Book warns about Internet chatting

How safe are Kiwi children using Internet chatrooms? A 2002 NetSafe study of three Auckland schools claimed that 23% of seven to 10-year-olds, 27% of 11 to 12-year- olds and 30% of 13 to 15-year-olds had a face-to-face meeting with someone they met on the Internet. Only 20% of them who had felt unsafe or threatened on the Net had told a parent.

Australian author Barbara Biggs has released a fictional book called Chat Room (published by Micklind) which tells of a lonely 13-year-old who turns to chatrooms on the Net for company, and what happens when she decides to meet up with someone she has chatted to. We asked the author about the book – and the issue of chatrooms.

Your book is a fictional story about a 13-year-old who gets intro trouble through an Internet chatroom. How common do you think the dangers are?

The Australian Police actually asked me to write the story because of the growing incidence of this crime. In Australia, we have 60 police officers dedicated to this problem, who trawl the Internet posing as children to hook predators. The potential for trouble in this scenario is obvious. A common scenario is that a child thinks they're meeting another child and just before the meeting, the other 'kid' texts to say they can't make it. Their uncle will pick up the child instead. The uncle has been the one communicating with the unsuspecting child all along

What research did you do for the book?

The book was written with the help of a detective with the sexual crime squad of Victoria Police. He gave the modus operandi of the predator and a common victim and perpetrator profile. He said just a resource was desperately needed because kids don't read pamphlets or necessarily listen to parental advice. So, even though the book is a novel, it's as close to a real-life scenario as possible. In a rare move, the book has been endorsed by the Australian Federal Police, possibly the first commercial book they've ever endorsed.

What is the main lesson parents and caregivers can learn from reading your book?

That predators don't necessarily talk about sex. Many kids know that's what "dirty guys" do in chatrooms and they steer clear. What the more sophisticated predator does is emotionally groom the child over many months. They can afford to do this because often they have several potential victims on the go at once, at different stages of the grooming process. They pick them off as they become ready.

Your book has a happy ending, but how many of these tales do you think end in tragedy?

Taskforce Argus, in Australia, has 60 police officers working on this crime. Fortunately laws there have recently been changed to deal with this growing problem. Now it's possible to charge predators even if they don't physically commit a crime; it's enough to show intent to commit the crime. Many people have already been charged for arranging to meet a minor, buying plane tickets to do so, etc. but these are predators who have been hooked by police officers posing as children. It's impossible to know how many crimes like this occur that are never discovered. The thing about this book, is that it's better to be safe than sorry. It's better to give your child such a book so that they become aware of what's possible, on an emotional level, with liaisons on the Net. In a survey by NetAlert, the Australian equivalent to NZ's NetSafe, they were alarmed by findings that of 3000 parents who partook in the survey, most said that they felt their child was safe because s/he was a good/smart kid. As they say, it has nothing to do with how good or smart a child is, as if it is something they do or don't do to become victims of this crime.

Often the children most at risk are ones whose parents have recently divorced, who have moved (like Sam in Chat Room), where there may have been a death in the family or if there's bullying at school - anything that makes a child lose confidence or become emotionally vulnerable. The biggest group at risk is those kids who have already been sexually abused. Research shows that the family/parents will usually not even know this. Children rarely report abuse through fear or threats by the abuser. Research also shows that once a child has been sexually abused, that child will become a target for other predators and will start to relate to the world in a sexual way. Most sexually abused kids will have been abused by more than one, and often several abusers, before they reached adulthood.

You wrote a memoir on your own childhood problems. You now work to promote child protection. Tell us about this work.

One of the reasons I was asked to write this book is because I understand only too well how a young, inexperienced and needy person can be. Nobody tells young people that there is sex and love, and sometimes they go together and sometimes they don't. I, like all kids today, was brought up on a diet of Hollywood romance movies and love songs on the radio. These stories tell us that if someone of the opposite sex wants to spend time with us, kiss us or have sex with us, it must mean they love us. We can only frame what happens to us through what we know. Where do we ever see in our culture someone who wants to have sex with someone else if they don't love them

This emotional attachment is by far the most damaging aspect of child sexual abuse. Because I understand this so well, I often speak about my life and this much- misunderstood and common phenomenon at child protection conferences, to social workers, in prisons, to troubled youth, etc. I also work towards social change in this area, write opinion pieces for newspapers about it, and have donated two-thirds of my author royalties from this book to a child protection charity.

print