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The Internet is emerging as a tool that individuals with pedophilia can use to attract young children. An Internet user explores the virtual dynamics of cyberspace that facilitate pedophiliac impulses and the tragic behaviour that can follow.

Last July, a 14-year-old Victoria, British Columbia girl was lured from her home and forced into a car by a 28-year-old travelling salesman she had met online. He convinced her to give him his address and phone number after the two had developed an intimate relationship during weeks of online chats. In June 1998, a 28-year-old electrical engineer from Missouri had sex with a 13-year-old girl he had lured into his house after meeting her on an AOL chat room and telling her he owned a modelling agency. And earlier that year in March, a 34-year-old Seattle man arranged to meet a 13-year-old Los Angeles girl whom he too had met in an online chat room. After several months of "foreplay" on the Internet, he asked to meet her in person to talk, play, and have sex.

In the last case, the 13-year-old girl was actually an FBI agent and the man was promptly arrested. More shockingly, the 34-year-old was Patrick Naughton, a well-known dot-com high-flyer who had helped develop Java and had recently been hired by Disney's Michael Eisner to launch its Web portal, Infoseek. He was also married.

The perpetrators in these incidents are examples of individuals with pedophilia—a mental disorder characterised by recurrent, intense sexual fantasies, sexual impulses, and behaviour involving sexual activity with prepubescent children. These fantasies, impulses, and behaviours are significant enough to impair the individual's regular functioning and are abusive to the children with whom they may occur. Pedophilia, which occurs in both males and females, may involve sexual attraction to males, females, or both.

As the examples above illustrate, these individuals are using the Internet to meet, entice, and have sex with impressionable young children. And many of them are those we would least suspect of doing so. But why are these individuals attracted to the Internet? It is a worthwhile question to consider, not to sensationalise what is a highly sensitive issue, but to increase awareness of the Internet's potential to harm children. At the same time, it can encourage us to address the underlying circumstances and long-standing psychological problems that manifest as abnormal sexual relationships online, but which actually originate and are best targeted offline.

The Internet is a vast network of computers linking together users of all ages. Its global reach has revolutionised the way we communicate with one another. Unfortunately, it has also given individuals with pedophilia increasingly convenient access to children anywhere on the planet. With its chat and game rooms, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), ICQ, Usenet groups, and webcam-equipped personal homepages, the Internet has become a font not only of young children, but young children with whom one can readily interact. While writing this article, I visited numerous chat rooms disguised as a young female teenager and within 3 minutes was inundated with requests for sexual favours. My experience is not uncommon. In fact, according to a recent U.S. study, "Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth", 1 in 5 children aged 10-17 are propositioned online for sexual activity.

The Internet provides not only a source of young children, but also a convenient means by which they can be reached by those with pedophilia. Such individuals are able to assume any number of friendly online personalities seemingly harmless to unsuspecting children. In fact, they may also seem harmless to other adults. Whereas in broad daylight we may notice potential offenders staring at and following children, in cyberspace all we see are static pseudonyms carrying on conversations invisible to the rest of us. This degree of anonymity may be particularly appealing to individuals who experience pedophiliac fantasies and urges but who, because of their high profile, would almost never act them out with children in their own vicinity (i.e. in their own family or neighbourhood). Thus it is not uncommon to find, for example, doctors, lawyers, policemen, or even members of the clergy using the Internet to engage in pedophiliac behaviours. And since there is an absence of observable censors that help keep check on their impulses, these users may unwittingly fashion for themselves the illusion that what they are doing is normal and natural.

Individuals with pedophilia provide support for one another in large online communities, which serves to reinforce such illusions. Congregating in chat rooms titled "dad&daughtersex" and "youngboylovers", users can discuss their tastes and inform each other where to find children. They can also readily exchange a wealth of child pornography, which has the dual effect of both satisfying pedophiliac urges, and increasing sexual appetite by associating visually-arousing material with text-based interactions with young children.

Complicating matters is the degree to which online communications offer opportunity for fantasy, especially during the initial `courtship' between an individual with pedophilia and a young child. While the two may exchange photographs and webcam images to `get to know' one another, the absence of two people in the same physical time and space promotes the development of all sorts of illusions.

