By Angeljean Chiaramida
Staff writer
—
SALISBURY — The investigation that resulted in child rape charges against a Salisbury 19-year-old last week began with an ugly journey into the world of Internet crime and child pornography, according to Salisbury police.
As the investigation proceeds deeper into the underground realm of child pornography and Internet crime, Salisbury Detective Mark Thomas said the extensive nature of the danger to children goes far beyond what most imagine.
"The Internet is the No. 1 threat to children today," Thomas said. "You have no idea what's out there. And our children know more about computers than we do; they even know how to hide things. It's a new age, and parents have to be aware; they have to educate themselves to protect their children. This is the world we live in now."
Seeing the increasing danger the Internet presents to children and the need for parent education, police Chief David L'Esperance hopes to work through school resource officer Mike Alder to set up a symposium for local parents on the subject in the fall. L'Esperance wants to pull in state law enforcement experts to show parents what they need to know about computers and the Internet, to safeguard local children.
"Children are victims because they don't know what they're getting themselves into when they respond to Internet predators," Thomas said. "Parents who say: 'No, my child would never do that,' are in denial. Denial is dangerous. It's alarming how much Internet crime of this nature we're seeing today."
The child rape charge Salisbury police brought against Scott Deschenes alleges he performed a sexual act with a 13-year-old Salisbury boy. But what launched the investigation and led to the charge, and what's keeping it on the front burner, was the discovery by the victim's mother of disturbing e-mails sent to her son by Deschenes.
The e-mails, police said, were soliciting the boy to pose nude for money for pictures to be posted on a graphic Internet pornography site, according to Thomas. In the e-mails, Deschenes told his victim that he earned a lot of money doing exactly that.
Delving into the Deschenes' case, L'Esperance intends to send an officer for special training on this very technical crime area. In addition, he'll keep working with special forensic units within the Massachusetts State Police and the FBI that deal with computer-related crimes, especially those related to children. Both are part of the collaborative force working on the continuing investigation into the child porn aspect of the Deschenes case, L'Esperance said.
But the ideal solution is for parents to prevent their children from falling victim to Internet-borne child predators, law enforcement professionals say. In the current case, Thomas can't speak highly enough about the victim's mother, who checked her child's e-mail account. And, when she found something disturbing, she brought it to police, to safeguard her own child and others in the community.
Sgt. Steven Del Negro, commander of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for Massachusetts, also applauds this mother for her actions.
"The main thing is for parents to get involved with our children's online lives," Del Negro said.
There's different levels of trust as children get older, he said, but just as parents ask children where they're going when they leave the house, Del Negro's advice to parents is to "know where your child is going out on the Internet."
There are some basic rules:
Know where children are accessing the Internet, he said, whether it's on their own computers, the family's, at school, the public library, their friends, their cell phones, wherever.
Computers at home should be in places where parents can walk by and see the screen, not in children's bedrooms behind closed doors. "Letting children have computers in their bedrooms is like taking your children to the park at midnight and leaving them there alone," Del Negro said.
Parents should set up all computers and be the administrators so they can control access to all its parts and programs. Children shouldn't be the administrators of their computers, he said, because then they can control parents' access to it, allowing things to be hidden.
Know how children are going out on the Internet, know all children's e-mail accounts, chat rooms and social networking sites —such as MySpace and Facebook — and all associated passwords. That allows parents to check on children's activities on the Internet regularly, he said, and parents really need to check on children's activities on the Internet. "Parents need to be parents; they need to check on these things," Del Negro said. "I tell parents to set up their own MySpace and Facebook pages, and ask their children to 'friend' them. That way they can check to see what's being posted on their children's pages."
In addition, there are some Web sites available to parents with more information on this subject. Del Negro said netsmartz.org is a good place to get helpful information for teachers, kids and parents, but netsmartz411.org is a site especially for parents.
Del Negro and the Internet Crime Against Children Task Force for Massachusetts are eager and willing to education parents at seminars on this topic when asked, he said, for he believes most parents are playing catchup with their kids in this area of expertise.
"Kids were born into the computer age," he said. "We're still trying to figure it out."
