How to Protect Your Children From Online Sexual Predators

A police notice to parents on the dangers minors face online.Credit...New Jersey State Police

By Michael H. Keller

Sexual predators have found an easy access point into the lives of young people: They are meeting them online through multiplayer video games and chat apps, making virtual connections right in their victims’ homes.

Many of the interactions lead to crimes of “sextortion,” in which children are coerced into sending explicit imagery of themselves.

We asked two experts how families could best navigate gaming and other online activity that can expose children to sexual predators.

Dr. Sharon W. Cooper is a forensic pediatrician at the University of North Carolina and an expert on sexual exploitation. Michael Salter is an associate criminology professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Both are internationally recognized for their work in the field of child sexual abuse.

The following recommendations have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Set rules for when and how your child can interact with others online.

Dr. Cooper: The conversation on online safety should begin with a statement that there will be rules because a parent loves his or her children and wants to see them be safe and have the best that is in store for them.

I empower parents to know that they control access and should always exert that control. Research has shown that parents who mediate online behavior have the most resilient children. It is about time online (not too much), content (age-appropriate and prosocial) and parental empowerment (access is a gift, not a right).

Spend time with your child on new games and apps.

Dr. Salter: Gaining some shared experience on a new service helps you identify risks, builds trust and provides an opportunity for nonconfrontational conversations. You can find out more about different platforms by going to trusted sources such as Common Sense Media and the eSafety commissioner website in Australia, which provide useful summaries of new apps and their safety features.

Talk to your child about online safety, and listen.

Dr. Salter: You can start by talking about our rights and responsibilities online. You can emphasize that, online, we have an obligation to treat people well, and a right to be treated well by others.

You can brainstorm with your child the kinds of situations where they might feel unsafe, and the strategies they can use to stay safe. Set reasonable rules, but keep the conversation open so they feel comfortable coming to you if something happens that concerns them.

We’ve had situations where children have stayed silent on really major sextortion cases for months because they were already in trouble online and didn’t want to be in trouble for breaking the rules, too. Groomers and abusers rely on silence.

Encourage your child to raise any concerns with a trusted adult.

Dr. Salter: Red flags that an online “friend” can’t be trusted: They tell the child to keep the relationship secret; they ask for a lot of personal information; they promise favors and gifts; they contact the child through multiple platforms and services; they initiate intimate discussions about the child’s appearance; and they insist on meeting face to face.

The first thing is for children to raise concerns with adults they trust. They should know never to send a nude image on the internet and remember they don’t have to do anything they don’t want to do. Their most common mistake is not listening to themselves when they feel uncomfortable.

Be on the lookout for warning signs of abuse
Dr. Cooper: We try to avoid making children feel they are wholly responsible for their safety because if they fail, they develop significant guilt and self-blame. That being said, the most important warning signs are too much time online and angry reactions when parents put in a cease-and-desist order. Others are contact with a “voice” they do not recognize, and contact with someone requesting inappropriate behavior, including duping their parents.

Educate your child about blocking users who make them uncomfortable.

Dr. Salter: While exploring a platform or app with your children, find out how to report and block users who make them feel unsafe. Encourage them to use this option if they receive unwanted or uncomfortable contact. If the user persists, contact your local police.

Don’t blame your child if abuse arises.

Dr. Salter: The first step is to remain nonjudgmental and reassure your children that they are not in trouble. Groomers rely on children feeling too ashamed to tell, so it’s important to be supportive.

The most common mistake parents make is embarrassment — being unable to create a space in their relationship with their children where it’s O.K. to discuss their emerging interest in sex. It’s really hard to talk to children about their sexuality.

Take charge as your child’s online protector. No one else will.

Dr. Cooper: The industry is not about the business of promoting safety. I have yet to see a new cellphone purchase accompanied with a “How to keep your children safe with this device” pamphlet. We should empower children and show them how to report to trusted authorities.

To report online child sexual abuse or find resources for those in need of help, contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.

How to Protect Your Children From Online Sexual Predators

A police notice to parents on the dangers minors face online.Credit...New Jersey State Police

By Michael H. Keller

Sexual predators have found an easy access point into the lives of young people: They are meeting them online through multiplayer video games and chat apps, making virtual connections right in their victims’ homes.

Many of the interactions lead to crimes of “sextortion,” in which children are coerced into sending explicit imagery of themselves.

[Read The New York Times’s investigation into the problem.]

We asked two experts how families could best navigate gaming and other online activity that can expose children to sexual predators.

Dr. Sharon W. Cooper is a forensic pediatrician at the University of North Carolina and an expert on sexual exploitation. Michael Salter is an associate criminology professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Both are internationally recognized for their work in the field of child sexual abuse.

The following recommendations have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Set rules for when and how your child can interact with others online

Dr. Cooper: The conversation on online safety should begin with a statement that there will be rules because a parent loves his or her children and wants to see them be safe and have the best that is in store for them.

