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McCollum Asks For Parents' Help Tracking On-Line Predators

SAYS 1 IN 5 FLORIDA CHILDREN WHO SURF THE WEB WILL BE SOLICTED FOR SEX

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By TONY MARRERO

Hernando Today

Published: February 18, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - BROOKSVILLE - An investigator in Attorney General Bill McCollum's office logged on to the Internet recently to prove a point.
The investigator offered a prediction to reporters that he could, in about five minutes, attract a potential sexual predator by pretending to be a 13-year-old girl.
The solicitation for sex came four minutes sooner than even the investigator predicted.
"This was by ten o'clock on Thursday morning," McCollum recalled Monday as he related the story to the Annuttaliga Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, "so you can imagine what you're children and grandchildren are facing in this brave new world of the Internet."
Get McCollum talking about his job and such gasp-getting stories are bound to follow.
McCollum's office is responsible for many facets of law enforcement, he told about 50 DAR chapter members and guests during their luncheon at Brooksville Country Club.
Elder abuse. Medicare fraud. Mortgage scams. Gang activity.
But McCollum said he considers adults preying on children via the Web – so-called cyber crime – as the most serious of them all.
Some 77 million American children log onto the Internet every day, he said. About one in seven will be solicited for sex.
In Florida, "we think it's closer to one in five," McCollum said.
McCollum said he is asking for more investigators and attorneys for his office to root out and prosecute criminals, he said. The cyber crimes unit, based in Jacksonville, could grow from six to 30 staffers this year, he said.
But that approach, he acknowledged, can only go so far, so his office goes into schools to talk to children about the dangers that lurk just beyond their mouse.
"The most effective thing we can do is educate," McCollum said. "Educate children, educate parents, educate grandparents and educate teachers about what's going on on the Internet."
Social networking sites such as MySpace act as magnets for pedophiles and predators, he said. Subscribers post information about themselves and, in the case of MySpace, "friend" lists that can grow into the thousands.
McCollum said he tries to drive home the point that "one of your 'friends' could be a 42-year-old lawyer or doctor or dentist pretending to be a 14-year-old girl."
Just such a case happened in Panama City, where an attorney pretended to be a 15-year-old girl and lured 11 boys to do sex acts in front of a Web cam.
Often, on-line friendships lead to one party typing five simple letters: LMIRL, an abbreviation for "let's meet in real life."
A 13-year-old Polk County agreed to do just that with a man she thought was 20 years old. He turned out to be a forty-something-year-old convicted sexual offender who took her Georgia.
"She's lucky to be alive," McCollum said.
MySpace is owned by News Corporation, and McCollum said he has been pleased with the company's cooperation and efforts to find and boot known sexual predators. But many "new" criminals who don't have a record remain, he said.
He encouraged parents and grandparents to be determined in their efforts to broach the subject with their children.
"They may not want to hear it, but you've got to talk to them," he said.
McCollum, a 1962 graduate of Hernando High School, is also a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and acknowledged the "forefathers who gave us a great Constitution" and the freedom that makes the Internet possible.
"We don't want to censor anybody. We just want to keep the bad stuff out of there," he said.
Parents "have to do more protecting," said prospective DAR member Sandra Shorter, who attended Monday's luncheon.
Many parents expect schools and the government to do it for them, said Shorter, a first-grade teacher at Pine Grove Elementary School in Brooksville.
That means keeping computers in common areas of the household – something Shorter said she knows proves more unpopular as children get older.
"Parents don't have to be popular," she said. "They just need to do their job."

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandtoday.com.

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