21 May 2009 - World News

Most kids today know more about the internet than many of their parents.

But while they're internet savvy they may not be ready to handle what they encounter online in the way of sexual predators.

Police say at any time of the day or night pedophiles are stalking our children on the internet and in this News Center investigation Barbara Reyelts reports they outnumber authorities thousands to one.

We need to warn you that this story contains some explicit language.

So we told this guy we're 13 and his next question is do you want to chat? You would think a reasonable adult at that point should be saying good bye.

Superior police are worried. And they have good reason. They can site case after case in which northland kids are meeting very bad people online and putting themselves in dangerous situations.

She went in there as a 13 year old child, into a parenting forum room, and within a few minutes she was contacted by a pedophile who ended up sending her pictures of him molesting his daughter.

At this parent presentation Superior Police Sgt. Nick Alexander set up an online profile of a 13 year old girl. Within seconds of entering the chat room he was bombarded by men wanting to befriend the child.

He asks if we like seeing naked men?

Have you seen a grown man's penis?

Another here is inviting us to view a nude cam show. This guy is masturbating that just sent us this web cam. This is live.

You can see we're getting flooded right now. I can't even get a conversation typed in.

Parents watched in growing dismay as the men online got bolder and bolder with what they believed to be a 13 year old girl.

I see that I can't be lulled into this sense that they're safe in their house because this can come into your house so fast, faster than you can blink your eyes.

Horrified parents asked if police couldn't go after the men who were exposing themselves to what they believed was a 13 year old girl. Police explained there are so many predators online that police can't possibly pursue them all.

We don't have the resources to do as much proactive work with these types of internet crimes against children cases.

To help handle the growing volume of internet crimes against Northland children Superior's police chief has established a cooperative agreement among Northland law enforcement agencies to share resources and make use of Superior's digital expertise.

We want to be cooperative. We want to work on these issues from a regional perspective.

We rely on our partner agencies for a lot of help. We just don't have the staff to dedicate to this problem that we would like.

But authorities say there's not enough time and money to adequately police the web...they say parents have to step up to protect their children even if it means taking a computer class to get up to speed.

There's a lot of technology out there that our kids are very savvy at and parents are very slow at it. We're the dinosaurs of technology.

Authorities say learning to track your child's online activity is just like asking them where they're going when they leave the house.

When kids get into those teenage years they're so guarded with their privacy but you've got to know who they're talking to.

Knowing who they're talking to could be a critical step in keeping your child safe. Barbara Reyelts, the Northland's News Center.

Superior police offer a pamphlet that describes simple computer tracking steps to see who your children are talking to online and what they may be saying to strangers, along with online safety tips