The Sting of Online Predators

The Internet has become a controversial tool in law enforcement’s efforts to catch child molesters and pedophiles. The sting is a simple one: Undercover agents pose as young teenage girls online, hoping to nab would-be sexual predators lurking in chat rooms. According to the FBI, conviction rates are more than 99% in cases that evolve from these Internet stings. Yet even police admit that online cases are only a fraction of the child molestation cases brought each year, and defendants caught online cry police entrapment.

Is the effort and expense of online patrolling justified? MAURA E. MONTELLANO spoke with a retired LAPD detective who spent 22 years of a 34-year career assigned to the Sexually Exploited Child Unit. Today, he is a consultant for police agencies. He talks about how the stings work.

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WILLIAM DWORIN

Retired Los Angeles police detective, Valencia

Aprofile is created of a child, and that profile is used online in family-oriented chat rooms. Many times, the pedophiles ask if the “child” is sexually active. If the response is positive, an arrangement to meet is made. Every state has laws for the distribution of child pornography. It’s illegal to distribute through the Internet, across state lines or phone lines. And it’s a crime to travel from one state to another with the intent to have sex with a minor.

The police don’t consider this entrapment. Entrapment is placing a criminal idea in a law-abiding person’s mind and that person acting on the idea. In these situations, the person is seeking situations involving sex with a child, so the entrapment issue is not a defense. They have a predisposition. It’s not like we’re taking a name out of a phone book asking if they are interested in a child for sex; they are seeking out the child.

We’re concerned with those individuals who produce child pornography. These people have a sexual interest in children, and they are actively seeking out children. In some cases, it’s fantasy and they just talk about it--but that’s still a problem. If they have weird sexual interests, there are adult chat rooms for all kinds of stuff. But their interest is with children and sex with children. It’s about seduction of children and their need to relate with children.

Obviously, the main reason for these stings is to identify those who have a sexual interest in children. Once you identify them, you can start tracking their behavior. If it’s a teacher, we have a responsibility to make the school where he teaches aware of this person’s activities. Perhaps they have not done anything yet but now we are aware of their interest. If he is contacting me believing I am a child, he is eventually going to contact someone who really is a child.

My concern is to protect children. The money spent on these stings is put to good use if they are done properly. The use of the Internet is not a new investigative tool, it is only a faster tool. Sexual predators are being identified. We won’t be able to prove that a child was saved from molestation because of these proactive investigations, but the price is worth the effort. When it’s done properly, this investigative approach is a fantastic tool in protecting children.