Fewer Sex Predators Online

In a study done by Durham University, NH, Children are less likely then they were a few years ago to encounter a sexual predator. The University surveyed fifteen hundred people and found that thirteen percent encountered a sexual predator on line. That is down from nineteen percent in 2000. It was also found that forty-three percent of the sexual solicitations come from other children. Six percent of children were reported to have been upset by unwanted pornography in 2000, that has not increased to nine percent.



It is centennially a good thing that the predators targeting children has gone down. But we should also note that a study sampling fifteen hundred people is hardly an accurate sample of the nation. It does sound worrisome that forth three percent of the solicitations that happen come from other children. Might this be a change in social patterns?

Related News Links:
www.foxnews.com
www.leadingthecharge.com
www.msnbc.msn.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Dateline, "To Catch A Predator"
Child web porn; 1500 Known Paedophiles, still not charged?

[edit on 9/8/2006 by Mirthful Me]

I hardly think a 6% reduction very material.

There is still a lot of work to do here.

Originally posted by loam
I hardly think a 6% reduction very material.

There is still a lot of work to do here.

Yes that is true but we have to get this number to go down is get the Liberal judges to actually punish sex-offenders harshley.



TRw

This means more that the predators are more carefull in revealing themselves and more skilled in their trickery and tactics, then it means that there are less of them.

i agree, i think theyre just better at getting information out of their targets. have you ever been to the perverted justice website? its amazing how many predators get caught on a daily basis there. they do 'human shields' where adults pretend to be kids in order to waste the sicko's time. sometimes the shields' text logs gets taken to law enforcement and the sicko gets arrested.

if we really want to crack down on this, more people need to take an effort in educating themselves on how to use a computer and teaching their children what's what, instead of letting your kids run rampant with a computer far away from a parents eye (i.e. bedroom, next to bedroom in basement, etc etc).

Not very newsish to me, I mean I know alot of people,
and I've never known anyone to be solicited in such a way,
though a female friend of mine, when she was 15 did,
ad humurously solicit a gentleman in his thirties,
much to his discomfort, it was actually part a joke and
part an experiment.

Anyways, I think part of it to is that there was never as
many so called predators (I just don't like the word) online,
rather it is/was a mix of people, especially the media,
exaggerating the amount, and the same "predators" soliciting
multiple people under different identities.



EDIT:
Spelling and line formating.

[edit on 8/12/2006 by iori_komei]

Originally posted by iori_komei

Anyways, I think part of it to is that there was never as
many so called predators (I just don't like the word) online,
rather it is/was a mix of people, especially the media,
exaggerating the amount, and the same "predators" soliciting
multiple people under different identities.
[edit on 8/12/2006 by iori_komei]

Iori,
you are probably very correct with that statment.
But just also want to say again that in the study that was listed at the start of this thred was they only sampled 1500 people. That is hardly an accurart sampleing of the country as a whole.

Fewer?

There might be. But the ones of us who are left, are ten times as good as the old sort.

Joking aside. It is likely, that there would be a reduction in the amount of people caught or involved in such things. However, does this make it a good thing? The study itself, doesn't say if this is due to a reduction in Sexual Predators or if they have gone somewhere else - such as offline and back into the real world. Which is worse, them trying it over a computer or at a park?

Furthermore, half the problem now is that a lot of these websites such as Vampirefreaks or MySpace have been filled with children who are under age but say otherwise. So a lot of the time, these studies never do factor that in and of course the problems that arise from such things. A good example, is the club my friend owns. They used to have a MySpace group for the club - due to cheaper promotion. One night they were doing random ID checks and several of the people who were on the site claiming to be 18 through to 20, had no ID on them. Although this isn't proof they were underage, it is an odd tendancy that they'd not have ID on them and not return to the club with ID.

So it really boils down to, is it always the "predators" fault? There was two years ago, a court case involvign such an incident where an Adult Dating Site was being used by an under-age girl [15]. She slept with a man and later on he was taken to courts by her parents. The judge in the case [and jury] ruled that he wasn't at fault due to the nature of the site. Furthermore, many such incidents happen where people are targetted by younger teens for either their own selfesteem or some form of amusement as iori_komei pointed out. If you look now at people, especailly girls between 14 and 17 several of them can be mistaken as being over the legal age of concent and while ages on sites can easily be changed and altered it is massively unfair to label these people as perverts. As though all of them had the intent to get sex with an underage person.

You also then have the problem that the internet is global. Laws differ in the United State's in each State. So what abotu the rest of the World? Many parts of the World don't even have concent laws, parts of Europe are 13 and younger. However, in reality it should fall on the parents to regulate what their children get up too. If their child is talking to a pedophila, should they not feel as though they can talk to their parents or someone in their family? If they cannot there might be bigger issues at hand than who they are talking to online.

I think part of the change of those values is the way things have changed.

The first study was made in 2000, still at the peak of the "Internet as a novelty".

Children that are today between 10 and 17 were then between 5 and 12, so they probably grew knowing the Internet in a way children with the same age in 2000 only acquired some time latter.

Also, they say that:

He attributed the drop to children being warned about the dangers of strangers on the Internet and to their spending less time in chat rooms.

That is probably true, because in 2000 it was popular to use Chat Rooms.

They should make a study like this to see what percentage of 10 to 17 year olds get solicitations by SMS.

Guys, trust me on this, these numbers show that contious encounters with predators are lessened, but it in no way shows that there are less predators.

I'm savvy to much more data then this poll out of a couple 1000 people and my deparment activly monitors and hunts down sexual predators and pedofiles.

There is in no way a decrease in their numbers and there are actualy quite a few normal people that make it a game getting pictures and cybersex from everything and everyone willing, no matter what age, their numbers should be added to the sexual predators stats, because they are a true new breed of sexual predators.

There's plenty of sicko's to go around and they are getting better and better to stay hidden and uncaptured.