It has been a few years now since I had been channel surfing on my TV and came across a show called "To Catch A Predator" on NBC. Being a Sci-Fi nut I was thinking of something much different than what I was seeing on the TV. Needless to say what I saw was breath taking to say the least. Here were grown men preying upon kids for sex. To me this is just about as bad of a crime as can be imagined. If it isn't bad enough that kids have to put up with school and peer pressure, just throw some sick adult men in there to really mess their worlds up. I paid close attention to the show and to the group Perverted-Justice that worked with Dateline's Chris Hansen.

I hold a position in my town where I believe I need to pay attention to what is out in the world that can effect my community. The most important thing in our community is the children. When I saw this threat, I had to do something about it. I created an online persona, a fake identity, if you will, on the net and went in search of predators. I was amazed at what I had found. Not only did I find predators, I found lots of them. I could hardly believe it. I spoke to our police chief and informed him to what I was doing to see if law enforcement would take such a crime seriously. He was very willing to work with me on this. I informed him that I actually had a 21 year old male willing to come to our town to have sex with what he thought was a 13 year old girl. Only to find out when this individual showed up, YES he showed up, that he was really 24. This man is awaiting his day in court right now. It has been awhile now and there was much media attention at the time but things have died down. Recently, there has been a young girl in a neighboring community that has been molested by an adult male that she met online. This only proves that people need woken up again to this subject. That is where this site comes in and the future community forums I am planning. This threat must always remain in the forefront of parents' minds. Protect your children no matter what the cost.

The site is geared towards Internet Predators but there is so much more that our kids need to be aware of. There is Cyber Bullying and Child Exploitation. I am sure there is more to be concerned about.

When thinking of this site I was mainly concerned about my community and the surrounding communities. It is easy to see that it has much more of a reach than that now. It will, however, have links to specific Pennsylvania sites to help people in my local state react to and learn about these particular threats. I know for a fact that they can be in the dark about some of these things our kids are so in tune with. So I hope this along with community presentations I am planning will heighten the awareness of this very important issue. When I played the part of a 13 year old girl and had an adult male travel so far to have sex with her, it did catch media attention and people listened, but it is time to keep this topic in the forefront of parent's minds and keep it there. We can't let our guard down because when we do, a child gets abused and I don't want to see that in my area or any area again.

Sincerely,
Bill
wlatchford@protectchildrenonline.org