By: Marci Frye, Syvada Workman, Alexis Hayes, And Ian Jacobs

Child predators are criminals who target minors. Characteristics play into the way child predators tend to act out. Such as predators seeing children as sexual objects. This had led to missing children and sex trafficking through the decades. This is not something predators just plan out overnight. It takes time for them to figure out what their victim should look like and what is more vulnerable such as short, skinny, and long hair. Most predators target children over the internet because children are more vulnerable online than in person. This may lead to parents not knowing what their child may be doing online and who they are talking to. 

In West Virginia alone there have been over 450 more cases of online exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2021 than in 2020, and about 650 more cases than in 2019. California has the most human trafficking incidents. (1,334) Texas is in the second spot with 987 cases. Risk factors include recent migration or relocation, substance use, mental health concerns, involvement with the child welfare system and being a runaway or homeless youth. 

This crime does not just impact children but also teenagers to young adults. It impacts the entire world as we know it. This is a crime that has been taken as an easy let-off, which is why more children go missing every day. This causes kids and teenagers to fear the outside world. I was raised to fear people who looked too hard at me or came close to me who I did not know. This should not be an issue for any child. A kid should be able to live their life and go outside and play without fearing someone kidnapping them or being touched without consent. 

Children are taught at an early age “don’t talk to strangers.” Does this really stop predators from assaulting or kidnapping a kid? No. This just causes less attention to be attracted to an area which helps them more than it harms the predator. How does this work on social media as well? Parents cannot supervise everything. Parents make mistakes just as much as kids do. So how does telling your kid “Don’t talk to strangers” help them when they are online talking to someone, they think they know. This is a common mistake between parents due to misconceptions about how child predators think and work. 

How can we help this situation? First, we can start with therapy and counselling for people who have sought help for pedophilia. We can also help by giving more care for assault victims at an early age because most pedophiles have been sexually abused when they were younger, so they start to act out on how they felt when it happened. They need to know they are not the only ones who have gone through this, and they are not alone. They also need to know that they should not make their victims feel the same just because it happened to them.