I empower parents to know that they control access and should always exert that control. Research has shown that parents who mediate online behavior have the most resilient children. It is about time online (not too much), content (age-appropriate and prosocial) and parental empowerment (access is a gift, not a right).

Spend time with your child on new games and apps

Dr. Salter: Gaining some shared experience on a new service helps you identify risks, builds trust and provides an opportunity for nonconfrontational conversations. You can find out more about different platforms by going to trusted sources such as Common Sense Media and the eSafety commissioner website in Australia, which provide useful summaries of new apps and their safety features.

Talk to your child about online safety, and listen

Dr. Salter: You can start by talking about our rights and responsibilities online. You can emphasize that, online, we have an obligation to treat people well, and a right to be treated well by others.

You can brainstorm with your child the kinds of situations where they might feel unsafe, and the strategies they can use to stay safe. Set reasonable rules, but keep the conversation open so they feel comfortable coming to you if something happens that concerns them.

We’ve had situations where children have stayed silent on really major sextortion cases for months because they were already in trouble online and didn’t want to be in trouble for breaking the rules, too. Groomers and abusers rely on silence.

Encourage your child to raise any concerns with a trusted adult

Dr. Salter: Red flags that an online “friend” can’t be trusted: They tell the child to keep the relationship secret; they ask for a lot of personal information; they promise favors and gifts; they contact the child through multiple platforms and services; they initiate intimate discussions about the child’s appearance; and they insist on meeting face to face.

The first thing is for children to raise concerns with adults they trust. They should know never to send a nude image on the internet and remember they don’t have to do anything they don’t want to do. Their most common mistake is not listening to themselves when they feel uncomfortable.

Be on the lookout for warning signs of abuse

Dr. Cooper: We try to avoid making children feel they are wholly responsible for their safety because if they fail, they develop significant guilt and self-blame. That being said, the most important warning signs are too much time online and angry reactions when parents put in a cease-and-desist order. Others are contact with a “voice” they do not recognize, and contact with someone requesting inappropriate behavior, including duping their parents.

Educate your child about blocking users who make them uncomfortable

Dr. Salter: While exploring a platform or app with your children, find out how to report and block users who make them feel unsafe. Encourage them to use this option if they receive unwanted or uncomfortable contact. If the user persists, contact your local police.

Don’t blame your child if abuse arises

Dr. Salter: The first step is to remain nonjudgmental and reassure your children that they are not in trouble. Groomers rely on children feeling too ashamed to tell, so it’s important to be supportive.

The most common mistake parents make is embarrassment — being unable to create a space in their relationship with their children where it’s O.K. to discuss their emerging interest in sex. It’s really hard to talk to children about their sexuality.

Take charge as your child’s online protector. No one else will.

Dr. Cooper: The industry is not about the business of promoting safety. I have yet to see a new cellphone purchase accompanied with a “How to keep your children safe with this device” pamphlet. We should empower children and show them how to report to trusted authorities.

To report online child sexual abuse or find resources for those in need of help, contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.

Troubled Girls Were Sent to This Town to Heal. Many Were Lured Into the Sex Trade Instead

Hawthorne Cedar Knolls Residential Treatment Center in Mount Pleasant, N.Y., is being closed. Some residents were forced into a sex-trafficking ring, federal prosecutors said.CreditCreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times

By Nikita Stewart and Benjamin Weiser

Tucked inside a neighborhood in a small town just north of New York City, Hawthorne Cedar Knolls was on idyllic, green grounds. It was landscaped to give some peace and stability to the emotionally troubled teenagers who were placed there.

But in recent years, Hawthorne, located in the town of Mount Pleasant, began experiencing unusually high rates of teenagers going missing from its campus. Staff, law enforcement officials and advocates for children said they knew that some of the missing residents had fallen victim to sex traffickers. Many of the girls in the rehabilitation center had been placed there in the first place to rescue them from the sex trade.

On Thursday, the breadth of a pipeline carrying young women out of Hawthorne and into prostitution became clearer. Nineteen people were charged in a sex-trafficking ring that exploited young women and girls as young as 13 years old, federal prosecutors said.

At least 15 victims were in the child welfare system, including nine who were residents of Hawthorne, the prosecutors said.

The defendants named in a series of indictments unsealed this week face charges including sex trafficking of a minor and conspiracy, which carry maximum sentences of up to life in prison.

The indictments do not name the residential center in Westchester County, referring to it only as “Facility-1,” but it is Hawthorne, an official at the center and two other people briefed on the matter said. Some of the defendants are in their 20s; the two oldest are 59, prosecutors said. None of the defendants were staff members of Hawthorne.

The charges were announced by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, the F.B.I. and the Police Department.

Some details of the alleged scheme were contained in the unsealed court papers.

One defendant, Hubert Dupigny, 34, recruited a 16-year-old girl from Hawthorne who worked for him as a prostitute until he was arrested in December 2016, prosecutors wrote. At that point, the girl went to work for his brother, Hensley Dupigny, 29, who posted advertisements for her on Backpage.comand collected most of her earnings, the prosecutors said.

