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INTERNET RIFE WITH PERIL FOR YOUTH Inside the chat room It happens so fast. All I want to do is have a look at the Internet chat rooms police warn parents about. But I can't just watch. Men, attracted by my tender 13 years — that's how I portrayed myself for this research — can't resist. This is how police patrol the Internet for adults who are trying to lure teens or who are trading child pornography. But anyone can log on. I sign up for Yahoo's chatrooms, give myself a screen name and password, and get in. There are hundreds of rooms and thousands of people. There are rooms set up by users; “girls masturbating on cam” and “daddy's girl” are a few of the publishable names. There are also rooms set up by Yahoo staff. That's where I start and find, under the title of teen, an Oh Canada room. As soon as my screen name, which includes my fake age, appears in the central room, smaller screens — private messages from other people in the room — start popping up in front of me. “Hey cutie,” says one private message that pops up seconds after I get into the room. “Want to chat.” One message is from Kris (not his real user name), who says he is a 16-year-old male from Chatham. “Asl” he says. “Wat?” I respond, not knowing what the code means. “Asl.” I don't respond. I don't know what it means or what to say. “Asl. plz.” It dawns on me. Asl: age, sex, location. Plz: please. “Toronto, 13” I respond. “So you have a pic?” I log off. It all happens so fast. I'm not used to posing as a teen girl, I'm not used to lying, I'm not used to the lingo and I'm certainly not expecting to get a request for a picture two seconds into a conversation. The next day, my composure regained, I log back in. In chat rooms, there is a central, main screen where people can chat and where the screen names of people who have either entered or left the room appear. On the right-hand side is the list of people in the room. Double click on a name and you can send a private message, away from the public glare of the main room. It's all instant. It's all in real time, like talking on the phone. This time, when I go into the Canadian room for teens, no private messages arrive. So I wait for five minutes, but nothing. I leave the room and decide to check out a few others. Then a private message appears from doug (not his real user name): “why'd u leave? wanna chat?” “Hey,” I say. Nerves are setting in. “Kind of looking for some excitement,” he says. “Explain that,” I respond. I want to know how far this man will go. “Looking for the kind of excitement a sexy teen like you could bring into my life,” doug says. He tells me he's older. He wants to know if I — a 13-year-old girl from Toronto — like my guys older. “Not like 50,” I say. “How about 30? would that be cool?” he asks. I'm getting nervous and take my time replying, but that doesn't put his desires on ice. “R u you looking for some FUN,” doug asks. “Define fun,” I say back. “Getting together, hanging out, checking each other out, seeing what we think. i don't know. having some fun. whatever we both want. how does that sound to u?” I tell him I want to see what I think of him via the Internet first. He tells me he is a “professional sales consultant” who moved to Toronto three months ago. After a few questions, he gets to the crux of it. “I really would like to find a girl to get together with and just enjoy each other and have a lot of fun. i don't know if that's what u r looking for or not.” It's as if he is trying to get consent for what he wants. Legally, no one can give consent until they're 14. “I don't know if it is what i want yet either,” I reply. “really. so u might be open to having a sexual adventure.” That's all it took. A few minutes and a supposed 30-year-old is asking a 13-year-old to meet in person for a sexual adventure. My nerves get the better of me. I log off. I feel like I'm in danger, like the screen is too close, that somehow this man will find me. Det.-Sgt. Angie Howe, of the OPP's child pornography section, says these days parents need not only to street-proof their kids, but Internet-proof them as well. Most parents wouldn't allow their 12-year-old daughter to walk around the neighbourhood talking to strangers, yet they let them do it on the Internet. “The Internet is a new place to prey on children and it eliminates many of the risks of hanging out at the schoolyard,” Howe says. “Before, pedophiles were isolated, but now they've found each other. The Internet let's them form a type of community which helps them normalize their behaviour.” Some will even send child pornography to children, to show them other people do it, and that it's no big deal. The new luring law, which means people can't communicate with a person they believe to be under 14 years of age for a sexual purpose, has a maximum five-year sentence. Howe says the OPP is lobbying to get the penalties made more severe and the age of consent for sex increased. A study conducted for Media Awareness Network in 2000 