Me again! :seeya:
In some ways, I think the Internet has also caused many predators to be bolder than they were before. If "you" (not you personally, but I can't type "a person" each time, so we are going with the generalized "you throughout) were a pedophile in the 1970s or 1980s, most likely you thought you were "rare" and you certainly didn't poll your pals to see if any of them shared your interest. Via the internet, you can easily find whole COMMUNITIES of people JUST LIKE YOU and you can do so anonymously.
Just as Websleuths helps us to unite and be stronger than we are alone, a group of CSOs can offer one another support, advice, etc., and after a while, maybe you DON'T feel you are so alone, so weird, so reviled. In fact, you hear other posters talking about how what you are doing (or want to do) is a form of LOVE of children, that you are NOT a predator, and that your acts should not be criminal... you are merely misunderstood. You start swapping photos, video, and helpful hints and before you realize what has happened, you feel you have enough information to successfully choose and groom a child, to do so without being caught.
The internet is like a support group for perverts. No matter WHAT your preference/fetish you can find huge groups who accept your behavior as normal and you may become emboldened by the rhetoric to act on your fantasies.
I have also wondered if clothing styles may have increased the activity of SOME pedophiles while simultaneously decreasing the interest of others. If you look at a 9 year old girl and she is in a ruffled party dress, patent leather shoes, and frilly ankle socks, you KNOW our society would think you are "wrong" for having sexual thoughts about her. But in the world of today, the same fashions available for adult women are also made in child sizes. A 9 year old can dress just like an adult, and many do. So someone who prefers a sterotypical child would be less likely to be interested in a 9 year old wearing makeup and dressed in a midriff-baring top, exposing a pierced navel, while men who NEVER thought of children sexually might find this attire to be "confusing" to them, as the little girls do not appear to be little girls at all.
moment? Check out the interactive amber alert map which also shows all current attempted abductions in the United States. It is completely eye opening
