A dozen or so times in the past six months, the Pender County sex crimes investigator has knocked on parents' doors to alert them that their child's online page seems to be inviting trouble.

Some of the site creators brag about people they've slept with. Others show themselves scantily dressed. And some make claims of being much older than they really are.

His aim is to avoid more cases like the five-inch thick file behind his desk with more than 2,600 pages of e-mails between a 20-something man and a young teenager he met online. An arrest is imminent.

Some parents still remain almost totally ignorant about the risks online, he said. But two cases this summer in Brunswick and Pender counties have underscored the dark side of MySpace and other social networking sites like Facebook, which have exploded in popularity in recent years.

In the first instance, Jonathan Nylen, a 19-year-old from Virginia, allegedly befriended a 14-year-old Hampstead girl online, starting a relationship whose back-and-forth love notes are preserved on their MySpace pages, which remain unchanged since before Nylen's arrest for statutory rape in July.

In the other, Boiling Spring Lakes Police Officer Luke Stidham faces four felony charges related to accusations of having sex with a 14-year-old girl whom he allegedly communicated with using MySpace. Stidham's MySpace page featured several messages from local teenagers until it was taken down several days ago.

Such cases just maye be a glimpse of a larger problem. Officials usually find out only when something goes awry, including pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and a parent or guardian finds out.

"It's probably much more common than those instances reflect," said Jorge Figueroa, deputy director of Wilmington Health Access for Teens. "We know sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes."

New Hanover County Assistant District Attorney Connie Jordan has seen demonstrations where FBI agents set up profiles as pre-adolescent children, enter an online chat room and within minutes are receiving questions from adults pushing the conversation to sex and trying to find out where they live.

But at the same time the number of offenses that she sees that began online is tiny compared to more "traditional" sexual crimes involving neighbors, family, church members, and others from all walks for life, she said.

Eryn Roberts, a senior at New Hanover High School, said she spends three to six hours a week on the site. Nearly everyone at school has a MySpace page or an account with a similar site, she said. For her, it's a great way to find new music, stay in touch with far-flung camp friends, communicate with groups and even contact teachers.

When she needed a college recommendation this summer, she sent the request through her teacher's MySpace page sure it would be received promptly.

She's cautious, setting up privacy settings that reduce the visibility of her site and ignoring strangers' messages. But on balance, MySpace is a big positive, she said. Her mother isn't paying close attention to the page but wouldn't find anything amiss if she did, Eryn said.

The sites fill a social need, providing kids a place to experiment with identity as teenagers always have and allowing them to socialize, said Sally MacKain, an associate professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

So many kids have their days booked solid with school and extracurricular activities, just hanging out is harder than it used to be, she said. Cyberspace provides a modern alternative.

"There aren't any malt shops on the corner like there used to be in the old days," MacKain said. "It isn't that different from the way young people used to go cruising on Friday evenings or go to a mall or spend hours and hours on the phone."

But social nature that makes some in law enforcement nervous. Kids are trained to be wary of strangers from an early age. Yet safe at home, they may feel less reason to keep their guard up, said Lawson, the detective.

Perpetrators can sidle up to easy targets, finding the lonely, the bored and the sexually bold based on their Internet postings to groom for an encounter, he said. Introductions often begin simply and move quickly to suggestions of intimacy that may occur under the parents' noses.

"Your field of potential victims has certainly been expanded tremendously by the Internet," said Rex Gore, district attorney for Brunswick, Columbus and Bladen counties.

Statistics compiled by the FBI show that the federal agency investigated 183 computer-related child pornography cases in North Carolina between 2002 and the end of 2005. The N.C. Attorney General's Office has partnered with state and local parent-teacher groups to get the word out, with officials speaking to parents and students about online safety.

The FBI works cases across the state, and agents are assisted by the State Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement. Members of the SBI computer crimes unit routinely conduct forensic examinations of computer hard drives to retrieve electronic evidence. In addition, the FBI has undercover agents who go into chat rooms popular with children and teens.

One of the first things parents can do is reduce the opportunity to stray into dark corners in the first place. The father of three, Figueroa said parents should learn how to do an Internet history search, adding it generally isn't wise to allow teens unfettered access to the Internet.

His house rules allow his kids to go online only in common rooms and only with the screen facing passers-by. MacKain has similar rules, saying her 14-year-old can use the family laptop in his room at certain hours, but only with the door open and only with the understanding she can walk in any time and see what he's doing.

Parents, she said, may want to give their child a day's notice that they want to see their MySpace page, avoiding the mistrust that comes from sneaking up on them, yet still making it known the page is on their radar.

Still, MySpace is just a tree in the much larger forest of issues teens and parents face, Figueroa said. He said he hopes parents are having conversations about sexuality and responsibility before an incident with something like MySpace forces their hands.

And for the person fighting the temptation of having an inappropriate relationship online, Lawson offers this cold shower: It may be hard for officials to find the cases, but once they do, the reams and reams of evidence that never go away online can make building a case a snap, something the 20-something man behind the 2,600 e-mails is likely about to find out.

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