Children chatting online are easy prey for sexual predators that troll the Internet. That's why Kentucky State Police troopers are posing as kids online, hoping to lock up those who would prey on children. But in Indiana, state police have been stopped by courts from posing as kids to catch child molesters. WAVE 3 Investigator James Zambroski reports.
Police know that children love to chat online. So it's no wonder that the Internet has become the primary place for perpetrators to find their next victim.
Experts like Vicki Wiley-Pusateri say at least 10 million kids use the Internet. As chatrooms continue to grow in popularity; the World Wide Web continues to become a more dangerous place to play.
Wiley-Pusateri says that, "for children, the Internet seems like it's so distant, it's so far away, these people that they re talking to. That person could be next door and the child doesn't understand that."
Kentucky probation and parole officers will be trained next week on how to monitor the computer use of sex offenders because the Internet has become such a popular hangout for them.
"It's a lot safer than going to a playing field, playground or a parking lot where you can stay on the side and watch kids play," Wiley-Pusateri says.
Experts say predators are using the virtual world as a prelude to a meeting in the real world.
"They can be a little bit more risque with the grooming process," Wiley-Pusateri says, adding that three's more time to win trust. Typically, she says, they'll use lines like: "I'm here. I'm your friend. I'm here for you. And the child gets hooked into this."
And that's a potential disaster.
"The next thing you know, the child is giving away personal information, sending their picture," Wiley-Pusateri says.
The Kentucky State Police has a taskforce that goes after Internet predators, and Capt. Rick Yetter is part of it. So he knows firsthand how the predators operate.
"The person will try to solicit sex from us," Yetter said, "thinking that they're talking to a juvenile, or send us pornography -- child pornography -- anything that would try to induce us to commit a crime with them."
Kentucky law allows police officers to pose as minors in order to catch child molesters, but courts in Indiana have struck down such investigations.
In some instances, cases against adults who thought they were meeting a juvenile for a sexual encounter have been thrown out, since the court reasoned there were no actual victims.
Police say there s only one way to stop Internet predators.
"I think all we can do is try and catch as many of these people as we can and put them in jail," Yetter says.
Or maybe the answer is to stop it before it happens, and that's where parents must get involved.
"I think it's educating your kids and talking to them about perpetrators and not giving out private information and not opening the instant messages," Wiley-Pusateri says.
Even if you're monitoring your children's computer use at home by having the computer in a common area and using filtering software, you have to remember your child has opportunities to access dangerous chatrooms when they visit friends whose parents are less vigilant.