Crime & Safety

Roosevelt Teachers Get a Lesson in Online Safety

Prosecutor's office provides lessons on internet safety, cyber bullying and sexting.

The footage looked innocent enough. A grown man who was a postmaster and volunteer fire chief, strolling in the strip mall parking lot waiting for someone. Totally innocent, a scene played out daily in towns across America.

But the scene suddenly changed, undercover cops swept in, looking for the man who they had been talking to in online chat rooms, the cops posing as teen girls. The guy had chatted with them looking to arrange an illegal tryst. The footage continued, showing the contents of a bag of merchandise the man had purchased from the drug store; condoms and lubricant.

The scene could have played out in anytown USA, but played out in Cranford in the Drug Fair parking lot on South Avenue. Following this, audio was played of a message left on the answering machine of a 13-year old boy. The message was of a grown man encouraging the boy to meet up with him and saying that if the boy did not get what he wanted for Christmas, that the guy would provide it for him. The almost sinister sounds of the voice and the words caused jaws to drop, with looks of shock geared towards the front of the room.

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The jaws that dropped were those of the faculty of Roosevelt Intermediate School during a Monday afternoon presentation on internet safety. The presentation, conducted by the Union County prosector's office, played out four times Monday, as students, faculty and parents learned how to be safe online, along with the dangers of cyber bullying.

The presentation by Sgt. Mike Hoose, the head of the cyber crimes unit for the prosecutor, focused on safety tips. For the teachers and parents, he played the same presentation as he did for the students, trying to show them how to keep children safe online. For the teachers, it was stressed that they play an important role since many student have a greater trust in them than their parents.

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"These kids are going to come to you, because you are offering yourself," said Westfield DARE Officer Gary Moore, who coordinated the lecture series. "In some cases they are more comfortable with you than they are with Mom and Dad."

Hoose stressed to the teachers that the students and the parents need to become more aware of the potential dangers found online. He said that many parents do not take an active role in their children's online lives, often not showing that much understanding of computers themselves. He said many middle and high school students will minimize screens with social networking sites and live chats when their parents are in the room, letting their parents think they are working on their homework. Hoose cited statistic s that show that three quarters of teens have a computer in their bedrooms, which Hoose noted prevents parents from being able to see the exact things their children are doing online.

Hoose talked about the undercover work his unit has done to catch child molesters, which he said surprises many who do not think such a crime could happen to children in Westfield or suburban Union County. He said investigators from his unit will pose as underage teens in chat rooms and typically receive 20 chat invitations within minutes of entering the chat rooms. The invitations are typically from adults looking for sexually explicit conversation.

Hoose said that on several occasions, the adults have made plans to meet one of the "teens" they meet online, traveling to a Union County destination for the meeting. He played surveillance video from before the adult is arrested, which showed the adults milling about waiting to meet the "teen" at well known locations adjacent to Westfield. Roosevelt teachers looked concerned they began to recognize locations in Cranford, Clark and Kenilworth. Hoose noted that he sees similar shock from students and parents when they realize how close to home the arrests are occurring.

In one case, the perpetrator was a wrestling coach at Cranford High School, who had talked online to an 11-year old boy who contacted authorities. Following the arrest of Dominic Digiacchino several years ago, Hoose and his unit discovered more than they knew.

"After that arrest, two other kids came out and said they had online conversations with him," Hoose said. "More people had conversations with him than we thought."

During the presentations Monday morning with Roosevelt students, Hoose asked them about conversations they've had online and whether they've been with people they did not know. He said a majority of students admitting to having online chats with people they did not know.

The other poll, Hoose takes with students is looking at involvement with social networking sites. He noted that there is a popularity with Twitter and AOL Instant Messenger, but most students have been centered on Facebook. During the chats, he also polls the students to see how many Facebook friends they have.

"In one class today we were up to a 1,000," he said of the poll he took at Roosevelt on Monday morning.

Hoose explained to the teachers that most of the kids were friending people on Facebook to fit in. That the desire to have many contacts on the social networking site allowed them to conform to the expectations of middle school. He also noted that many of the students did not even know the people who they were friending on the site.

Another aspect of internet safety, primarily concerning cell phones, Hoose discussed was sexting. The practice of sending sexually charged text messages or sexually explicit pictures has been growing among teenagers. This has included students texting nude photographs of former love interests around after a break-up in an attempt to embarrass the ex. Hoose noted the practice is illegal as it is posession of child pornography.

Hoose also touched on the growing aspect of cyber bullying amongst middle and high school students. Cyber bullying normally occurs in several forms, including sending bulying e-mails and instant messages online or through texting, which are the most common. Most sophisticated methods include creating websites attacking a teenager and creating online polls judging the physical appearance of a teenage girl. A national statistic Hoose discussed shows that 75-percent of students across the country have visited a website attacking another student.

Like traditional in-person bullying, cyber bullying leads to low self-esteem and other issues for the victims. In extreme cases, there have been several cases of students commiting suicide after being victims of cyber bullying. In the most extreme case, a teenage girl killed herself after being cyber bullied by who she thought was a teenage boy, but rather was the mother of a cheerleading rival.

In a sobering statistic, Hoose noted that between 60 to 90-percent of middle school students who take part in cyber bullying end up with a criminal conviction by the age of 24.

Stewart Carey, Roosevelt's principal, explained to his staff that the issues surrounding cyber bullying, sexting and chat room safety have become more of a concern for him and other educators.

"Internet safety has been something all middle schools and high schools are going through," he said. "Last week the Third Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to hear a case on whether students have the right to send sex messages."

 


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