Story Published:
Mar 8, 2010 at 11:30 PM MST
Story Updated:
Mar 9, 2010 at 7:16 AM MST
BILLINGS - As the internet becomes even larger and more accessible, police and service providers have to fight harder than ever to keep you and your children safe.
One Montana task force is trying to take a megabyte out of crime. "In compiling our numbers from last year, there were almost 700 cases of solicitation just here in the state of Montana," said Tim West, Montana's Coordinator for Internet Crimes Against Children. It's the only such task force in the state.
"We are connected now to the rest of the nation, in fact the world," he said, "so we get tips from any one of the states in the union, and we also get tips from overseas."
Hundreds of cases are pending, but luckily there isn't always a victim, "we can take on a persona of a juvenile and then from there we can develop our own cases," said West.
But West says cases won't end the problem, "I was around when the war on drugs began," he said, "we didn't arrest our way out of the problem with drugs, and we're not going to do it with this particular problem."
It used to be that kids could only get online with the family computer, but now they can do so with a cell phone, or even a video game. "You were tethered to a desk or a table," said West. He said mobility "opens up a whole different problem."
"Sexting has become a problem now," said West, referring to the practice of sending an R-rated picture of one's body by cell phone. "Although the children have the knowledge of the technology, they don't really have the level of maturity to understand that when they hit send it's gone forever," he said, "I've had victims come up to me six years later after the event and ask me if I still see their picture in our cases, and the answer is unfortunately yes."
But, help comes from more than a task force or a shortcut key.
"We feel it's our accountability really to provide that education to our consumers and to our community," said Bresnan Communication's Montana Regional V.P. Sean O'Donnell. They've teamed up with ICAC, holding seminars for kids of all ages, and their parents.
Sometimes it's the kids who do the teaching, "we have to keep up with the curve," said West, "we ask the kids, where are you all hanging out, what are you guys doing now when you're on the internet?"
It's the search for a safer tomorrow.
Research suggests that internet sex crimes involving adults and juveniles more often fit a model of statutory rape than a model of forcible sexual assault. Offenders are likely to meet and develop relationships with their underage victims.
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