Message targets teen girls' use of Net

Tween and teenage girls are the most vulnerable to Internet predators, authorities say.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Julie is 16. She's a cute brunette who is, by her own account, "built" -- but see for yourself on her MySpace page. There are lots of pictures, some pretty racy. She attends Sevier County High School (for directions, just hit mapquest.com).
Talking points to lure her? Those are on MySpace, too:
She feels "stuck" in Tennessee's Sevier County. She's the product of divorced parents. Loves mom; dad, not so much. She loves any style of music "with a good beat" and swoons over guys "with cheesy smiles." She has a brother, two sisters and four stepsiblings.
Julie probably thinks she's too smart to fall prey to some Internet predator. Her mom probably thinks so, too. But U.S. Attorney Russ Dedrick isn't so sure.
"They get lured into these things," Dedrick said. "They think they're safe, that they're in control. They can block this person. But by then they've already been exposed."
On Friday, the Department of Justice kicked off a new message for its year-old Project Safe Childhood initiative, which targets primarily Internet sexual predators via coordinated local, state and federal law enforcement and prosecution efforts.
Vulnerable group
This year's campaign will zero in on the increasingly vulnerable "tween" and teen girl who views social networking sites on the Internet as veritable billboards where she can tout her looks, her beliefs, her likes, her dislikes and, more important, her personal "stats."
"Anytime [sexual predators] have the ability especially to get a picture and a location, that's going to be problematic," said Knoxville Police Department Investigator Tom Evans.
Evans is a key member of the Knoxville Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which pairs local law enforcement, state prosecutors, federal prosecutors and federal agencies to battle a host of Internet-based crimes ranging from downloading child pornography to luring child victims.
"Most parents feel, 'It can't happen to my child,'" he said.
Worse, Dedrick and Evans said, most girls ages 12 to 17 think it can't happen to them. After all, on social networking sites such as MySpace, they can limit who sees their pages to invited "friends." The problem is, according to Dedrick, the number of "friends" a person can gather has become a measure of popularity. As Evans noted, once a girl welcomes in a "friend," that person's entire list of "friends" also gets access to the girl's personal page and thereby personal information and photographs. Before she knows it, thousands of people she's never met have a key to unlock her Internet world.