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Chatting On-Line: A Dangerous Proposition for Children
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
Mr. John Karraker
Congressman
Upton and other Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today at this hearing entitled: Chatting
On-line: A Dangerous Proposition
for Children. I appear before you as a
private citizen representing myself and, more importantly, as a father. My
oldest daughter was nearly the victim of a sexual predator. I allowed her to
engage in chat room conversations and utilize the Internet when I was not home.
I found a phone message from somebody that sounded much older than my 13
year-old daughter asking her to call him. When I questioned her about it she
denied having any knowledge of who the person was. Shortly afterwards my ex-wife
took a phone call in which he mistook her for my daughter. When he refused to
answer her questions she hung up. My
daughter as this point still refused to provide details but did admit to a long
period of chatting with this person on the Internet and how he'd eventually
asked for her number, which she provided. Checking
the computer for information was not useful, as she'd deleted any information
on identities from her instant messenger after being confronted on the first
phone call. I believe now that she was trying to protect him and if I'd not
disabled the Internet when I wasn't home and taken it's use away except for
monitored homework, it would of continued. The experience my
daughter experienced fortunately did not have a tragic outcome, but that was
more by luck than parental intervention. We tried to instill the possible dangers of meeting people on the Internet with my daughter. We tried to warn her of sexual predators who would say anything to lure her into meeting them. I told her they would try to establish bonds with her to make her trust them. Unfortunately I then relied on the judgment of a young girl to make appropriate decisions. The computer was in it's own room and I did not physically oversee its use. Parents must educate themselves
and than their children with the dangers in the Internet world. Monitoring must
consist of more than just reviewing histories of Internet use. Children quickly
learn how to delete histories and will do it. Reliance on for profit ISPs
will also be useless. When I contacted AOL their attitude was they could care
less. Law enforcement was also of no
use. At that time neither local nor federal agencies would intervene when no
crime had yet happened. Even as a
police officer who knew of some of the types of individuals that exist in our
society I was lax. I thought I'd done my job in warning her. I also felt very
frustrated that even as a police officer, I could not get anybody to take
action.
In my opinion several things
must happen:
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