Today is National Missing Children's Day, a day dedicated to making child protection a national priority.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has chosen this day to promote to promote 'Take 25,' a national campaign designed to encourage parents to take 25 minutes to talk to children about safety. In today's tech-savvy environment, CyberSafety is one of the most important aspects of keeping our children safe.
Agreed. Talk to your kids, parents. You protect your children, not the government.
What caught my eye this morning was Florida Today's front page headline, Brevard officers patrol Internet for sex predators.
Headlines are attention-grabbers, brainstormed by editors to promote the dropping of quarters into a newspaper stand, so I drew a deep breath and hoped for a read that served more educative and less scare tactic.
I was encouraged by what was reported.
The process of the still suspect legal use of the sting by law enforcement was aptly described but what stood out for me was the fact that law enforcement was up front with the fact that chatting inappropriately online--without travel--is a felony in Florida.
Solicitation carries the same sentencing weight as if the actual act was committed.
It's a warning. We are out here. We will get you. And if convicted, you will be made a sex offender.
In fact, a quick breeze through the registry will prove such conviction on the part of LE. Pay special attention to the resulting forensics into the impounded computers. These crackerjacks are looking for pornography--not only to "bolster ... cases"--but to add one heckuva heavyweight charge that all but guarantees an ankle bracelet monitoring device, if not prison time upon conviction.
At this point, folks--stop playing around online. Let the cyber-cops get the really bad guys, but don't be one of the foolish that thinks it won't happen to them.
The article is offered in its entirety, to pass along the education. Although I do feel that the AG is indeed promoting his own self-interest in the maintaining of these cyber-crime units--which came close to the legislative budget-cut knife--I feel the more John and Jane Doe learn about how a sex offender is made in this country, the better, offering up communication about the different levels of offense.
But remember--only 3% of those listed on the Florida Sex Offender Registry are truly dangerous, hiding behind those who have been convicted of low-level offenses such as online solicitation--never physically touching anyone--much less a child.
Read on.
And 'Take 25' to tell your friends how to be safe online from those who will ruin their lives for typing words on a keyboard.
May 25, 2008
Brevard officers patrol Internet for sex predators
BY KAUSTUV BASU
FLORIDA TODAY
Michael Spadafora surfs the Internet for several hours a day, posing as a teenage girl or boy in chat rooms and on social networking sites.
Some days, all it takes is a few minutes before the Brevard County sheriff's agent gets a bite from a would-be sexual predator, usually an older man.
On a recent weekday, he posed as a 13-year-old girl in a chat room, and soon a man was offering $500 to see a nude picture of her. In 30 minutes, as Spadafora stalled and the conversation meandered, the offer was raised to $1,500.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that one out of seven children receives a sexual solicitation online. Internet predator cases tackled by the sheriff's office rose by 38 percent to 65 in 2007.
"We are only scratching the surface here," Lt. Tod Goodyear said about the possibilities on the Internet for sex crimes against children. He heads the sheriff's unit that handles sex predator cases.
Once in a while, Spadafora, who works in the unit, will find predators who are local and will ask to meet. Sometimes, he will pass on information to other law enforcement agencies around the country.
A typical chat might begin with the exchange of "ASL," online lingo for age, sex and location. Those trolling for juveniles are sometimes brazen enough to use sexually suggestive language right away.
"Wud u like share sex chat?" asked a 24-year-old man in a recent chat, thinking he was communicating with a 14-year-old girl in Florida.
"Mature can give u more enjoy," he told Goodyear, who had logged on as a teenage girl.
Online solicitation of a minor is a felony, as predators soon find out.
"They do not have to travel to be charged," Spadafora said.
If they do, it becomes a bigger crime.
Nicholas Campbell, 19, was arrested near a gas station on Merritt Island in June after a series of conversations with agents. He was investigated after the parents of a 13-year-old girl complained about him, suspicious that he had met their daughter for sex and was planning more encounters.
Agents posing as the girl talked to Campbell online, and when he tried to meet her, he was arrested. The charges against him: online solicitation of a child under 14 and attempted lewd and lascivious battery on a child.
Numbers climb
Nancy McBride, safety director for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said her organization had received 36,000 tips about online sexual solicitation or enticing a child to run away in about a decade.
In one recent week, the office received 186 reports, she said.
In Brevard, arrests by the sheriff's office increased by 75 percent in 2007, with 15 people jailed for trafficking in child pornography and six for online solicitation.
Spadafora and Agent Dan Ogden also assisted agencies in Alabama, Georgia, Colorado and Ohio, leading to the arrest of suspects in those states. Other police agencies in Brevard often fall back on the sex crimes unit of the sheriff's office for help in investigating sexual predators.
After arrests are made, an agent at the sheriff's office usually takes apart the suspect's computer to inspect it. In Brevard, that job usually goes to Agent Francis Dufresne. His job, too, is getting busier by the day.
In 2007, he examined 131 computer hard drives. He also is trained to inspect and retrieve records from cell phones, digital memory cards and Apple computers, a rare skill among Central Florida officers that has seen Dufresne's services requested by law enforcement agencies in other counties. His office space usually is a mess of disassembled computers and stacks of hard drives.
It is this evidence, collected and researched painstakingly, that helps the sheriff's office bolster its cases in court.
When a 12-year-old girl ran away from her Port St. John home in April, it took Dufresne less than 30 minutes to find out who she had been corresponding with through her MySpace account. The information and a vehicle tag number helped law enforcement trace her to the 19-year-old man from Quincy who had encouraged her to run away.
Shows alert parents
Predators are becoming more careful, too, because of saturation coverage of Internet sex crimes and TV shows like NBC's "To Catch a Predator."
Sometimes it might take a while of chatting before they let their guard down, Ogden said. But predators are persistent. It just takes a little ingenuity to find them.
"It is like a fishing trip," Spadafora said. "The show has brought more of an awareness that this is out there and it happens."
"It has woken up some parents," said Goodyear, though he is uncomfortable with the made-for-TV quality of the show.
Goodyear is a proponent of actively policing chat rooms and social networking sites to prevent children from being solicited and abused -- even though the work is painstaking, many predators do not live locally, and budgets are tight.
"Even if you can prevent one child from being sexually battered, it is worth it," Goodyear said. "You can't put a cost on that."
Contact Basu at 242-3724 or kbasu@floridatoday.com.
