Most parents don’t think it can happen to their child — falling victim to a sex predator.##M:[more]## But thanks in part to the Internet and the easy communication that it enables, children are traveling in circles that their parents might never imagine, all without leaving the family home.
Recently a 34-year-old man from Hoboken was sentenced to a state facility for sex offenders after admitting to a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old West Windsor girl whom he met through an Internet chat room. Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that the victim’s parents had no idea that, over a period of several months, their daughter was spending time at area hotels to have sex with a man that was more than twice her age.
In an era when the computer has all but replaced the telephone as the primary device for kids to communicate with each other, it’s becoming more and more difficult for parents to protect their kids from the pedophiles who prowl the Internet hoping to lure kids into meeting them for sex.
“The most serious problem imaginable is a child who turns up missing or is molested as a result of an online contact,” says GetNetWise.org, an Internet safety web site sponsored by Internet industry companies and public interest groups. “Most of these cases are not strangers bursting into homes and stealing young kids; they are almost all young people who have left home on their own volition, usually after ‘meeting’ someone online.”
According to GetNetWise, the vast majority of these cases involve female victims in their mid-teens. “What we have here isn’t a case of bad guys snatching children, it’s mainly teenagers exercising poor judgment.”
This was exactly the case in the 2003 incident. In that case, Phillip J. Berkeley, a predator who trolled various locations on the Internet looking for underage victims, made contact with the victim in an Internet chat room, according Casey DeBlasio, spokesperson for the Mercer County Prosecutor’s office. The two engaged in a handful of conversations until Berkeley convinced the victim to meet him for sex.
Between August and December, 2003, Berkeley and the victim met on a number of occasions in hotels in Lawrence Township — including the Red Roof Inn and Mount’s Motel — for the purpose of having sexual relations. The two made arrangements for the clandestine meetings through the use of online instant messages.
Berkeley’s illegal escapades came to an end in December, 2003, when he was arrested by the West Orange Police Department for a sexual relationship with a minor there. During questioning, he confessed to the relationship with the West Windsor girl.
“It was still going on at the time he was arrested for the other offense,” says DeBlasio, adding that if Berkeley had not been caught, the West Windsor girl’s parents may have never known about the crime.
Earlier this month, Berkeley was sentenced by a state superior court judge to three years in the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Avenel, pleading guilty to sexual assault charges and attempting to lure a minor.
While this type of crime is not commonplace in Plainsboro or West Windsor, parents have to remain vigilant to ensure that their kids don’t fall victim to the Philip Berkeleys operating through the Internet.
And just how is that accomplished? According to Sergeant Robert Garofalo, the West Windsor Police Department’s expert in the investigation of computer crimes, parents need to have an eagle eye when it comes to their children and computers.
“You have to have open communication with your kids, and monitor, monitor, monitor. And if I didn’t say it before, monitor,” Garofalo advises. “You should tell your kids, ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you. I don’t trust other people. If I’m monitoring or spying on you it’s because I’m trying to protect you from getting hurt.’”
“Leaving children unmonitored on a computer is like dropping them off alone in New York City, giving them $100, and telling them to have fun,” Garofalo warns.
The myriad of communcations options for kids over the Internet — E-mail, chat rooms, and instant messaging services — has made it easier than ever for sex predators to come into you home and access children without their parents ever knowing it.”
“It’s not like the days where parenting used to involve searching your kid’s room for porno mags and cigarets,” says Garofalo. “Today parents need to be able to look at that computer when their child is on it. We have to educate children both at school and at home and let them know that the Internet can be a dangerous place. Pedophilia is a disorder. It’s chronic and research has shown there really is no cure. We have to be aware of predators out there and teach our kids how to stay away from them.”
While there is the potential for all children to get into trouble on the Internet, Garofalo says that the middle school group (ages 12-14) poses the biggest problem.
“This is the time when many kids become very social and when they are most likely to be interested in online chat,” says GetNetWise.org. “This is also an age where many children start expressing interest in sexual matters. It is natural for them to be curious about the opposite (or even same) sex and not unheard of for them to want to look at photos and explore sexual subjects.”
“Kids are gonna lie to you and try to hide what’s going on,” says Garofalo. “That’s why parents have to be diligent.” One way to accomplish this is by making use of tools designed to keep track of all activity on a computer.
“There are different types of software out there. One that I know of is Spector Pro from SpectorSoft, which monitors everything. It keeps track of keystrokes, monitors instant messages, and captures E-mails and attachments. If a child has a profile on America Online, it will allow you to look and see what it is.”
The program can even take periodic screen shots of what is happening on a computer and E-mail it to parents while they’re at work.
Another preventative measure is to keep Internet-enabled computers out of kids’ bedrooms. “Put the computer in a public place so you can see what your kids are doing on it. If your child wants an E-mail account, let them have one, but also make sure you that you have access to it.”
Garofalo also advises to beware of webcams — cameras that are hooked up to the computer and can broadcast live over the Internet. “In a few of the instances we’ve had in town, the girls have had webcams in their rooms. No good can come of a webcam.”
For younger children, Garofalo advises that parents make sure that the safe search option is enabled on Internet search engines such as Yahoo! or Google. There are also software programs available that help to filter out pornographic or sex-themed websites.
But it’s almost impossible to totally prevent children from accidentally wandering onto sex sites. In one example that Garofalo has used in Internet safety programs he conducts, he asks parents to go onto the Internet and find the web site for the White House. Most parents typed in “www.whitehouse.com” and then were surprised to be confronted with pictures of female models in various states of undress.
“Whitehouse.com used to be [it’s since been dismantled] one of the biggest porn sites out there,” says Garofalo. “The actual address for the real White House is www.whitehouse.gov, but you can see how it would be easy for a kid doing research to wind up in the wrong place.”
“This is very much a society where we plant our children in front of a television and go and do our thing. Well the Internet is not a one-way medium like a television.”
