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Net's anonymity helps 'travelers' to single out vulnerable teens
Sunday, January 13, 2002 By Torsten Ove and Michael A. Fuoco, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
In snippets of Internet shorthand, a predator reveals himself:
Time4BS: i will be so disappointed if i come all the way there and u dont show
"Time4BS" was Bradford S. Davic, 37, a man from McCandless who plotted to have sex with an underage girl. In a chat room called "I Love Older Men," he flattered, cajoled and seduced "ChillingNOhio," whom he believed was a 14-year-old girl named Ashley.
He never fulfilled his fantasy, because "ChillingNOhio" was actually Alonzo Wilson, an undercover officer in Xenia, Ohio. Police picked up Davic at a Kmart, where he had gone to meet the girl of his dreams.
He's a classic example of what federal agents call a "traveler" -- a man who strikes up friendships with children on the Internet, gains their trust, then travels to pick them up for sex.
Davic went to prison before he could get his hands on a real girl.
Not so Scott W. Tyree, the man the FBI says transported 13-year-old Alicia Kozakiewicz of Crafton Heights to his home in Herndon, Va., where investigators found her Jan. 4.
The Tyree incident has generated considerable publicity because it is so sensational.
But the fact remains that cases where teens actually meet someone after an online liaison are relatively rare.
One of the reasons the Tyree case "is such an important news story is because it doesn't happen that often," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit initiative of the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.
No one can say for certain how often traveler cases occur, but a study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire said, "It is fair to speculate that these kinds of events are probably not as common" as date rape, sexual assaults by strangers or sexual abuse inside families.
An unsystematic survey by the FBI, other law enforcement sources, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and newspapers identified nearly 800 Internet-related cases, confirmed or under investigation, involving adults traveling to or luring young people for sex.
But that has to be seen in the context of millions of teens in the United States who engage each month in Internet conversations with strangers.
One of the report's authors, Kimberly Mitchell of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, said she and her colleagues have embarked on research to get a more precise idea of how big a problem these "travelers" are.
Locally, federal agents and police have investigated at least a dozen cases in the past two years in which a child has communicated online with an adult, many of which have also involved child pornography prosecutions by the U.S. attorney's office.
In a couple of the cases, teen girls left the state to have sex with men they met online. In others, teen girls had sexual relationships with men from this region. In still others, police stopped the meetings before they could take place.
While the Internet has extended the reach of sexual predators and their ability to remain anonymous, the methods they use to gain children's trust are as old as time.
"They use psychological techniques to build trust," said Larry Likar, a La Roche College professor of criminal justice and a retired FBI agent who supervised the U.S. Attorney's Crimes Against Children Task Force. "They'll find out if the child has problems and they'll capitalize on that. They'll say [to a child], 'Hey, I've got the same problem.' They use that as a little link. They have the ability to sense vulnerability."
As Internet use proliferates, more and more children and teen-agers have become the targets of online solicitations of one kind or another.
Unwanted solicitations
The study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center found that almost 20 percent of Internet users it surveyed had received an unwanted sexual solicitation in the previous year, ranging from questions about bra size to requests for a meeting.
Five percent reported receiving a "distressing sexual solicitation" which made them upset or afraid, and 3 percent said they had received an "aggressive solicitation" in which someone requested off-line contact. Among the children surveyed, though, none of those solicitations led to sexual contact or assault.
Most experts on Internet use maintain that the Web itself is less a Pandora's Box than a two-way window on the world.
Pew director Rainie said the Internet "is definitely a tool [and] in that sense of the term it is a neutral communications and information conduit that can be used for good or ill. For the vast majority of people online, it is a helpful thing, a useful tool, and it enhances their social world. But there are things to be scared about."
One of the more dynamic qualities of the Internet is how it facilitates formation of "communities," he said. For example, people who suffer from unusual medical conditions can go online to find support groups.
But, he said, "the same tools that form these vital communities also can be used to form communities with malevolent purposes. Most pedophiles in a geographical space won't want to be recognized and known -- they won't be marching down Main Street -- but on the Internet, partly because it's anonymous, it's a lot easier to form communities of pedophiles."
Postal Inspector Tom Clinton, perhaps the region's foremost child pornography investigator, doesn't believe the Internet has created more predators. But he says it gives them a powerful new tool to do what they do without as much risk of exposure.
In the old days, investigators say, pedophiles had to lurk around shopping malls or parks, or seek out children in their neighborhoods. That still goes on. But now the Web has dramatically amplified the supply of available targets.
Young teens are particularly vulnerable, for several reasons.
First, they simply don't have the same judgment as adults.
Janet L. Gates, a professor of psychology at La Roche College, says the tendency is to view teens as miniature adults. But research suggests that because they have lower levels of the brain chemicals that control emotions, they are more susceptible to taking risks.
"They may look grown up, but they don't have the reasoning to be independent," she said. "You still have to exercise parental responsibility."
Other factors also play into teen vulnerability. Girls, in particular, are reaching puberty earlier than ever, and are growing up in a sexualized society with such role models as Britney Spears, the pop diva who openly displays her sexuality while still claiming to be a virgin.
In addition to societal pressures, teens' friendships tend to be less stable, and some don't have friends at all. Cyberspace can provide a peer group they can't find anywhere else.
"For some kids, particularly those who don't have a big strong social network at school, the use of the Internet has special meaning in finding other people who are like them," Rainie said. "They can find people to be friendly to them and who will express some level of empathy, people who are going through the same thing."
Those needs are exactly what a pedophile will exploit by lending a sympathetic ear.
Most teens are wary of online solicitations, just as they are about being approached by strangers on the street. The University of New Hampshire study found that "most young people seem to know what to do to deflect these sexual 'come-ons.' "
But, the study said, "there are youth who may be especially vulnerable through lack of knowledge, neediness, disability or poor judgment."
Likar said the predator is particularly good at zeroing in on the troubled child, the one who is most at risk of actually meeting someone she's been talking to online.
"In many cases, the parents have no idea there is a problem," he said. "It's not usually a knowing disregard or negligence."
Authorities are doing what they can to eliminate the predators. There are now hundreds if not thousands of police officers trolling for them online, and federal authorities have made catching them a priority, particularly in Western Pennsylvania.
So many cops are online these days that predators are wary. In his correspondence with "Ashley," for example, Davic expressed concern that she was an undercover cop "setting me up." The officer deflected that with a joke, saying police departments don't hire 14-year-old cops. Davic fell for it.
But the law enforcement effort can do only so much. Most investigators are reluctant to say it because they don't want to hurt families who are already suffering, but many of them feel parents of children who respond to "travelers" have to do a better job raising their children.
"One of the big problems is, parents are not computer savvy and the computer becomes a baby sitter," Allegheny County Detective Tim Haney said. "The whole world is at your daughter's fingertips and you better believe the whole world has access to her.
"It's the same thing as monitoring whether your kids are involved in drugs, drinking or gangs. You need to direct them. That's a natural parental responsibility. We can put all kinds of controls in the laws and on the Internet, but it still won't stop it. It all starts at home."
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