Primary of these is a user's unrealistic conviction that his or her sexual interest in a particular child is mutual. When he or she cannot see the indifference, the hesitation, the confusion, or the fear in the child's face and body language—signs which are usually more conspicuous in person, especially over time—the child may quite easily become sexualised in that user's mind. Not only does this escalate the individual's physical arousal, but it also seems to feed his or her justification of the pedophiliac relationship. As one online user known only as "Patrick" tells me, "If she's talking to me, giving me her pic, not telling me to leave her alone, I think there's a pretty good chance she wants to have sex." In some cases, a person suffering pedophilia does not initially approach a child merely for sexual favours but may after many weeks or months of online chatting delude him or herself into believing that a healthy relationship has naturally `developed' between the two. This may eventually serve as justification for the relationship, and, of course, all the more reason to continue it. While it may be said that this dynamic-if not most of the ones discussed in this article-is not unique to pedophiliac relationships because it may also occur between two adults online, it is especially problematic where children are involved because it adds to the degree of obsession that often seems more pronounced in cases of pedophilia.

But what of the children themselves? Far be it to suggest they are fully rational, consenting agents in these abhorrent interactions, but we cannot help but ask: why in the first place do they respond to older users who randomly solicit them for chats? Why do they continue corresponding with them? What is, in essence, the nature of this peculiar attraction—for in the absence of physical coercion, what else can there be but attraction to bind the two users?

While all children are at risk, it appears that lonely children are the most vulnerable to falling into pedophiliac relationships online. With the alarming disintegration of the modern family, the family stretched so thin that it can no longer nurture its members, young children are more and more likely to accept the attention of anyone who will offer it—even an online stranger. In some cases, a child may not initially suspect any ulterior sexual motives. In others, he or she may not like what is suspected, but will succumb to the hunger for affection. As 12-year-old "Mindy" tells me, "Nobody's at home. And even when they are, they don't give a shit about me. When I'm online, I meet people who really care about me and will take care of me. . .who love me." Attention from a virtual father or brother figure seems better than none at all.

It also seems that a lack of guidance, social support, and role models for gay youth-particularly crucial in the developing years during which they may start coming to terms with their sexuality—leaves them searching for human connection online. Sexual offenders may be more than happy to take these youth `under their wings', initiating them into a world of gay sexuality and fulfilling their longing to become part of the larger gay community around them. During my exploration of cyberspace, it was not uncommon to see chat rooms frequented by users such as "YoungPup" or "MusclBoy" being courted by users calling themselves "Dad4Sons" or "Bear4Cubs".

What makes all these interactions all the more powerful is the tangible trail they leave behind. Online chats and messages can be saved permanently, allowing users to review and relive their interactions with children line-by-line, word-for-word, for hours on end. This may amplify the user's belief that the child is demonstrating genuine sexual interest—even when the child is understandably confused about the relationship and in reality harbours no sexual interest at all. Of course, while this may occur between any two users online, it is particularly troublesome when children are involved, because, as suggested earlier, it may feed the already obsessive quality of pedophiliac fantasies and urges, and in turn increase the likelihood that these fantasies and urges will grow into actual sexual behaviours (either online and offline) with the unsuspecting children a user meets on the Internet.

All of these factors demonstrate the need to monitor children's Internet use. On a more general level, they also hint at some of the pre-existing psychological and interpersonal deficits that are rooted offline and are merely amplified through a medium such as cyberspace. A simple example is empathy. Sex offenders often appear unable to realistically appreciate what it is like from a child's point of view to be introduced to sexuality at such a young age. The nature of this difficulty becomes salient when we notice an increase in the development of sexual behaviour in an environment devoid of children's facial expressions, body language, speech, and so forth. In considering such factors in detail, I believe we can try to distil what general circumstances, cognitive patterns, and emotional dynamics are involved in pedophiliac relationships, in order to help us manage them not only on the Internet but also in the general community. If lack of impulse control, as another example, is a significant precipitating factor in pedophiliac behaviours, then we can focus on devising new ways of restricting adults from Internet zones in which they have quick, immediate access to children, and at the same time we can place more emphasis on impulse control cognitive therapy programs for individuals with pedophilia.

The Internet has certainly come a long way since its early beginnings in the 1970's. It will surely grow exponentially in size and become increasingly complex. And so will the sophistication with which we will be able to connect with one another. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to handle this sophistication, least of all those with limited cognitive and emotional maturity—our children. This leaves some adults with grossly disproportionate dominion over this fragile segment of the population. I believe a thorough appreciation of the dynamics involved in this variant of the `digital divide' can help us tackle this inevitable problem—and the more complex problems underlying it.

Copyright © 2001 Eddy Elmer. All Rights Reserved.

Eddy Elmer is a psychology student at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. He may be reached through his website, http://www.eddyelmer.com