Wasting yet more taxpayer money, the house passed
the Digital On-Line Protection Act last week claiming it will protect children from internet predators.
It is my thesis that internet predators are, at most, a minor problem and at best virtually non-existant as a threat.
This is not to say there are not pedophiles on the internet who would be perfectly willing to rape a child. We all know there are plenty. There are websites devoted to exposing and shaming them. I don't question that there are people willing to do so. What I question is the number of children stupid enough to let them.
I have searched Google News and found several stories of statutory rape and one story of what appears to be an actual rape of a 15-year-old girl by someone she met on the internet. That case is especially unusual as she actually let the man into her home and we are usually told about predators luring teens to other places.
There could be more, I don't know. However, I think the fact that most of the stories I saw about people getting arrested for being internet sexual predators were people caught in sting operations is very telling.
A cop, or a 'concerned citizen' like those at the website I linked to above trying to catch online predators will pose as a teenager and try to lure the pedophile out. Of course, a real teenager doesn't have this goal so they won't be using the same language. If you have a strong stomach and can bear the disgusting nature of the chat logs of these encounters, you will notice that the 'child' keeps egging the predator on and plays along with him, making his fantasies wilder and wilder until he finally thinks he'll be able to meet with the kid. I have to wonder how many kids would do that.
From when we are very little we are told about predators of various types. One of the most resounding lessons of childhood is, "don't talk to strangers." It helps that we tend to naturally shy away from those we don't know. The fact that I can find so little information about children being attacked by internet predators is a testament to that. Most kids are smart enough to know not to talk to them. Furthermore, at this point, what kid gets on the internet in America without being aware of them?
According to a survey from The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children:
Less than 10 percent of sexual solicitations and only 3 percent of unwanted exposure episodes were reported to authorities such as a law-enforcement agency, an Internet Service Provider, or a hotline.
I believe they are using that to show what a big problem it is. I think what is far more likely here is that less than 10 percent get reported because most of the time, kids either ignore the predator or get rid of the person themselves. This is especially apparent with another statistic-
One in 33 received an aggressive sexual solicitation - a solicitor who asked to meet them somewhere; called them on the telephone; sent them regular mail, money, or gifts.
Obviously kids are able to deal with the problem. It's also quite interesting to me that they don't mention how many of those aggressive solicitations came from other teens.
Meanwhile-
30-40% of victims are abused by a family member.
Another 50% are abused by someone outside of the family whom they know and trust.
Approximately 40% are abused by older or larger children whom they know.
Therefore, only 10% are abused by strangers.
(Emphasis mine. From: http://www.darkness2light.org/... )
Remember that. Only 10% are abused by strangers. And of that 10%, how many of those strangers were people who the children met on the internet?
It is yet another part of the neoconservative blame the victim culture. As far as I can tell, they seem to be reasoning that the child can't possibly protect themselves from internet predators, so we have to legislate it for them. That's a very, very short step to 'the children encourage them.' It's suggesting that online predators are so lured by these young children that we must invent new laws to save these children. It's like blaming the rape victim for wearing a short skirt.
We already have many, many laws on the books protecting children from sexual predators. The statistics show that most predators are people children know. This act does nothing about that.
The act, as most of you know, restricts access to social networking sites on public internet terminals like in libraries. I don't have statistics on this one, but I would put money on the suggestion that of the very small number of children who have been sexually molested by people they met over the internet, very few originally met them via a public terminal. Even if they did, how does this bill do anything to protect them from where they're likely to be using it the most, in the home?
I hope I haven't offended anyone with this. I realize that child molestation is a very serious problem in this country. I just don't think this does anything to help.