How Kids Become an Online Sex Offender's Prey

Almost every day we hear news broadcasts detailing the conviction of an online sexual predator who committed some astonishing crime against a child he met in an online chat room or on a social networking site.

One of the most common questions that I'm asked by my friends, the people that I meet and by my Web site visitors is, "How do kids get drawn in by the everyday sex offender on the Internet?"

The first thing to consider is that in most cases, the young people are in a vulnerable position in the first place. The preferred victim is not usually the star athlete, the kid at the top of the honor roll or the head cheerleader. The best victims are the kids who lack something in their lives.

The child may be lonely and hungering for attention because his/her parents are not physically or emotionally available for him. He/she may be living in poverty and desires just the basic needs of survival including food, clothes and shelter. The void in the child's life might even just be something that the child wants such as music, games, or electronics.

The offender moves with great haste to identify what the need of the young person is, what he/she longs for and fills that need almost instantaneously. The child begins to hear all the right things and soon begins to develop an emotional relationship with the potential offender. Some of the most common things that kids are told include:

· You are absolutely beautiful!
· I love you, want you or need you.
· You deserve a better life than you've had and I can give you that.
· I would love to take you shopping (or mail you gifts) and spoil you rotten.
· I will always have time for you and you can call me or e-mail me anytime.

Soon the intended victim is hearing everything he/she has longed to hear and is being showered with all the attention he/she has ever dreamed of. Then the expensive gifts begin pouring into their homes and the intended victim feels an emotional attachment to the potential sex offender.

By this time the young person has invested many online hours with his/her newly found relationship. The intended victim has received a photo of the potential offender and whether or not it is really him, the young person believes that it is a true representation of who he/she has been interacting with.

Most online sex offenders are lying about something if not everything. The most common distortion of facts are regarding the age and physical characteristics of the offender.

The young victim lacks the experience and knowledge to verify any of the details of his/her new friend's identity and instead creates a false reality of the person he/she has been communicating with for the past few weeks.
The young person becomes so immersed in the virtual identity of the other user that he/she believes that the feelings and emotions the other person claims to have are very genuine. The young person then begins to fill in the blanks between what he/she has been told and what he/she doesn't know. Since there has been no physical interaction at this point, the child creates an imaginary person in his or her mind and honestly believes every aspect of it to be fact.

When the child molester suggests a face-to-face meeting for sex, the most likely reason that the young person readily agrees and shows up is because he/she has no concerns for safety and no longer views the offender as a stranger.

Studies show that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood. *

Sexual abuse is a very common occurrence and is often the result of meeting someone online. It is imperative that parents and guardians supervise young people when they are online and work to prevent the sexual abuse of all young people.

*D. Finkelhor. "Current Information on the Scope and Nature of Child Sexual Abuse." The Future of Children: Sexual Abuse of Children, 1994, volume 4, page 37.