Is Posting Children\'s Pictures Online Dangerous?

Our organization works online with pedophiles every day. Real ones. Our abuse prevention programs are based on the information we gathered by infiltrating internet circles of them to learn how they act. Such first hand research gives us a unique perspective to answer this question that nobody else can.

First you must ask yourself…..how likely is this? This fear plays into peoples traditional concepts of what they think a pedophile is. The old candy offering, stalking child murderer in the park perception is about as far from reality as you could possibly get. This is not who your average pedophile is, and continued beleif in such falacy’s is what has children molested right underneath their parents noses, while they are spending time worrying about an online picture.

In reality, the fear that a pedophile is somehow going to see your child’s picture, then become obsessed, go through the nearly impossible feat to identify your child in the first place, then develop an elaborate plan to somehow abduct your child, is about as likely as your child being hit with a small asteroid, twice in the same day.

Let me introduce you to the real pedophiles. First, they are opportunists. While they may have preferences as to the way a child looks, (hair color, eyes, exc) the children they molest, are based on the ones they have an opportunity to be around. And yes, nearly every pedophile is around children every day. We catch less than one percent of them, and they exist in a population well into the millions, likely into the tens of millions in the United States alone. Our organization has recently come up with mathematical equations based on the most widely accepted numbers, indicating that around one in every 20-30 adults has active pedophile tendencies.

Second, most are everyday people just like you and me. While they have a sick perversion that they struggle controlling, in other ways, they are completely normal. They don’t envision torturing or killing your child, and rarely would one even consider an abduction. They convince themselves that the child is Ok with the abuse, and survive off the fact that children will in most cases oblige without a fuss. To understand the mindset better, we urge all parents to visit any pro-pedophile chat room, or get onto our website and read through the "pedophile letters pdf" we have collected for parents, which illustrates the split mindset of your average pedophile, found on the parent information page. This should give you an added glimpse into the reality of most molestations, and how they occur.

Your average pedophile lives through fantasy and gratification through media. Few actually maticulously plan on molesting a child, but instead lose control of their urges when they are around a child for an otherwise normal reason. Although there are a few out there who do plan out a molestation, most of the crimes happen on a whim, because an individual struggling with such urges loses control.

Third, this fear of a pedophile finding your child’s picture online, and then stalking your child for evil purposes, is nothing more than an urban legend. It has never happened. I can also tell you from the thousands of pedophiles I have worked with, even among the most extreme of them, it is unlikely that such a thing ever will happen. It is simply not how they work. They do not need to go through elaborate heists to get children, they are around kids every day. Even the ones who might consider an abduction, are going to base it off a child they know, or one they have access to based on geographic location, nothing else. Your child is not the only cute little kid out there, and even among the extreme, they will find victims based on how easily they can get to them.

While the fear parents have about this may be real, it is unfounded. A thief is not going to spend days fumbling on a solid steel lock with a thousand tumblers, when the door 3 feet away is already open and swinging in the wind. Likewise, a pedophile will not take the most difficult, complex route to a victim. They are surrounded by opportunities every day.

The only real justification to such a claim, is that pedophiles are picture collecters. Sometimes they do peruse through photo sites for pictures of children. However, the reality is this: The most common internet pictures of random kids used by pedophiles are taken with a telescopic lens, and without you even knowing about it. Beach pictures, in the mall, walking down the street. The family pictures you take and distribute to relatives without the help of the internet are much more likely to end up in the hands of a pedophile. While it is a discomforting thought for parents to think that pictures of their child may ever be viewed by a pedophile,short of locking your child in the basement, it is a reality of the age, and it happens just as much when you don’t post your pictures online. Picture sharing over the web is a convenience. It is something loved by family and friends. When we breed a society where inocent pictures are too dangerous to be shared, then we’ve simply added another atrocity to the list.

Society would be much better off, if we could stop wasting time on these misguided fears, and instead apply the same effort to abuse prevention. Lost in all this is the fact that nearly every incident of sexual abuse is preventable, with simple steps that parents can take. The and lawmakers have done a great disservice to the public, by focusing on the problem of sexual abuse from the extreme fraction of a percent, and reinforcing traditional views of pedophiles which are far from accurate. If you don’t understand the way they work and act, you can’t protect your children. The ploys pedophiles use can be stopped, if parents simply take the time to address the things that make their childrren vulnerable to begin with. With simple steps that nearly every parent can take, just about every molester can be kept at bay.

We understand that it can be hard to find ways to address this topic with your kids, which is why we offer safety programs that teach kids how to defeat abuse simply by reading them a children’s book. Don’t get us wrong, the subject takes more than talking with your children about good and bad touches, but if parents can spend 10-15 minutes a month, reading them a different children’s story from our preventions series, each one which addresses a different aspect of prevention psychology, parents can build up a wall with their children that no molester can break.

For more information on this or other important child safety issues, please visit http://www.keepyourchildsafe.org