Internet Chat Room Awareness
Perverted Justice: Does It Work? November 13th, 2005 @ 9:47 PM by News Director We recently had the opportunity to watch the Dateline NBC special dealing with the efforts by volunteers of Perverted Justice.com. Yeah, we know there are folks who oppose their activities, however we think that whether one approves of Perverted Justice’s actions or not, it’s necessary to recognize that there are far more Internet predators than one would imagine. Just viewing the Dateline special, without visiting the PeeJ site and reading the actual transcripts, is a shocking and almost speechless affair. It’s almost inconceivable to imagine these men making the point to show up to a minor’s home, a home and area that they do not know, alone and prepared to have sex with someone whom they know to be a child. In their parents’ home, no less. And they not only “chat” sexually, God help us, they send pornographic picture of themselves. Yet there it is - ON FILM and in print. All of them, including a guy who got naked in the garage before meeting his intended partner. Fact is, the naked guy showed up twice in a row (he didn’t learn the first time when he showed up at the house), and one guy who missed the time he was supposed to arrive at the house earlier in the day showed up at 2:15am in the morning. Can you imagine that as a parent? We do have to note that per the volunteers at PeeJ, they only sit in Internet chat rooms with a profile clearly identifying their persona as underage. They do not initiate conversations nor participate in the main chat; instead, the PeeJ volunteer is always private messaged by someone, and that someone appears to be usually an adult soliciting sex. Reading the chat transcripts is a lesson in the predatory and depraved nature of those adults in our society who seem to think there’s nothing wrong with their virtual sexual conversation with children, yet there are those like Fairfax County, VA authorities who apparently don’t perceive what Perverted Justice and NBC collected as grounds for persecution of these individuals. Read the transcripts, Fairfax County. Trace the IP’s and collect the logs from the ISP’s and AOL, which does maintain chat records and informs users that those chats can be used in any manner AOL chooses. That’s a terms of service (TOS) condition as of February 2005 when signing up for an AIM handle or using AOL’s AIM service. Fairfax County’s position that PeeJ’s evidence isn’t up to the County’s snuff is closely aligned with the position of manure to a horse. If you’ve any experience chatting in Yahoo, AOL, or IRC chat rooms, you’ll know that the “a/s/l” (age/sex/location) questions are routine when chatting to others in a chat room or in a private message. Remember, anyone can be anybody on the Internet. The problem is that most kids do choose to be themselves and are far freer about relaying personal information to people they don’t know than they should be. Visit a chat room designated for 17 and younger chatters on any chat server and see for yourself how many have open personal information where it simply should not be and the same applies for MySpace and blog accounts. You’ll also be stunned when you see how many older men (who do tend to include their ages in their profiles) “lurk” in these chat rooms, post comments or private messages to clearly underage chatters and bloggers. If you have kids who frequent the Internet, it’s time for some harsh reality that not just their friends are out there. There’s apparently the thought that just girls are prone to be targeted by Internet predators and this is NOT TRUE. Boys are just as likely to be propositioned by adult men via private message as girls. In our day, our parents only had to speak to us about drugs , strangers, and sex. Nowadays, that isn’t the case. Giving your child a computer and allowing Internet use is a great thing; in our opinion, this is a privilege for any child, not a right. To help with your discussion, check out some of the links below - but DO have the conversation. An ounce of prevention….well, we’ll let you finish the rest. Better that than your child end up missing or abducted. http://www.nap.edu/netsafekids/ http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/May2003/Feature1.asp. http://www.sdcda.org/protecting/children.php http://www.levelbest.com/design/sites/enough/ http://www.focusonyourchild.com/learning/art1/A0000086.html http://www.missingabducted.com/index.php/2005/11/13/perverted-justice-does-it-work/