There are few things that terrify me more than pedophiles.  A couple weeks ago I was searching online for summer camps for the kids and came across an article that totally scared the shit out of me.  Are you thinking of sending your kids to summer camp?  I hate how much I worry about these freaking idiot pedophiles.  But if you could have a look inside their minds you might worry too.  The internet is making it easier for these perverts to hook up and help each other find the perfect places to practice their sickness.

On the Web, Pedophiles Extend Their Reach

This is just a short bit of the article – you really should read the WHOLE article

“At first blush, the two conversations — taking place almost simultaneously in different corners of the Internet — might have seemed unremarkable, even humdrum.

In April, with summer fast approaching, both groups of online friends chatted about jobs at children’s camps. Did anyone, one man asked, know of girls’ camps willing to hire adult males as counselors? Meanwhile, elsewhere in cyberspace, the second group celebrated the news that one of their own had been offered a job leading a boys’ cabin at a sleep-away camp.

But participants in the conversation did not focus on the work. “Hope you see some naked boys in your cabin,” a man calling himself PPC responded. “And good luck while restraining yourself from doing anything.”

The two groups were made up of self-proclaimed pedophiles — one attracted to under-age girls, the other to boys. Their dialogue runs at all hours in an array of chat rooms, bulletin boards and Web sites set up for adults attracted to children.

But it is no longer just chatter in the ether. What started online almost two decades ago as a means of swapping child pornography has transformed in recent years into a more complex and diversified community that uses the virtual world to advance its interests in the real one.

Today, pedophiles go online to seek tips for getting near children — at camps, through foster care, at community gatherings and at countless other events. They swap stories about day-to-day encounters with minors. And they make use of technology to help take their arguments to others, like sharing online a printable booklet to be distributed to children that extols the benefits of sex with adults.

The community’s online infrastructure is surprisingly elaborate. There are Internet radio stations run by and for pedophiles; a putative charity that raised money to send Eastern European children to a camp where they were apparently visited by pedophiles; and an online jewelry company that markets pendants proclaiming the wearer as being sexually attracted to children, allowing anyone in the know to recognize them.

These were the findings of a four-month effort by The New York Times to learn about the pedophiles’ online world by delving into their Internet communications. In recent months, new concerns have emerged about whether the ubiquitous nature of broadband technology, instant message communications and digital imagery is presenting new and poorly understood risks to children. Already, there have been many Congressional hearings on the topic, as well as efforts to write comprehensive legislation to address the issue.

But most of those efforts have focused on examining particular instances of harm to children. There have been few, if any, recent attempts to examine the pedophiles themselves, based on their own words to one another, to gain a better recognition of the nature of potential problems.

Last week, that world attracted new attention after reports that John M. Karr, who was arrested last Wednesday as a suspect in the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, apparently used Internet discussion sites intensively in efforts to communicate with children, sometimes about sex. In e-mail messages to a journalism professor that investigators believe were written by Mr. Karr, statements about children seemed to echo the online dialogue among pedophiles.

“Sometimes little girls are closer to me than with their parents or any other person in their lives,’’ the e-mail messages say. “I can only say that I can relate very well to children and the way they think and feel.’’

The recent conversations among pedophiles that were examined by The Times took place in virtual rooms in Internet Relay Chat, a text-based system allowing for real-time communications; on message boards on Usenet, which has postings by topic; and on Web sites catering to pedophiles.

In this online community, pedophiles view themselves as the vanguard of a nascent movement seeking legalization of child pornography and the loosening of age-of-consent laws. They portray themselves as battling for children’s rights to engage in sex with adults, a fight they liken to the civil rights movement. And while their effort has brought little success, they celebrated online in May when a small group of men in the Netherlands formed a pedophile political party, and they rejoiced again last month when a Dutch court upheld the party’s right to exist.”

If that wasn’t bad enough I happened to catch a repeat Law & Order SVU that was originally aired Oct 09, it featured a plot about an organization that justifies sex between adult men and minors (boys or girls) as a civil right.  Listening to this storyline made me sick and I had to find out more – does this group really exist?  I mean, pedophiles portraying  themselves as battling for children’s rights to engage in sex with adults, a fight they liken to the civil rights movement? No way this could be happening in our society in this day and age, right?

