'Don't talk to strangers': Doesn't work

What parents hear about the unthinkable - online child molestation - is not really accurate. A new study paints a very different picture from "predators who impersonate peers to befriend children and lure them into encounters that end in abduction, rape and murder," according to a study done for the American Psychological Association. The study, by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, found that "most offenders did not deceive victims about the fact that they were adults interested in sexual relationships"; "the victims, primarily teens 13-15, met and had sex with the adults on more than one occasion"; "half of the victims were described as being in love with or feeling close bonds with the offenders"; "few offenders abducted or used force to sexually abuse their victims." In other words, these young people who are curious, fearless, and naive think their abusers are friends and - because of the Internet's anonymity - they often get too far in an online relationship to back down before the abuse occurs. Or they are "sexually liberated" and have decided they don't care. For more on this research and working with online kids, see my interview with Janis Wolak, one of the study's researchers and a Net-literate mom herself, covered in last June's "Rethinking 'stranger danger'," Part 1 and Part 2.