interesting
thank you for your comments which are duly noted, however - soft advice sites such as childline, barnados, thinkyouknow, webwise etc etc etc are fine, they all give friendly advice to parents and children which is great and much needed. What I would say to you though is "how many parents actually read them?" Do a small survey to a few parents you know and you'll be amazed at the replies. I would be very surprised at how many said yes they do read the advice and pass it on to their children. In my own daughter's school, they have never broached the subject of internet safety - amazing huh?
Hotline is a different kind of site entirely. It's main function is a process of reporting sites, not individuals. In our research for
www.LemurLoops.com we found tons of pro-paedo sites thet we reported to both hotline and a detective in Harcourt St. We didn't even get an acknowledgement from Hotline and no further progress reports from either - the sites are still live.
The primary tactic of
www.LemurLoops.com is indeed scare tactics. I felt we needed to wake people up to what's going on online and if a gallery of paedophiles along with their crimes can wake up just one parent and their child remains safe, then it is a good day's work.
The whole point behind
www.lemurloops.com is also to speed up the process of making "grooming" a crime in Ireland by way of a petition. The official reason it's not a crime in Ireland is because the lawmakers of this country are yet to define "grooming" - how rediculous is that? At present, it is perfectly legal for a paedophile to talk online with potential victims, to send "images" and to webcam with them and to talk as explicitly as they like, not untill they meet the child in person has a crime been committed - by which time it may be too late. Even if the predator is caught at the time of the encounter, the child is already tainted - as responsible professional web-workers we need to do all we can to stop this - I know we never will but we can keep kids safer through education.
www.lemurLoops.com has never pretended to be a child friendly website - it is there to educate parents who need to be wise enough and mature enough to be sickened by what they never want to think about - that this could happen to them, to their children - we advise not to ban kids from the net but rather to teach them to use it responsibly, and in their presence and to openly talk about what they might see or hear online.
To say MySpace etc is not a danger to children is absurd. Would you put your child in any enviroment which had just one peado let alone 90,000? Why else would MySpace ban 90,000 known sex offenders from it's site - how many are not known? To say children shouldn't be on it in the first place is quite naive too - would you say to a victim of a paedophile "Tough luck kid, you should be watching Barney anyway" - not at all, just because Bebo says you must be 13 to join doesn't turn kids off - they think it's cool, their friends have a page, they want one too - we can't make kids play by the rules but we can try keep them safe and use these sites responsibly.
Let's also not forget, the site also explains netlingo, chatrooms, social networking P2Ps and a whole minefield of stuff that parents and teachers just don't know about. My own parents for example wouldn't know how to turn on a computer but happily watch my younger sister play away, alone in her room, to her heart's content - scary huh?
On our resources page we have links to many government supported websites which are aimed at children from countries such as America, Australia and the UK.
http://www.lemurloops.com/resources.php
By using scare tactics we are just coming at a different angle from all of the "friendlier" sites and like I say, if just one parents sits up and takes notice, then happy days, maybe 1 less victim.
While I'm here I'l also invite any web-professional to write their own article for our guest writer's blog to have it posted. Links can be found for such with email addresses etc or write directly on the blog
Thanks in advance
- your site isn't even live my friend, what the ... ?
