Study hopes to shed more light on Internet crimes against children

It’s not easy to find statistics about Internet crimes against children. The most recent study available is from 2005, in which a University of New Hampshire report found that about one of every 25 children have received a sexual solicitation to meet offline or a request to take sexual photographs of themselves.

Thanh Truc Nguyen hopes to fill the information gap.

Nguyen, an assistant specialist with the Curriculum Research and Development of the University of Hawai‘i’s College of Education, is leading a project to gather information from children and their parents about juveniles’ Internet and other technology usage to provide data to law enforcement that will help officials imitate juveniles in online undercover stings, amass evidence and take down sex offenders. The project received $435,689 in federal stimulus money from the U.S. Department of Justice.

“It is very hard to do this kind of research,” Nguyen said. “Like I’m sending out over 30,000 surveys and I don’t expect to get back half because a lot of parents will think, ‘I don’t want my child reading this questionnaire.’ ”

Nguyen will send out about 36,000 surveys to around 300 schools in Hawai‘i, California, Wyoming and Virginia to determine “the prevalence of sexting, cyberbullying and social networking usage for explicit materials amongst youngsters,” and then compare the children’s responses with the perceptions of parents and teachers. Nguyen said the project aims to identify patterns of behavior in the hope that law enforcement can use the patterns as guides to track conduct that could lead toward victimization.

“This project will be eye-opening in that this will be the perspective of the kids,” she said. “Often times what happens is you hear from all of us – the adults – what the kids are doing, but what we really what to find out is what are they doing from their own mouths, from their own perspective standpoint.”

Nguyen said she believes this type of study is the first of its kind.

“That double-comparison is going to be really valuable from the school perspective and also from the law enforcement perspective,” Nguyen said.

The most frequent concerns parents have over their child’s Internet activity, according to Nguyen, is that they will fall victim to sexual predators and cyberbullying, but she said she is becoming concerned with the growing problem of gangs recruiting young people through the Internet.

“A lot of people are so concerned about sexual predators and cyberbullying that they forget about when you’re about 12 and 13 years old, you’re really angry at the world,” Nguyen said. “Your mom tells you you can’t go to Ala Moana, your dad tells you you can’t hang out with your friends, and you get pretty angry. And kids nowadays when they’re online, ... there are predators who seek out these angry children and get them to join their group.”

Children often don’t know that the person on the other end of the connection is a gang member trying to exploit their adolescent anger, said Nguyen.

“The Ku Klux Klan actually have a presence online, but they don’t call themselves kukluxklan.com,” she said.

Nguyen said groups and gangs can use subtle forms of manipulation to get the child interested in joining them.

“They begin by asking kind of nice questions just to get the kids comfortable and to try to draw them in,” she said. “The psychology of it and social-behavioral nature of it is very outstanding how they are successful. So now they are using the Web also.”

Advice from Nguyen is for children to never give out personal information to someone they don’t know and she recommends parents have open discussions about their child’s Internet activity., But, she added that she is careful not to tell the parents how to do their jobs.

“It’s hard for me to tell a parent what to say to a child,” Nguyen said. “I think that the sense of trust that a parent develops with their own child is what they develop; it’s not something we can tell them how to do.”

She said that many parents want to know their child’s password, but Nguyen warns that will violate the child’s privacy.

“I think the best you can do is keep talking to you about what he is doing online,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen also recommends asking children general open questions, like “What did you do online today?”, “Who are your best friends?” and “Do you talk to them online?

“As long as you know a child’s best friends and who they are talking to, I think that a parent will be generally in an okay realm,” Nguyen said. “It’s when there are too many hidden things – that’s when things start to become problematic.”