless, they have been seduced and manipulated by a clever offender and do not fully understand or recognize what they are getting into."









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