GREENSBORO, NC — A North Carolina woman is upset that a man was able to send pornographic images to her children…over their X-box! WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

A gaming system a mom bought for family entertainment and to use as a means to keep in contact with other family members across the country, became an avenue for predators to send pornographic images to her children.

She says she won’t ever be able to undo what her children were exposed to, but she wants other parents to be aware of what could happen.

“Had you told me when I bought all this equipment, a warning of some type that you were going to allow pedophiles into my home, I wouldn’t have bought it. My children would not have the systems,” Robin Espejel says she feels like she’s been tricked. She had no idea who could gain access to her children through a video game system.

It was when 10-year-old Jacob opened a message when the trouble started.

“He comes running in here frantic, telling me, I need to come look, I need to come look. Something is wrong with the Xbox,” Espejel explained.

She says she thought a cord must have come loose, so she sent her 20-year-old son, Christopher Marshburn to check it out, “I come in here and I click on the message and up pops this, this, this gruesome, nasty pornographic picture.”

Espejel says she was disgusted when she looked and saw someone sent a picture of a man’s genitals to their system.

Marshburn says his little brother’s reaction was the worst, “He starts to cry and he’s scared that it is something he’s done, and it’s nothing he’s done.”

Marshburn warned the user he was contacting children, but the Xbox user continued to send pictures of himself, most of them too graphic to show on TV.

“These are kids that are receiving nude pictures of other people, grown men. That’s a pedophilic act,” said Marshburn.

“I called the police last night, saying, how do you stop a pedophile from coming through the Xbox? You stop them from coming through the computer, they need to be stopped through this as well,” said Espejel.

She said two officer visited her home to check out the photos, but they told her she would need to contact Xbox. She says Xbox support told her they could only delete the gamer’s ID name, but it’s possible he may have several, and he could continue to try to make contact.

 The online gaming threats continue. The latest medium? The Nintendo Wii. Parents and guardians must be on the lookout for sexual predators who continue to find unique ways of contacting kids.

The Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force recently received complaints of an adult male contacting Missouri children through a Nintendo Wii interactive game called “Animal Crossing: City Folk.” Over the past months, the task force and other agencies have received reports of young children receiving inappropriate contact through a variety of internet based games and programs. The children’s ages have ranged between seven and 11-years-old. All were girls. Three children in Missouri  and one in the state of California have been contacted by the subject.

Predators are growing in number and getting smarter. Let’s show them they’re in for a fight.

CHICAGO - Worries that the Internet and social networking services like MySpace pose a threat to child safety may be overblown, a report by industry, academics and technology experts suggests.

The report, which will be released on Wednesday, suggests that the biggest threats to children’s safety online may come from other children, and that their own behavior could contribute to the trouble they encounter.

“Minors are not equally at risk online,” the report said. “Those who are most at risk often engage in risky behaviors and have difficulties in other parts of their lives.”

It is the product of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, created last February by 49 state attorneys general to address what many of them said was the growing problem of sexual predators soliciting children online.

“The risks minors face online are complex and multifaceted and are in most cases not significantly different than those they face offline, and … as they get older, minors themselves contribute to some of the problems,” the study said.

The Task Force includes executives from social networking services like Facebook and News Corp’s MySpace, as well as other technology and media companies including Yahoo Inc, Verizon and Time Warner Inc’s AOL.

The findings, if accepted by the law enforcement community, would be important for Facebook and MySpace. Both social networking sites have large numbers of younger members, and parents have expressed concern over strangers approaching their children on those sites.

Both have signed agreements with the attorneys general to increase their efforts to protect their youngest members from sexual predators.

MySpace was the subject of a 2006 lawsuit by a 14-year-old girl who said she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old man she met on the site.

Released by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the report suggests that the biggest threats to children’s safety online come from other children.

“Youth report sexual solicitation of minors by minors more frequently, but these incidents, too, are understudied, underreported to law enforcement, and not part of most conversations about online safety,” the task force said.

Online sexual predators are a concern, but the task force said that many of the studies it reviewed were based on law-enforcement cases that pre-dated social networking sites.

They said bullying and harassment, especially by peers, are the most frequent problem minors face both online and elsewhere.

Not all agreed with the findings. Task force member John Phillips, chief executive of Aristotle Corp, a company that makes software specifically intended to verify the identity and ages of people on the Internet, said blaming children and their parents is not the answer.

