MySpace Banning Sex Offenders: Online Predator Paranoia at Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) (Via a tweet from iJohnPederson.) I think John Pederson tweeted this for other reasons (the flaws in Megan’s Law I think), but I found these statistics particularly relevant to the message we are trying to get across to educators and parents in our Internet Awareness and Safety presentations.
David Finkelhor, in panel Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization: Researchers Present the Facts and Debunk Myths, May 2007
Let me summarize the important facts and figures from this excerpt and the next few pages. The numbers are based on a sample of law enforcement cases which Finkelhor et al. performed research upon:
- most victims of “online predators” are teenagers, not young children
- only 5% of cases involved violence
- only 3% involved abduction
- deception does not seem to be a major factor
- 5% of offenders concealed the fact they were adults from their victimes
- 80% of offenders were quite explicit about their sexual intentions
- these crimes are “criminal seductions”, sexual relationships between teenagers and older adults
- 73% of cases include multiple sexual encounters
- in half the cases, victims are described as being in love with the offender or feeling close friendship
- in a quarter of the cases, victims had actually ran away from home to be with the person they met online
- only 7% of arrests for statutory rape in 2000 were internet-initiated
These statistics go a long way toward providing a balanced and nuanced view of what the real dangers are online, especially as opposed to older and potentially misleading studies such as the much quoted youth internet safety survey (the source of the 1 in 5 students are solicited for sex online statistic). The reality is that the students most at risk are those who are naive, low in self esteem, and susceptible to “grooming” (when predators build trust by acting in flattering and sympathetic ways). The issues are of course more complicated than that, but these are eye-opening statistics I wanted to capture and share here.