1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before they reach the age of 18
Only 1 in 3 of them will tell anyone
1 in 7 children who are regular Internet users receive sexual solicitations online
1 in 3 is exposed to unwanted sexual material
1 in 25 receives a request to meet someone in real life that they met online.
800,000 children are reported missing every year in the U.S.
58,000 of those are abducted by nonfamily members with the primary motive sexual
115 of those cases the child is abducted by a stranger and killed, held for ransom, or taken with the intention to keep.
Protect your children take the National Center for Exploited Children‘Internet Safety Quiz.
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The internet is a vast, world wide network connecting computers and people around the globe. Millions use the net every day for research, entertainment, financial matters, etc. Computers are becoming less and less expensive and more available to anyone who wants one.
It is no surprise that some people have begun using the computer for less than honorable purposes. The use of a computer over the internet offers anonymity to the unscrupulous user and many times will embolden users to do what they would not normally do. The reality of the matter is that offenders are all over the internet all the time.
Following is a list of tips that can make your use of the internet more fun and a little safer:
- Avoid unfamiliar “Chat Rooms”. Chat rooms are places where many people can gather and discuss various topics of mutual interest. Postings may be public, or they may be private, one-on-one communications. Offenders have a tendency to lurk in chat rooms and check out the user profiles of the people visiting the room. They may contact you with undesirable messages over the internet, or, if they found enough information on you in your profile, they may try to meet you in person.
- Don’t talk to people you don’t know. The perceived anonymity offenders take advantage of can easily fool you. You may think you are talking to a 16 year old cute guy or girl, but in reality, it’s a 45 year old with bad intentions.
- Never use your real name, age, or indication of your gender in your screen name or email address. You don’t need to advertise yourself. The most prevalent internet crime today is cyber stalking. Avoid drawing unnecessary attention to yourself.
- Never post personal information in a user profile. Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and other instant messaging tools will allow you to create a member profile where you post information about yourself. If you post your picture, name, home address, or even your high school, it’s not difficult for offenders to find you. Public resources on the internet and a little surveillance will give you away if you provide the smallest bit of information for an offender to use.
- Use an up-to-date firewall. Hackers are everywhere. They can reach out and touch you from anywhere on the globe. A firewall will block their pre-attack probes, called port scans. Your computer has 65,535 ports or “ears” that listen for other computers. Hackers scan these ports to see if an application is using one to communicate with other computers on the Internet. Your firewall should also block egress traffic, or communications from a virus that made it onto your computer as it tries to “phone home” with your personal information.
- Use an up-to-date virus scanner. Most virus scanners will automatically add virus definitions. You need to have the latest definitions in order to detect the latest viruses. Update these definitions at least once a week.
- Use Windows Update. Windows Update provides patches for known vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system and for other Microsoft products. Today, hackers are trading exploits publicly within a day of the announcement of a vulnerability. In other words, the methods of attacking your computer are made public and traded over the internet between hackers at the same time you would be made aware that there is a problem that needs to be addressed in your software. Windows Update can be automated to check for patches and will even install them automatically. See the Windows Update site for more information.
- Avoid opening email from someone you don’t know and even email from known persons with unexpected attachments. Email can be found in different formats. One of the most common formats is HTML. This type of email enables the user to display an email as if it were a web page with links and pictures. These links can take you places other than where you think you are going. Email attachments can contain viruses and Trojans. Always use a virus scanner to scan attachments before opening them.
- Report any incidents to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (iC3).
Bullies used to confront their victims face-to-face. They’d throw them against a locker and demand lunch money. Or they’d toss them into the locker room of the opposite sex.
Today, bullies make their mark often without ever talking to their victims. Sometimes they don’t even know them.
A hapless student trips in the lunchroom and spills a tray. Seconds later, a picture of his or her lunch-stained humiliation is posted to Facebook and then instantaneously sent to classmates who forward it to more friends. Before the next period begins, the student is so devastated, he or she vows to never return to school.
“Kids are human beings and where there are human beings, there will be bullying,” he said.
And when the bully is a teen or pre-teen girl with a smart phone in her hand, she can be hard to stop, said Johnson, who has been a Fort Collins police officer for 23 years and a school resource officer for eight.
“When I grew up, my social life was at school. I lived on a farm, and we had a party line and everyone could listen in on my calls,” Johnson said. “Now, the kids have laptops and smart phones, and they can send and receive photos and videos. They live connected to the Internet. Rather than sit and talk to their friends, they IM (instant messaging) them. This is how they socialize. This is how they spend their time.”
PSD doesn’t keep specific statistics on bullying, but the prevalence of cell phones makes it easy for kids to communicate with each other and to harass each other.
“You can have 100 counts of harassment by one keystroke,” Johnson said. “Then, you have someone posting pictures of someone else without their consent at a time when they are building their self-esteem. These are kids who are insecure. Or worse, you take a picture and morph it on someone else’s body and then you send it to 200 of your ‘closest’ friends. No wonder we have kids contemplating suicide when they have to deal with something like this.”
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The Benton Police Department recently joined with the Arkansas State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force to help protect the local community in the fight against child predators.
“This will allow us to better access and see what is going on in our own community,” Lt. Kevin Russell said. “We believe this will be an extremely valuable tool that will help our officers investigate the possibility of these crimes firsthand without having to contact outside agencies.”
The Internet Crimes Against Children program was developed in 1998 and is administered through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the Department of Justice. The ICAC helps state and local law enforcement agencies develop an effective response to cyber enticement and child pornography cases. It also encompasses forensic and investigative components, training and technical assistance, victim services, and community education. The Benton Police Department will be part of the Arkansas Region, which is one of 61 task forces nationwide, and is comprised of various law enforcement and other agencies throughout the state.
“Our officers will now have access to equipment where we can initiate our own investigation,” Russell said. “In the past we’ve had to let other agencies work the cases if the child predator is outside (the city limits). Now we’ll have better training and we’ll be able to investigate no matter where the (child predator) is at.”
Russell said the mission of the ICAC is to provide a comprehensive multi-agency response to identify, investigate, apprehend and successfully prosecute offenders who use the internet, online communication systems, or other computer technologies to sexually exploit children. It also provides proactive tools, resources, and information to educate parents, teachers and children about internet safety and victimization prevention.
Maurice Cohn, 50, would later learn that the teenager was fictitious, a creation of the Oceanside Police Department. Cohn is accused of contacting the person through a MySpace account in mid-September, according to a federal complaint filed Tuesday. He repeatedly contacted the supposed teenager —- actually a confidential informant working with Oceanside police —- through the Internet and then over the phone, the complaint states.
He made graphic statements about his intent to have sex with the person, who first told him she was 17 and then said she was 16 years old, the complaint states.
Cohn was arrested Friday when he showed up for a prearranged meeting at the Sprinter station at Oceanside Boulevard and Rancho Del Oro Road, said FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth.
Cohn tried to flee when he saw an Oceanside police car, but crashed into a curb and surrendered, Foxworth said.
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