Years ago, sexual predators and child molesters were once thought of as suspicious looking people hiding in the shadows on a schoolyard or a playground at the park.

These days, law-enforcement officials have to expand their hunt for child-crime suspects to the ever-expanding world of the Internet.

Online social Websites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga are more popular than ever among teenagers. However, they are also popular places for sexual predators to take advantage of children.

Teens who join social Websites create profiles that include pictures, personal facts, likes, dislikes and ideas.

However, according to Ardmore Police Officer, David Posey, private details about ages, hometowns, after-school jobs and hangouts are prime details that sexual predators look for to pursue their victims.

“I can be anybody I want to be on the Internet,” he said.

Posey created a fake profile of a young teen in order to catch pedophiles after being solicited while he was browsing the Internet.

“I was sitting there looking on eBay one day and I had someone try to contact me,” said Posey.

The Ardmore Police Department was lead by Posey to three arrests of online predators last year. During these stings, he would create a profile of a teenager and wait for solicitation from an adult.

Teenagers who are online should talk only to their friends and be leery of people they don’t know well, said Posey.

He pulled up a local teenager’s MySpace profile to show how easy it is for pedophiles to prey on their victims with just simple information.

“Everything she likes I can like,” Posey said. “I could find her within two hours and have her in my car.”

He said predators could easily deceive their victims online by lying about their identities and making victims think they are friends.

For example, if a teen has a friend named “Bob” shown on their “friends list,” it would be easy for a pedophile to pose as Bob by creating another profile. The pedophile could obtain details about Bob from his profile and even possibly make plans to meet the teen in person with the pretense of being Bob.

Predators not only send children obscene and pornographic materials, but also most likely try to ask to meet in person for the solicitation of sexual acts, Posey said. While posing as a teen online, Posey said he noticed that predators who wanted to meet were in a hurry.

“One I talked to less than two hours, and then he was on his way up here,” he said.



Keeping the guard up

According to the Website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children weekly incident statistics, last updated July 2006, there were 37 reported incidents a week of unsolicited obscene material sent to a child, 140 reported incidents a week of online enticement of children for sexual acts and 1,077 reported incidents a week of child pornography to their tip line.

“It really is a serious problem,” said Chris Slaton, Limestone County district attorney investigator. “I really think that people have become more aware of it.”

Slaton worked as an investigator at the Athens Police Department and then transferred to the D.A.’s office four years ago. While with APD, he headed several sting operations to capture online pedophiles.

“It’s close to my heart because I worked on it and see how bad it is,” he said.

Slaton has not seen any more incidents involving child Internet crime come through the D.A.’s office since he has been there, but when he pursued online predators it was largely on his own time.

“I guess [the department’s] not working them actively,” said Slaton. “It’s not because they don’t want to. It’s basically a resource issue. They don’t have the resources for anyone to specialize in working on just that.”

The child Internet crime problem is still prevalent, he said.

“We arrested five people in about a six-month span, and that’s been about six or seven years ago,” he said. “It is a bad problem.”

Awareness of the problem has come to the forefront compared to four or five years ago, Slaton said. But parents and children should still keep up their guards.

“I would completely monitor any child’s Internet activities,” he said.

Slaton suggests parents pay close attention to any chat-room activity.

“You can’t say enough about that because all these chat rooms can be breeding grounds for pedophiles to come into these people’s homes,” he said.

He said parents should check online logs, place restrictions on use of the Internet until parents are around, use online website blocking tools setup through most servers and, most importantly, educate their children.

“I know sex is a touchy subject between parents and kids, but I would suggest that they educate their kids about these kinds of people and not be afraid to tell them,” said Slaton.

Posey suggested that anyone who is on a Website such as MySpace or the Yahoo Personals, should set their profile to private. This allows only selected viewers to see the profile. He said parents could also make their own profiles to secretly monitor their children’s activities.

Slaton said he thinks the stings involving the decoy profiles in the area have helped at least slow down some predators, but teens can never be too careful.

“Since we’ve done that, all over the country a lot of law enforcement do that now, and I think [the predators] are a little more careful about it,” said Slaton.

Posey and Slaton both agree pedophiles are nothing if not persistent.

“Back then we were amazed,” Slaton said. “The news carried it pretty heavy and we were still getting a lot of responses to the profile.”

To report local incidents involving child Internet crimes contact the Athens Police Department at 233-8700 or the Ardmore Police Department at 423-2146.