Attorney general teaches Internet safety during Valle Crucis School visit

By Scott Nicholson

Many people see Internet safety as a big concern because more children are getting their own computers and North Carolina has launched an awareness campaign to alert students, teachers and parents.

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper visited Valle Crucis Elementary School Tuesday to talk to students and teachers about the issue. He spoke with Shirley Shaw’s eighth grade class, asking them about their computer habits and the way they use the Internet.

Students responded that they used the Internet for school research. About half the class had their own computers and Internet connections in their rooms at home, and most had been in chat rooms. About a half-dozen students knew someone their age who met someone online and later met in person.

“It’s clear the Internet has changed the way you learn,” Cooper said. “An amazing world has opened up. But the Internet does have a dark side.”

Cooper said a 14-year-old in McDowell County had met someone online and gave the person his address. The person visited the boy and sexually assaulted him. In another case, a girl had met someone online and been lured out of the state by a predator.

Cooper warned that sexual predators had moved to the Internet to find victims, and could learn a lot about people based on little information. Cooper said people should be careful in posting profiles online at places like Myspace.com or Xanga.com, sites that encourage the building of online communities and friends’ networks. He also said it was easy for a predator to pretend to be the same age as the intended victim, and that the predator was skilled in asking questions that elicited personal information.

Cooper said pedophiles also searched for online pictures, and encouraged the class to be careful in chat rooms. He also urged the class to not meet anyone in person they’d first met online unless an adult was present. “It’s probably not a good idea, anyway,” he said.

Cooper’s office teamed up with law enforcement agencies and child safety experts to produce a video and resource guide. The DVD and guide are called “Internet Safety: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt Your Students,” and both are available for download at www.ncdoj.com. The resources have also been sent to every public school in the state.

Cooper said while students in classrooms could visit every library and museum in the world via the Internet, the same resource could lead to violence and pornography. According to a national study, almost one in five young Internet users has received an unwanted sexual solicitation online. In Watauga County, George Clayton Trivette Jr. pled guilty to federal charges of attempting to solicit someone online whom he believed to be underage.

Cooper said he’s not only the top law enforcement officer in the state, but he’s also the father of three daughters. He said he uses parental controls on the computer so he can track his children’s online activities. The computer is also centrally located in the house where it can be monitored. He having an unsupervised computer was like “opening homes as portals to child predators.”

Cooper said most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) had ways for parents to block or control Internet access and encouraged parents to check with their ISPs. Parents can also check histories of visited Web sites and set up the computer so the record of visited sites can’t be erased.

Cooper said incidents of child sexual exploitation continue to rise, abetted by the use of the Internet. There were 11 incidents reported in 2001 and 533 reported last year. Cooper said his office had launched a computer forensics team to help track predators. The General Assembly passed a law that makes it a felony for an Internet predator to solicit anyone, including an undercover police officer, that the predator believes to be a minor. The law took effect Dec. 1, and Cooper urged law enforcement agencies to add personnel skilled in computer use to help catch potential predators. The new law also requires convicted online predators to join the state’s Sex Offender Registry and to provide DNA samples for the state’s convicted offenders database.

The N.C. Department of Justice conducted a survey in April that showed two-thirds of all parents are concerned about their children communicating with a stranger on the Internet, and 80 percent are concerned about exposure to sexually explicit material.

A similar study by the U.S. Department of Justice surveyed children about their Internet activities. Twenty-five percent reported unwanted exposures to sexual material and 5 percent received a sexual solicitation or one that made them feel distressed or afraid. Most of the unwanted exposures were to youths between the ages of 15 and 17.

“It’s a world where child predators are cruising the Internet instead of the playground,” Cooper said.

• Scott Nicholson may be contacted at nicholson@wataugademocrat.com.