“There is absolutely a role for parents and for minors themselves to be a lot more careful,” he said in a telephone interview. He said industry also needs to do more to protect children from sexual predators.

MySpace, which helped to fund the study, said in a statement it fully supports the key conclusions of the report, noting that “there is no single technological solution to the problem of youth online safety and no single technology that fully addresses any specific risk minors face.”

Other companies that helped pay for the study include Microsoft Corp, AOL, MTV Networks parent Viacom, AT&T, Symantec, Turner Broadcasting, Loopt and Linden Lab, creator of the Second Life online community.

Any thoughts? We’d sure like to hear them.

German shooter Tim Kretschmer, 17, began the killing spree at his old school. “I’m fed up with this bloody life,” a German official quoted Tim Kretschmer as writing early Wednesday. Heribert Rech, interior minister of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, told journalists that media reports indicate a teenager from Bavaria reported the Internet conversation to his father. According to Rech, Kretschmer continued: “Everyone laughs at me. No one recognizes my potential. I mean this seriously. I have got a weapon here and tomorrow I am going to go to my former school and give them hell. “Maybe I would escape, keep your ear to the ground. You’ll hear from me tomorrow morning. Just notice the name of the place, Winnenden. Don’t say anything to the police.” The youth who was reading the comments didn’t take the message seriously, Rech said, and responded “TLL,” which translates to “laughing out loud,” or “I’m splitting my sides with laughter.” “I need to see some pictures before I believe it,” the teenager added.

The portal is owned by someone in the United States, and measures have been taken to preserve the conversation, Rech said. Rech said some pornographic images were found on Kretschmer’s computer, and he played violent computer games, but the findings were typical of male teens.

Kretschmer started treatment for depression at a clinic in April last year, then attended outpatient sessions.

It was not known when he stopped attending the sessions but it is known he had started studying business. Rech said the killer was described as silent, but not unfriendly.

Hours after the reported Internet exchange, Kretschmer, 17, did go to his former school — Albertville-Realschule school in Winnenden, near Stuttgart — and killed nine students and three teachers.

He then killed three other people — one at a nearby psychiatric clinic, and two at a car dealership — before he was spotted by police about three hours and a half hours later.

The article documented that this week in Spotsylvania, Va., two boys, ages 15 and 18, were charged with solicitation and possession of child porn with the intent to distribute after an investigation found they sought nude pictures from three juveniles – one in elementary school. Last month, District Attorney William Shaw filed a juvenile petition against a 15-year-old girl for sending nude photos of herself over the Internet. This activity is bringing charges that could amount to becoming a registered sex-offender for up to 20 years. 

To add insult to injury, the victim, who has ironically become the perpetrator, could become a rogue-like celebrity over the Internet. Material of this kind usually hits the web rather quickly and spreads like a cancer. Before long, images of our young girls could find a resting place on the hard drives of sexual predators, as well as millions of other people who have access to the Internet. 

Education is paramount. If society does not inform our youths of the dangers of posting nude pictures of themselves on social networks, as well as texting them via cell phone, we may have to face the reality that our children will carry the stigma of being sex offenders.

Many affirm that relationships strengthen over time. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. They spend a great deal of time together, either falling deeply in love or growing to hate each other. In most cases, affection deepens the more time people spend with each other. With this in mind, how critical is it for guardians to monitor the online gaming time our kids consume?

Is game time too much time? Not that there is anything wrong with playing online video games, but do our children spend too much time interacting with their friends? Or perhaps sexual predators? Make no mistake, pedophiles and predators have direct access to our kids through online gaming. They spend an incredible amount of time with our children, befriending them and grooming them. If the experts are right in affirming that relationships strengthen over time it is not far-fetched to believe our kids are developing a fondness for predators.

The wolves are not the only problem, however. Too much time at the console leads to a lack of responsibility, a deficiency in face-to-face social interaction and high risk addiction. Kids who spend too much time gaming have also gained weight and have slacked off in their school work, causing their grades to take a nosedive. In rare cases, some kids have literally perpetuated the violence they’ve become accustomed to while gaming online.

So, when is game time too much time? It’s hard to determine. Every scenario is different. Every child is different. And online gamers are a small community when compared to the social network craze. Nevertheless, online game time should be monitored. Or should it? Some would argue it’s the children’s prerogative and there is a plus to it. It keeps them off the streets. But at what price?

