GBI Agent Delivers Scares About Internet to Alpharetta, Milton Parents

A GBI agent gave Hopewell Middle School parents what she intended to be a scary lesson Wednesday about child predators and pornography on the Internet.

Agent Renae Anderson, who works with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's child exploitation and computer crimes unit, spoke at the school's PTA meeting to give parents a lesson of their own. Principal Bill Thompson said she has given students in the middle school the lesson tailored to their age groups during this and previous school years.

Middle school students "are manufacturing child pornography left and right right now, taking nude images of themselves," Anderson said.

That's no different in the eyes of the law than an adult taking photos of them.

To start a conversation about child pornography without giving a child any ideas, Anderson suggested asking a lot of open-ended questions to find out just how much their child knows.

Allison Dekoning said a parent would have to be pretty naive to think their middle school children don't know about it.

But Anderson said while the children may know about it, they may not be able to make the connection to a sex offender. And children who look at photos and videos of other children their age don't understand that it's child pornography and therefore something wrong. They might think it's OK because they are looking at kids the same age as themselves.

Anderson said she couldn't tell the parents how many search warrants she's served that when the GBI gets out there, they find just a child looking at porn.

"The problem is, they are looking at child porn, which is highly illegal," she said.

"You've got to talk to your kids about this before law enforcement comes to your house," Anderson said.

Sexting Seems To Start In High School

There's a lot of sexting-sexually explicit text messaging-going on in the high schools, so she told parents with students in those grade levels to go home and talk to their kids about it.

"With sexting, a lot of these kids don't realize what they are doing is committing a felony," Anderson said.

And if they put a picture out there even sending it to just one person, there's a good chance it will end up on someone's phone or computer the child never intended to get to see it.

Your Child Probably Has An Account You Don't Know About

A parent who says her child doesn't have a Facebook or MySpace account just doesn't have one you know about, she said.

"How hard is it to go to a neighbor's house," she asked.

Today's phones make it even easier.

"Everything I can do on my computer I can do on my cellphone," she said.

"I'm not so worried about your kids, because you are here," Anderson said. "But there's a lot who are very intimidated by a computer."

Children Might Be Playing Games With Predators

Even game consoles such as Playstation 3, XBox and the Wii carry risks because they can all access the Internet.

Anderson said she is working a case of an 8-year-old Gwinnett boy who was the victim of a child predator.

"He started playing a game with somebody he thought was a child," she said.

If a 40 or 50-year-old man approached them in the mall, their child would know not to give any personal information out and to stay away from them.

But in online games a person can pretend to be any age and build up a relationship, getting bits of personal information during game play.

"Basically what happens, your child, who thinks he or she is playing with another child, over the course of a couple of months gives away all that information the predator wanted in the first place," Anderson said.

Parents Have Some Controls Over The Situation

"All of these games come with parental controls, but you guys have to sit down and look at this stuff. If your kids are going to play online that's fine, but make sure you can hear what they say at the same time," she said.

She suggested parents have their children work on their computers in the living room, dining room or kitchen, keeping it public at home. For the older children that might not work, so she said parents could ask those kids to bring their laptops and cellphones out to the kitchen at night before they go to bed.

Watch out for those Facebook or other Internet profiles. When they don't set up their profiles as private, they are not only giving friends access to that information, they are also giving it to hundreds of thousands of other people.

One child predator Anderson arrested told her these online sites were "a virtual shopping catalog."

Disable those laptop webcams, too, she said.

The best advice Anderson said she could give was for parents to sit down with their child and ask them to help create a Facebook page. That's quality time spent with a child, but by playing stupid the child can act like they know more than mom and dad. A parent will learn how much her child knows about computers.

After the Facebook page is created, send a friend request to your child so you can monitor what the child says online.

"Don't stop there, look at all their friends' pages, too. You want to see what they put out on your child," Anderson said.

For an older child, she suggested that parents have the child write down their email address and password and put them in a sealed envelope.

"Promise you won't open it unless something bad happens," she said.

That will really help law enforcement in a missing child case or a child predator case.

Kids Are More Worried About Cyber Bullying

Cyberbullying is another problem for children.

"When cyberbullying first came out, it was a great example of how technology was outpacing law enforcement," she said.

Now there are laws against it, and most schools have policies against it.

With traditional bullying, a child got a reprieve when they went home. But not anymore, as the bullying continues and is passed on by others. The kids who bully others never have to see the consequences.

"Children are more worried about being bullied in cyberspace than any threat from pedophiles," she said.

Children need to be told the consequences of cyberbullying in terms that they can understand, Anderson said.