Pa02Nov01i Finkelhor: risks overstated

Last November I sent a message to IMO exposing the falsehoods in the use of 1-in-5 statistic re children being sexually solicited on the Internet.   [See hereunder]

Although the author of the study it comes from, David Finkelhor, a child sex abuse expert, limited the statistic's applicability, others stripped it of its context in order to exaggerate the perception of danger to children.  

Finkelhor has now been quoted in the nation's leading newspaper saying that the online risks to children are overstated.  

"There are new perils for kids, but no evidence that kids are on the whole more endangered today as a result of the Internet," said David Finkelhor, a criminologist at the University of New Hampshire who has studied Internet-related crime. "There's no sign of an incredible tidal wave of mayhem and danger that's washed onto our shores."

(The New York Times, "Making the Web Child-Safe," 31 October 2002). 

 
Subject: 01Nov23c Dutch developments 1  

[...]

 Perhaps it's helpful to know the principal statistic used to warn of Internet "stranger danger" in the U.S. is exaggerated.  

It claims "1 in 5 children who use the Internet received a sexual solicitation or approach by a stranger within the past year" and is promulgated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

 

In reality, the study this statistic comes from says:

 

other children made about half of solicitations

virtually all of the others who made solicitations were 25 or younger

most of the children approached were 15 or older

the "solicitations" included any type of sexual talk, and were usually a request for chatroom sex, defined as "fantasy sex, which involves interactive chat-room sessions [written messages ] where the participants describe sexual acts and sometimes disrobe and masturbate"

 

The study is:  Finkelhor, D., Mitchell, K. and Wolak, J., "Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation’s Youth", NCMEC, June 2000, pp. 2-5. It is on the NCMEC Website as a pdf document.

 

Even though this statistic is in a NCMEC study, the NCMEC uses it without qualification in its other documents, such as its report defending the ban on virtual child porn (at this part of the NCMEC site, scroll down to "Child Pornography: The Criminal-Justice-System Response", pdf page 13). In addition, U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft warned only of large numbers of children encountering sexual solicitations when the Justice Department announced the life sentences for child porn distribution in Operation Avalanche (the Landslide case) this summer.