From Deseret News archives:
The plague of child predators
The difference today, however, is that children also have to be ready to run from ravenous wolves who can change their appearance and demeanor at will, who can turn from friendly cyber-chatters on computers one instant to wicked witches the next, and who chase children across the Internet with a desire to grind their bones for their own gratification.
That much has been made abundantly clear again in recent days with three men being charged in Utah, all in separate cases, for traveling across state lines to have sex with minors. Perhaps the most notorious of these involves allegations that Mark Turner, an Idaho native, may have come to Utah on more than one occasion to commit these crimes before he stumbled on an undercover federal agent. Authorities urge anyone with connections to the screen name "mark_2424t" to contact them.
All of this makes us glad that the new U.S. District Attorney for Utah, Brett Tolman, has announced he will focus on finding child-sex offenders. This mirrors a similar focus recently announced by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
The only defense is for parents to be actively engaged in their child's online activities, to strongly forbid them from using chat rooms, and to keep any Internet-connected home computers in clear sight and in parts of the home that receive frequent traffic. Perhaps the most frightening part of the case against Turner is that authorities allege he instructed the online investigator, whom he thought was a 13-year-old girl, to leave a note telling her parents she had run away from home with two friends, and then to dye her hair.
Had his victim been a real girl, and had she followed his instructions, police would have had as difficult a time finding her as they would finding Hansel and Gretel.
Comments
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