1 Million Safe would love your thoughts on this matter.

I have read the journal.  I have access to and frequently read the emails.  My rule is, do not delete any text messages so that I can read them later when I am sitting under the dryer at the beauty salon.  I monitor computer activity with a software called Tell It PC.  AND I would remove the bedroom door without a moments hesitation.  The right to privacy is theirs when they leave my home. I do not always invade her privacy but if I choose I will do so without guilt or regret.  I take this approach to find out about my child’s life, issues or potential problems. Others might dissagree but I feel it is my responsibility to know what my children have under their beds or in their closets or on their computers. If the parents of the two Columbine boys snooped around their closets maybe they would not have been able to stash their weapons and kills so many innocent children. Maybe by finding marijuana baggies one can prevent a kid from becoming an addict of or distributor of drugs or save a depressed girl’s life from suicide by discovering she is being cyber-bullied by a mySpace hoax .  I actively seek out information that I might not want to know even if it means snooping.  Be mad at me now, but you will love me and thank me for it later.  I can wait.  Better safe than sorry…

But should our rappers’ influence be a platform to promote gang related activity? To push the issue further, should our rappers endorse gangs who recruit young kids on the Internet? Face it; kids spend just as much time on the Internet as they do learning new lyrics. This is a difficult scenario, considering that some rappers are gang members themselves.  And with the influence of hip hop music coupled with the influence of social networks, kids are flooded with a deluge of suggestions.

So, the question looms. Should rappers use their influence to steer kids into a more constructive path by speaking out against netbanging? Or should they just let well enough alone? Keep in mind that it’s the welfare of our kids at stake

Child predators are more sophisticated and more dangerous than ever before. Not only have they developed clever techniques to lure children into their webs, but they have become more defiant against the law. The boldness of predators has expanded and the internet is their most useful tool in locating and interacting with minors. Though the internet is an excellent tool to access information, unfortunately, it gives pedophiles instant access to unsuspecting children. Through online communication, predators have the ability to develop long term internet relationships with their potential victims. What follows the cyberspace rapport is physical contact. Technology has only made the predators’ job easier.

The pedophiles’ techniques are getting even more drastic. Predators are forming their own online communities and they are actively uniting against legal authorities. Their communities are also devising methods of influencing legislation and public opinion on the exploitation of minors. According to the December, 1997 Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children, Dr. Nancy Faulkner provided documentation on one of the largest organized pedophile groups on the internet, the Man/Boy Love. Their website community was entitled “Free Spirits,” which is still in effect. This group of internet pedophiles had even developed their own creed, The BoyLove Manifesto. Dr. Faulkner also documented that within the “Free Spirits” internet community were pages of links to other websites that include personal pedophile web pages, pedophile organizations, pedophile web forums, pedophilia history and documents supporting the pedophile viewpoint. The Online Summit was over eleven years ago and the predator viewpoint was drastic then. Imagine now.

If we are to protect the children, these drastic methods require drastic countermeasures. Predators have taken a “no holds barred” approach to manipulating American’s youth, and America can no longer stand by and “wish” these communities away. “Beating around the bush” and cryptic language are no longer viable options. Straight talk, raw and uncut may be one of many practical solutions (i.e. education training, seminars, etc.). Stricter parental guidelines on internet use, along with blocking software are other practical methods as well. Training and education on the value of “restrictions” and “discipline” are major techniques that parents and guardians can use to counterattack the predators’ strategy.

But at what cost? Is it a double edged sword? Many experts believe so. No matter what the entity, the pros will always square off with the cons. Though our kids can access major educational tools from this social network, as well instant communication with friends, they can also draw dangerous attention from predators, pedophiles, gangs and hate groups. Keeping in touch with their friends can be a plus, but that same open communication has an undercurrent of destruction. It’s clear. Oftentimes, the same things that make us laugh are the same things that make us cry. Facebook is no different.

How do we make sure the double-edged sword doesn’t cut into children? It’s obvious and all specialists agree. Adults, guardians and parents need to be more active in monitoring our children’s Internet activity. Get nosy. Get involved. Set privacy restrictions. Study the network. Watch out for suspicious activity and reject unknowns adding our kids as their friends. If we are to make sure that Facebook is an enjoyable experience, we must be more proactive. Otherwise, the double-edged sword of social networking may penetrate and cause massive injury to our children.