Runaway Teens

Experts: New techniques, teamwork needed to catch online sex offenders

Protecting teens against online sexual molesters is tough because the social skills used by the offenders often win the victims over, warned experts teaching police investigators Thursday.

Tracking down the bad guys is also tough because they could be anybody, including judges, fellow cops and even citizens who volunteer to help catch online predators.

These are not new facts. The fact that news organizations and some law enforcement organizations are treating this as if they just learned it is troubling.

Kenneth V. Lanning, a consultant who spent 27 years in the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit researching sex crimes, has a chilling observation.

“Many of these guys appear to be nice for a very good reason. They are nice,” he said. “If you’re grooming and seducing kids, the single most valuable characteristic you can have is to be nice.”

Police call the process “grooming.” It might include sending gifts to the child - most often a teenager - such as a Web cam that can be used in illicit photographs.

While the reporter is right that it is “chilling”, it still is not new information. It’s old information that law enforcement has been slow to react to.

Cooperation is the most valuable asset, something less likely in the turf battles over other crime investigations, veteran police officers say.

A growing number of cases are solved when computers are seized from offenders and the photos of children are analyzed. Details in the background of photos provide clues when compared with similar shots in the international databases with software that can compare thousands of images in minutes.

Although the photos can be jarring, the results of the laborious detective work can save a young victim, according to David Nahmias, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

“The cases tend to be painful, emotional. They tend to be hard to work on for a long time with the images of pure evil creeping into other parts of your life,” he said. “But these matters are as rewarding as any kind of police work can be.”

Let’s hope law enforcement gets better at catching online sex predators, but in the meantime there is a huge problem that is not even mentioned in this story. Some of the teenagers are using their web cams to solicit men online. The total reverse of the situation.

These teens set up their web cam and charge sexual predators for “shows”. They get paid online through various payment methods and sometimes these predators get their address by offering to send them gifts.

If your teenager, boy or girl, has a web cam on their computer in their bedroom, you need to look for any signs they are initiating this contact, not just that they might be solicited by an online predator.

It may be shocking, but it is reality.

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