Mike Butcher just written a post about the case of a 15 year-old Welsh girl getting herself into what could have been a very dangerous situation as a result of a relationship she developed with two men via the social network Netlog.The rest of Mike's piece explores Netlog's role and responsibility with regard to this drama. The reason I'm referring to it here is that it is also a good example of how the online predator/prey relationship typically operates. In the case Mike refers to, the 15-year-old Welsh girl pretended she was 18 and befriended 19 and 20-year-old Turkish guys via the social network Netlog before running away from home to meet them. The thing is that the truth about how the predator/prey relationships works is highly counterintuitive. If you follow your instincts you would guess or assume that typically the predator poses as another child in order to lure in and entrap their unwitting victims. The fact is that in most cases the minor is often seeking out and collaborating with and sometimes deceiving the adult. This is an uncomfortable notion to say the least. Uncomfortable enough to make it a taboo subject. But the facts bear it out. And are laid out by the world's foremost quantitative scientists studying this field. Its just over a year since the top researchers on child online safety gathered to deliver their research at Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization: Here's some excerpts from the transcripted video inserted below: 04:50 Dr. David Finkelhor,

The predominant sex crime scenario, doesn’t involve violence, stranger molesters posing online as other children in order to set up an abduction or assault. Only five percent of these cases actually involved violence. Only three percent involved an abduction. It’s also interesting that deception does not seem to be a major factor. Only five percent of the offenders concealed the fact that they were adults from their victims. Eighty percent were quite explicit about their sexual intentions with the youth that they were communicating with ... So for example, Jenna – this is a pretty typical case – 13-year-old girl from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chat rooms, had the screen name “Evil Girl.” There she met a guy who, after a number of conversations, admitted he was 45. He flattered her, gave– sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And eventually, he drove across several states to meet her for sex on several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested in her company, she was reluctant to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities. Many of these cases have commonalities with this particular instance. In seventy-three percent of the crimes, the youth go to meet the offender on multiple occasions for multiple sexual encounters. The law enforcement investigators described the victims as being in love with or feeling a close friendship for the offenders in half the cases that they investigated. In a quarter of the cases, the victims actually had run away from home to be with these adults that they met online. So this is very different, I think, from the predominant impression that one might get from how these cases are being presented in the media. And also, I just think the inferences people make. And then I think it has a lot of implications for prevention just to go to that point. We can talk about some of these things in greater detail. But first of all, we think it means that our prevention messages really need to be directed at teenagers themselves in language and format and from sources that they relate to.

13:44 Dr. Michele Ybarra,

First, things that we assume to be true did not seem to be worn out by the data. For example, we assumed that if adult men are meeting young women online, deception must be involved. We assumed that if young people are posting and sending personal information to other people, this must place them at greater risk for victimization. The data suggest that the vast majority of young people who are meeting adults online are not deceived and instead, knowingly, at least as knowingly as a young person can, consent to this relationship... Over and over, our assumptions turn out to be not reflective of the experiences that youth tell us. This is important because if we’re to keep young people safe, we need to understand what truly puts them at risk and what the risks truly are.

Of course we should continue to do everything in our power to tackle online predators. But the research shows that is only part of the problem. We need to remember is that children, by definition, need to be protected from themselves. To rework that choice phrase of Clay Shirky's, we need to remember that 'a youth is its own worst enemy'. The truism that 'a youth is its own worst enemy' is useful as it helps us remember that tackling an internal enemy is always a hard problem. It reminds us we need to take a different approach. Its a reminder that cuts through and clarifies the task we are faced with. People will clamour for us to treat the symptoms. And even champion us when we do. But the phrase 'a youth is its own worst enemy' can help us to focus on the class of problem we have before us. And remind us that the only way to solve the problem is find a way to tackle the root cause.