Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett called the Berkman Center's recently released report on Internet safety a "setback".
"I believe this report (Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies) is incredibly misleading and significantly lessens the progress we have made in implementing safety techniques for children using the Internet," Corbett said. "Giving parents a false sense of security about their children's safety online is dangerous, especially when thousands of predators are still trolling the Internet seeking victims."
Corbett and his fellow attorneys general agreed to create and lead the task force to identify and explore age verification and technologies to improve social networking safety. The task force found that "...sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem..." doesn't quite mesh with the expectations of this country's Attorneys General.
"The threat is real," Corbett said. "In the last four years, my office has arrested 183 predators, all of whom have used the Internet for the purpose of contacting minors to engage in sexual activity.
The citing of 183 predators caught the attention of Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D. of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. In her 1/26/2009 analysis of the Berkman Task Force Report--Outdated and Inadequate--she states:
This nation’s Attorneys General are the ones who have access to the most up-to-date arrest data on online sexual predation - data that is critical to understanding the extent of the problem, as well as other site and risk factors. They did not provide any data to the Task Force that they created.
So she went digging.
The following is an analysis of the press releases accessed through the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s site on January 15, 2009. They were identified by using the search term “predator” in the search engine for press releases on the site. The search yielded 143 responses.
As noted by the Attorney General, 183 predators had been arrested. All of these arrests were described in the press releases dated from March 21, 2005 to January 13, 2009 - thus allowing for a full analysis of the arrests of sexual predators in the state Pennsylvania for the last 4 years by the Attorney General’s Child Predator Unit.
The analysis of the arrests that involved predatory actions, excluding the arrests for child pornography, revealed the following:
• Only 8 incidents involved actual teen victims with whom the Internet was used to form a relationship.
• There were 166 arrests as a result of sting activities where the predator contacted an undercover agent who was posing as a 12 - 14 year old, generally a girl.
• There were 166 arrests as a result of sting activities where the predator contacted an undercover agent who was posing as a 12 - 14 year old, generally a girl.
- The vast majority of the stings, 144, occurred in chat rooms. Eleven stings occurred through instant messaging. Nine of the arrests failed to specify the location, but the description bore significant similarity to the chat room incidents. One involved an advertisement that had been placed on Craig’s List.
Let's be perfectly clear.
Despite the fact that for the last 4 years, the Child Predator Unit has 10 staff members diligently pursuing online sexual predators, primarily through sting operations, only 8 reported incidents actually involved actual teen victims. This number should be compared with the 9,934 victims of sexual abuse served by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape during one fiscal year.
(Seems to me anytime an Attorney General wants to bait a shark, he or she simply casts a hook into the shark-infested waters of a chat room.
Would it make far too much sense for AOL and their like to just shut the chat rooms down?)
It is important to note that these press releases establish that the Child Predator Unit agents had, by November 2006, established one or more teen profiles on MySpace. These MySpace sting profiles clearly did not take advantage of
the protective features on MySpace that the majority of teens use, because the predators were easily able to look at the pictures.
Despite the establishment of one or more public profiles on MySpace, there has apparently not been one successful sting operation initiated on MySpace in the more than two years during which these sting profiles have been in existence.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s strong focus on setting up stings to catch online sexual predator strangers appears to be misplaced in light of the concern of the growing use of technologies by a significantly larger number of family and acquaintance abusers.
Sting operation arrests have greatly distorted this reality--
The incidents of online sexual predation are rare.
Sexual abuse by family members and acquaintances continues to present a much more significant concern.Clearly, there is a need for more research in this area, as well as a need to increase the speed with which such research is reviewed to ensure accuracy and then made available to guide prevention and intervention efforts. Collaboration between researchers and law enforcement is essential. Full and complete disclosure of arrest data by the Attorneys General, as well as federal law enforcement authorities, would facilitate this research.I wonder if any other state could beat Pennsylvania's 8 out of 166 record?My bet's on Florida.
