Parents fight back against on-line child predators

by Clay Renick                                                                                                                          Vol. XI, No. 4, April 1998

Cynthia Rea thought her child was safe. The family attended Covenant Christian Fellowship in Manteca, CA. They home schooled their 16-year-old daughter. And the girl was an honor student. Then they got a computer and a connection to the Internet.

The family used no filtering software. Rea's daughter, Jamie, found a local chat room. And a 30-year-old pedophile found the girl.

"This man came in and groomed my child and everything turned upside down," Rea explained. "Grooming is a word they use when they're molesting."

The man convinced Rea's daughter to leave home at night for meetings. The girl got sexually involved. "He came out to the house (and) said he was 20 years old," Rea recounted. "He had gray hair."

The couple told the man to stay away from their daughter. But the girl continued to leave home at night for visits. "The day she turned 17 they planned to run off and get married," Rea said.

She even sent the girl to live with other relatives in an attempt to break up the relationship. Rea's daughter responded with slashed wrists and treatment in a psychiatric hospital.

"I don't know if my child will ever be normal again," Rea said, lamenting. "Our children are being stolen from our homes."

"The biggest problem facing parents now is not knowing what to do," explained Colin Hatcher with Cyber Angels, an on-line safety organization. "People call the Internet the schoolyard of the 21^st century," Hatcher stated. "Distance means nothing."

Last December, the computer industry sponsored an on-line summit meeting in Washington to discuss the problem. Advocacy groups like "Kids Safe" also participated. Jayne Murphy Shapiro, Kids Safe president, said the numbers show a need:

-- Each year 425,000 children are sexually abused in the United States.

-- 95 percent of those victims know the abuser.

-- Each month more than 300 sex offenders are released from California prisons alone.

“You can't monitor your children 24 hours a day," Shapiro said. "It's getting more dangerous." "There's a huge network of pedophile organizations that the Internet has brought together," Hatcher noted. "They're very organized."

Parents had few options before when they encountered the problem. Now they can call a toll-free number to report suspected child predators, 1-800-843-5678, at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"In California alone, we have 67,000 registered sex offenders," Shapiro said. "When they get out on the Internet, there's no way to find them."

According to USA Today, one in four Americans now use the Internet. And the numbers are growing. "You have to be careful," advised Michael Adams, author of On Line Friendship, Chat Room Romance and Cyber Sex. "On-line people can lie easily and you wouldn't know it. The adolescent population is particularly vulnerable."

Software can help, such as "Cybersitter," a filtering program that blocks openly gay and lesbian sites. Patty Cartwright, meanwhile, used technology to fight back. She's a mother in Federal Way, Wash., whose son was molested by a friend of the family when he was 12 years old.

Cartwright didn't know until three years later. Her son developed psychological problems and required hospitalization. Police arrested the suspect. But they lacked evidence for a conviction. So, Cartwright got a computer and learned that the man used America Online to find other victims. She got the same service and decided to pose as a young gay man in an effort to provide police with more evidence.

"I found out where he was," she recounted. America Online has a "Buddy List" feature to contact other AOL members, and Cartwright did that with the man's screen name.

"He said hi first," she recounted. They traded information like age and hair color. "He wanted to have sex," Cartwright said. "He kept wanting me to call him." She called the police instead. They encouraged her to continue and set up a meeting. The man went with the intentions of finding a young boy.

Undercover police arrested him at a mall, and he is now serving an eight-year, three-month sentence. His name was Otis Jerry Fellows and he was already on probation for receiving child pornography through the mail.

"Mr. Fellows also volunteered as a 'big brother'-type person," Cartwright said. "There must be more victims.

"He was a military man," she added. "We thought this was a credible person."

Her son still suffers from psychological problems and Cartwright continues to trap other child predators. "As a mother, you would do anything" to fight against a child's abuse, she said.

Parents have several options when they suspect a child predator.

      -- Call your local police or the FBI.

      -- Save all correspondence. It can be used as evidence.

      -- Check with your local service provider for protection. America Online has parental controls that allows subscribers to block e-mail, chat rooms and instant messages.

On the Internet, on-line help is available from Safeguarding Our Children-United Mothers athttp://www.soc-um.org.