found some disturbing trends. It found 45 per cent of young people admit to occasionally e-mailing people they've met only on the Internet. Of the youth who use instant messaging, 57 per cent say they talk to people they've met only on the Internet and almost six in 10 young people in Canada say they used chat rooms — the most popular were ones that weren't monitored. The Media Awareness Network found the likelihood of young people visiting adult chat rooms increases with age, with 66 per cent of 15- to 17-year-olds visiting them. These are the chat rooms whose names are too crude to publish. The survey also found 25 per cent of young Internet users have been asked by someone they knew only on the Internet to meet in person. The likelihood of these meetings actually taking place increases with age. Also, it isn't just Internet strangers parents need to be aware of. The Net's a haven for pornography. Teens also can easily find bomb-making diagrams, like those found on a website of one of the teen shooters at Columbine high school. The survey found a quarter of Internet-using youth have received pornography from someone they met online, and nearly half of high-school age Internet users say they've received unwanted sexual comments. But the statistics need to be taken in a certain context, says Jane Tallim, the Media Awareness Network's director of education. Children are still more likely to be assaulted in the real world, she says, pointing out sexual predators have always gone where kids hang out. The good news is that the popularity of chat rooms is decreasing. The “it” thing right now is instant messaging, when teens talk in real time but only with one another, not with the public. The reality is instant messaging is replacing the phone — now parents have to kick their kids off the computer. The number of contacts — or buddies — a teen has on instant messenger is a status symbol. It's a sign of popularity. “From time to time, parents should look at their children's buddy list,” Tallim says. Det.-Const. Jeff Degen, one of two Internet-trolling officers in the OPP's child porn section, spends most days investigating people trading porn or luring kids. He has binders full of people he's investigating and even more of the different personae he uses on the Internet so he can keep them all straight, including panty and bra sizes he's given the suspect. “The bad guys will test you,” Degen says. He keeps his instant messaging buddy list organized by category: likes little boys, likes little girls, in possession of child porn, luring suspects. Scrolling through the different chat rooms set up by Yahoo users, Degen shakes his head. “Sexy teens — there are 40 people in there right now. Girls with dogs and horses, 13 to 18, younger girls for older guys, 11 to 17 girls xxx — 36 people in there," he says, reading the names of rooms on his computer screen. The people Degen catches come from all walks of life, but most are middle-aged, professional men. “They'll send you pictures of what you should be doing. They send porn to desensitize the child so they think it's normal,” he says. On his bulletin board is a picture of a middle-aged man in a navy uniform. There are three stripes on either shoulder. The picture is of Ed Campbell, who was charged with possessing child pornography, distributing child pornography and luring. He died before going to trial on the charges. Campbell readily admitted his marital status and age to Degen, who was posing as a 12-year-old girl. Degen chatted to Campbell for more than three months. “Sometimes we'd have conversations for five minutes, other times it would be for more than an hour,” Degen says. The sexual side of the relationship progressed. Campbell sent Degen adult and child pornography and invited Degen — who Campbell believed was a 12-year-old girl — to touch her genitals sexually. That's when the luring charge became possible. When Degen's investigation was ready, police officers arrived on Campbell's Ottawa doorstep, armed with a search warrant. Degen always lets the men approach him, and, as I'd experienced, it's not hard to get propositioned. “It's not unusual,” he says of my experiences. “It doesn't matter what I say, it always come back to sex.” His biggest problem is trying to keep up. Over the Labour Day weekend, his office received 420 complaints. While the hardest part of his job is looking at the pornographic images people send him, it's also made him cautious when it comes to his own two small children. He even chatted to a nephew online and caught him giving out personal information. That's one of the biggest no-nos — filling out profiles. But kids do it. They tell strangers what school they go to, who their teacher is, where they live and sometimes their phone numbers. Parents need to watch, Degen says. “My kids won't be going into chat rooms,” he says. “They might get to use instant messenger when they're older but I'll still put a lot of controls on it.” The Internet
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