Parents must sign on to protect children

Somewhere out there, you can be sure a child sexual predator is tapping his evil fingers on the computer keyboard, seeking his next victim. And one of his favorite places to go is MySpace, the popular Web site that allows users to post profiles.

On Tuesday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan reported that 1,843 MySpace pages were created by registered sexual offenders. They have been convicted of serious sexual crimes, including predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, aggravated kidnapping, sexual exploitation of a child -- and murder.

Alarmingly, Cook, DuPage, Lake and Will Counties are listed among the counties with the most offenders using MySpace.

MySpace has since deleted known sexual offenders' profiles from its Web site.

And Madigan has joined with 48 other states in pledging to work with MySpace to add new protections to keep users safe from harm.

These include helpful changes such as MySpace permitting parents to submit their children's e-mail addresses to prevent anyone from using them to set up profiles, and reviewing images and video uploaded to the site for inappropriate content.

But other recommendations that are extremely good in intention may be difficult to enforce. For example, a new proposed policy would require 14- and 15-year-old users to keep their MySpace setting at "private" to prevent sexual offenders from accessing their profiles.

However, age verification is difficult. And this change could also make it harder for those with good reason to monitor a child's MySpace activity -- suspicious police and parents -- from doing so.

While these recommendations need fine-tuning, it also points out that even the most carefully crafted laws and regulations cannot alone stop predators from searching the Internet for victims.

Parents will always be the first defense against sexual offenders exploiting their children via the Internet. Vigilance in monitoring and limiting children's computer use -- and educating children on the threat that can present itself on their screens at any time -- are vital parental duties.

Such scrutiny can be done without unjustly compromising privacy or ruining fun. Parents don't need to stand over their children every minute they are on a computer. But they ought not to leave their children with the impression that they are naïve about the kinds of things that can be going on during chat time.

And children must know enough about the danger lurking in cyberspace, and have the kind of trustworthy relationship with their parents to be able to tell them of any suspicious contacts.

Parents need to do all they can to assure that when their children type in their password, they are not signing on as potential victims of a sexual offender.