WRONG!

There are groups out there that will make you cringe – such as -North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) -

This is who they say they are:  (this is really warped)

“As never before, our society is beginning to recognize the value and richness of human diversity. The manifold nature of our humanity appears in the emotional, spiritual, and physical attractions between people. Attractions between men and boys can be found in every society, crossing lines of race, age, temperament and occupation. They form a sure basis for mentoring and friendship traditions the world over. Man/boy love is exceptional only for the degree to which it is still misunderstood in cultures derived from Northwestern Europe. Most man/boy relationships are based on mutual respect and affection, and strongly desired by both partners. Such relationships do not harm anyone, and often entail many benefits for both man and boy. Boy-lovers and boys alike respond to the needs of those they love — needs for affection, understanding, and freedom.

Do you have kids?  Do you worry about pedophiles?  I’ve written about this before.  It’s a big fear of mine.  I guess I watch to much TV – but it scares me to think of someone doing something to my kid and me not being able to help.  I worry that I overreact and am harming my kids by overprotecting them.  But how do you protect them unless you lock them in your house and keep them away from everyone. (from the same article above)

“But the Internet soon presented an alternative. In the early 1980’s, through postings on bulletin board systems, pedophiles went online to swap illegal images. From there, they could easily converse with others like themselves, and they found theirs to be a community of diverse backgrounds.

In the conversations observed by The Times, the pedophiles often discussed their personal lives. Their individual jobs were described as being a disc jockey at parties (“a high concentration of gorgeous” children, a man claiming to hold the job said); a pediatric nurse (“lots of looking but no touching”); a piano teacher (“I could tell you stories that would make you …well… I’ll be good”); an employee at a water theme park (“bathing suits upon bathing suits!!!!!”); and a pediatrician specializing in gynecology (“No need to add anything more, I feel”).”

Ok, moms and dads how do you handle this? Do you overprotect? Ignore? How do you stay sane when your kids leave the house

Profile of A Pedophile

Though there is no hard and fast profile of a pedophile, here are some general characteristics:

• Popular with both children and adults.
• Appears to be trustworthy and respectable. Has good standing in the community.
• Prefers the company of children. Feels more comfortable with children than adults. Is mainly attracted to prepubescent boys and girls. Can be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.
• “Grooms” children with quality time, video games, parties, candy, toys, gifts, money.
• Singles out children who seem troubled and in need of attention or affection.
• Often dates or marries women with children that are the age of his preferred victims.
• Rarely forces or coerces a child into sexual contact. Usually through trust and friendship. Physical contact is gradual, from touching, to picking up, to holding on lap, to kissing, etc.
• Derives gratification in a number of ways. For some, looking is enough. For others, taking pictures or watching children undress is enough. Still others require more contact.
• Finds different ways and places to be alone with children.
• Are primarily (but not always) male, masculine, better-educated, more religious than average, in their thirties, and choose jobs allowing them greater access to children.
• Are usually family men, have no criminal record, and deny that they abuse children, even after caught, convicted, incarcerated, and court-ordered into a sex offender program. The marriage is often troubled by sexual dysfunction, and serves as a smokescreen for the pedophile’s true preferences and practices.
• Are often, but not always, themselves victims of some form of childhood sexual abuse.
• Even if the pedophile has no children, his home is usually child-friendly, with toys, books, video games, computers, bikes, swing sets, skateboards, rec room, pool, snacks – things to attract children to his home and keep them coming back. Usually the items reflect the preferred age of his victims.
• A female pedophile usually abuses a child when partnered with an adult male pedophile, and is often herself a victim of chronic sexual abuse.
• A pedophile can act independently, or be involved in an organized ring, including the Internet, NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association), and other pro-pedophilia groups. Some pedophiles recognize that their behavior is criminal, immoral, and unacceptable by society, and operate in secrecy. Some are quite open and militant about their practices and advocate the normalization of pedophilia under the guise of freedom of speech and press, and uses innocuous language like “intergenerational intimacy.”