09 June 2000

Twenty Percent of Children on Internet Report Sexual Advance

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- One in five children who participated in a study of offensive behavior on the Internet report that they have received a sexual solicitation or advance in the last year. The finding was announced June 8 in a study entitled "Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth."

Sponsored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the study is described as "the first scientifically-based window" to assess the risks that children encounter in the form of sexual approaches or harassment.

The report "presents a picture of young people who are confronted with offensive, upsetting and potentially dangerous Internet encounters," according to an introductory message from NCMEC president Ernest E. Allen.

Fifteen hundred youngsters ages 10 to 17 were interviewed for the study from August 1999 to February 2000. Twenty five percent told surveyors that they had been exposed to pictures of naked people over the last year during regular use of the Internet. One in seventeen was threatened or harassed.

"The growing evidence of the criminal misuse of cyberspace to target and physically victimize children is alarming to me as a parent and legislator," wrote New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg in an introduction to the study. He is the chairman of a U.S. Senate subcommittee that is focusing on the problem through education programs about the potential for Internet victimization; the development of better technological tools to protect children as they use the Internet; and aggressive law enforcement directed against those who engage in illegal and threatening behavior.

The report warns against any attempt to stereotype the predators who inhabit cyberspace, saying the "survey has revealed a more diverse array of individuals who are making offensive and potentially exploitative online overtures." It further recommends that Internet users should develop a greater awareness of the helpful resources available to them and their children, and should become more involved. "The Internet needs its own neighborhood crime watch posters," the report says.

To create more self-policing on the Internet, the study suggests prevention and intervention strategies for youth and recruitment of young users in a campaign to improve online behavior. The report also suggests that social scientists and technologists might team up to develop new methods of reducing offensive and illegal behavior on the Internet.

One area of Internet victimization that needs to be more fully explored, according to the report, is what are described as "traveller cases," that is, when an online contact develops into a meeting in the physical world. More than a thousand such cases were identified in the U.S. by the researchers, who speculate that their findings do not accurately reflect the actual number of such meetings. The authors suggest further study should be conducted to develop more data about "the most serious part of the spectrum of the problem."

Despite the findings about the potential for victimization of children online, the NCMEC emphasizes that it remains a strong advocate of the Internet and its "tremendous potential for our nation's youth." Allen writes, "We are among the most outspoken advocates of cyberspace and have urged parents and children to explore and take advantage of its incredible benefits."

The NCMEC used Internet communication extensively in its efforts to locate missing and exploited children. Allen's message says that the NCMEC Web site (www.missingkids.com) has become "the world's primary missing-children search tool."

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