Adults with a sexual interest in children can identify, contact and groom potential victims via the Internet. No one is sure how common online predation has become. It's clearly involved in a small minority of all child sexual assaults. Still, advocates for children say that online predation represents an entirely new kind of threat and poses risks that are difficult to address. The danger is growing as more children, and more adults with a sexual interest in children, go online.
Child molesters go where the children are, and the children are in cyberville.
Online predation also may be much more common than is generally recognized, he and other advocates for children said. The anonymity of computer networks, the secretive nature of child sexual predators and the shame felt by many victims conspire to keep formal complaints down and the activity hidden. Banks agreed that police complaints are a poor measure of the problem. Probably only one in 10 crimes gets reported. Indeed, many of the incidents thus far have been discovered almost by accident.