Leave Ou Kids Alone

A report published by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the University of New Hampshire revealed that of a sample of children & teens who use the Internet:

1 in 5 children - Solicited for sex in the past year.

1 in 33 children- Aggressively solicited sexual, meaning that the child was threatened, asked to meet, called on the phone, or received mail or gifts.

1 in 4 children- Exposed to photos of people having sex, even though about 1/3 of households reported using "Internet blocking software."

1 in 17 children - Threatened or harassed on the Internet, including threats of harm to the child, friends or other family members.

Unfortunately, adults are currently free to distribute non-obscene adult sexual content to children online without legal recourse. This creates the following irony: publishers and distributors of pornographic magazines or videos are legally forbidden from selling, renting, or displaying them to children in a bookstore or video store; but the same publishers and distributors are legally free to sell or display those same magazines and videos to children online.

There are recurring press reports of pedophiles using chat rooms to lure children into physical meetings. According to a recent national newspaper report, chat rooms are the most popular activity for children online, yet most chat rooms are unsupervised. Many are "private," accessible only by invitation and special passwords (which may be provided to children by e-mail or "instant-type" messages to the screen of a targeted child).

Through use of chat rooms, adult strangers can have direct one-to-one access to our children. The "safe" home setting, combined with our children's natural trust, may lead them to forget that these people are strangers. This makes it easier for the pedophile to prey on children who would never talk to a stranger in the "real world."