14 DAY TRIAL // The framed image of the guy lurking in the shadow, deceiving his way into a date with an unsuspecting youngster and later raping him or her, was shattered to pieces by a study conducted in a report issued by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham.
Janis Wolak of the team conducting it wiped the above image and instead brought one that, she says, based on the study's results, is closer to reality. There's no posing as a teen in order to lure the youngsters out, the predators often turned out to be adults who were very straightforward about their intentions, and that they chose their victims to be very vulnerable emotionally. Thus, the love I mentioned in the title.
The research also showed that the social networks that have been stepping up their game, in order to protect children from being exposed to pornographic material or even abused, are not even remotely usual medium for the romance to start happening. Email, instant messaging and chat rooms turned to be the weapons of choice for developing intimate relationships with the victims to be.
"The great majority of cases we have seen involved young teenagers, mostly 13-, 14-, 15-year-old girls who are targeted by adults on the Internet who are straightforward about being interested in sex," Janis said. The whole situation could easily be avoided if the teen, after finding out about the other's intentions, just doesn't answer any more to the messages. Instead, the study showed that nearly 75 percent of the victims met with their offenders in person more than once.
"The study was based on telephone interviews with 3,000 Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17 done in 2000 and again in 2005. The researchers also conducted more than 600 interviews with federal, state and local law enforcement officials in the United States," Reuters reports.