STUDY FINDS NET ‘PREDATORS’ ARE OFTEN KIDS

According to Newsday, when experts speak of making the Internet safe for youngsters, they are often warning parents about the usual suspect: the adult male pedophile who lurks in chat rooms and lures children into meeting offline.  A new federally funded study finds the threat is real.  Your child stand a nearly one in five chance of being approached for cybersex, but the culprit will likely turn out to be one that hasn't gotten much media attention: another young person.  The study, Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth (available at www.missingkids.com), conducted by David Finkelhor and his colleagues at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in conjunction with the National Center for Missing and exploited Children, is based on interviews with 1,500 children ages 10 to 17.