With its unlimited opportunities for learning and entertainment, the Internet has become an essential tool for children. It allows them to talk with friends, explore the universe, and find help with homework in ways baby boomers could not have imagined. In cyberspace, children are just a mouse click away from viewing great art, listening to an array of fine music or joining astronauts in space. Unfortunately, they are also only a mouse click away from sexual predators.
It’s been estimated that at any given time, there are upwards of 50,000 predators on the Internet, trolling for victims. Just last month, Jerry Banks Sr., of Boise, was sentenced to life in prison for using a Web cam to record himself molesting a 2-year-old and sharing the video on the Internet. Banks had a history of molesting children, maintained an extensive collection of child pornography, and ran a file-sharing network called “Kid Sex and Incest.”
Contrary to myth, child pornography does not mean pictures of flirtatious teenagers in bikinis or babies in a bathtub. Rather, these are graphic, violent images of children being raped, molested and sometimes tortured. They are extremely difficult to view, or even to think about, but we cannot ignore them. First of all, these are real children being brutalized, and second, there is mounting evidence that possession of child pornography is directly linked to actual sexual abuse of children. In one study, for example, 85 percent of men in prison for possessing child pornography admitted that they had also molested children but had not been caught.
Internet predators are usually men. They are of different age, financial status and sexual liking.
Child abuse range from children of privileged, stable backgrounds who have never before been abused, to those who come from abusive, broken, neglected or impoverished homes. The more time they spend on the Internet — and the more personal information they post to it — the more likely they are to be victimized. Indeed, the Youth Internet Safety Survey found that one in five children who are heavy Internet users receives an unwanted sexual solicitation each year.
The Internet site Jerry Banks ran has been shut down, but others have taken its place. Like the mythical Hydra — a monster who grew two new heads each time one was cut off — child sexual exploitation is growing rapidly, and changing daily as new technology is developed. Law enforcing agencies and prosecutors cannot succeed this fight alone.
To help educate children about the dangers of the Internet, the Department of Justice has launched Project Safe Childhood (PSC), which has produced some outstanding public service announcements that I hope you’ll be hearing and seeing on radio and TV. PSC has also brought dedicated local, state and federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors together to apply more resources to this fight and bring more predators to justice.
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