A prosecutor said at a court hearing in August for Hensley Dupigny that the alleged conspiracy was “particularly egregious” because the defendants sought out minors in the social services system, often children with behavioral or emotional problems who had become wards of the state.

“These were especially vulnerable victims,” the prosecutor, Elinor L. Tarlow, said. “They didn’t have stable residences. They didn’t have family support. They didn’t have guidance.”

She said the accused traffickers capitalized on that vulnerability. “They approached victims as if they had a romantic interest in them,” she said. “They offered them a place to stay and then they pushed them into prostitution.”

As part of the investigation the government spoke to “multiple victims, who provided firsthand accounts,” Ms. Tarlow added.

The Dupigny brothers have each pleaded not guilty. A lawyer for Hubert Dupigny wrote recently to the court, “Mr. Dupigny adamantly denies that he is guilty of any of the charges” or that he ever forced, threatened or coerced anyone to engage in prostitution. Lawyers for the two men either declined to comment on Thursday or could not be reached for comment.

Hawthorne, which had been heavily scrutinized for its failure to keep teenagers from running away, has been closing in phases all year, said Chris Giglio, a spokesman for the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, which operates the facility. Mr. Giglio added that the nonprofit was cooperating with federal investigators.

Only six children remain and are expected to be moved to a new location by Tuesday, said Monica Mahaffey, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Children and Family Services.

The Jewish Board announced it would close Hawthorne earlier this year, following pressure from state legislators, severe sanctions from the state child welfare office and growing complaints from residents of Mount Pleasant about teenagers wandering the town, particularly as they headed to trains back to New York City.

In 2016, the town began charging the Jewish Board and another nonprofit that runs a nearby residential treatment center $250 for every call about missing children in an effort to push the nonprofits to beef up security.

In one recent year, about 73 percent of the 188 residents placed at Hawthorne by the city’s child welfare agency were reported missing, a significantly higher rate than at comparable programs. As a residential treatment center for children with emotional and behavioral problems, Hawthorne was not as restrictive as other facilities for children with more severe mental issues.

Though the nonprofit installed new fencing and took steps to foster trust with the teenagers in hope of dissuading them from running away, the momentum to close Hawthorne was too strong. The federal investigation was also well underway.

David Hansell, the commissioner of New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, said in a statement that his agency was cooperating with the investigation.

“We have zero tolerance for trafficking, and we have strong programs in place to protect young people from being trafficked and exploited,” he said.

Susan Beachy contributed reporting.

Reading Aloud to Young Children Has Benefits for Behavior and Attention

By Perri Klass, M.D.

It’s a truism in child development that the very young learn through relationships and back-and-forth interactions, including the interactions that occur when parents read to their children. A new study provides evidence of just how sustained an impact reading and playing with young children can have, shaping their social and emotional development in ways that go far beyond helping them learn language and early literacy skills. The parent-child-book moment even has the potential to help curb problem behaviors like aggression, hyperactivity and difficulty with attention, a new study has found.

“We think of reading in lots of different ways, but I don’t know that we think of reading this way,” said Dr. Alan Mendelsohn, an associate professor of pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine, who is the principal investigator of the study, “Reading Aloud, Play and Social-Emotional Development,” published in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers, many of whom are my friends and colleagues, showed that an intervention, based in pediatric primary care, to promote parents reading aloud and playing with their young children could have a sustained impact on children’s behavior. (I am among those the authors thanked in the study acknowledgments, and I should acknowledge in return that I am not only a fervent believer in the importance of reading aloud to young children, but also the national medical director of Reach Out and Read, a related intervention, which works through pediatric checkups to promote parents reading with young children.)

This study involved 675 families with children from birth to 5; it was a randomized trial in which 225 families received the intervention, called the Video Interaction Project, and the other families served as controls. The V.I.P. model was originally developed in 1998, and has been studied extensively by this research group.

Participating families received books and toys when they visited the pediatric clinic. They met briefly with a parenting coach working with the program to talk about their child’s development, what the parents had noticed, and what they might expect developmentally, and then they were videotaped playing and reading with their child for about five minutes (or a little longer in the part of the study which continued into the preschool years). Immediately after, they watched the videotape with the study interventionist, who helped point out the child’s responses.

“They get to see themselves on videotape and it can be very eye-opening how their child reacts to them when they do different things,” said Adriana Weisleder, one of the authors of the study, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University. “We try to highlight the positive things in that interaction — maybe they feel a little silly, and then we show them on the tape how much their kid loves it when they do these things, how fun it is — it can be very motivating.”

“Positive parenting activities make the difference for children,” said Dr. Benard Dreyer, a professor of pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine and past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who was the senior author on the study. He noted that the critical period for child development starts at birth, which is also a time when there are many pediatric visits. “This is a great time for us to reach parents and help them improve their parenting skills, which is what they want to do.”

The Video Interaction Project started as an infant-toddler program, working with low-income urban families in New York during clinic visits from birth to 3 years of age. Previously published data from a randomized controlled trial funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development showed that the 3-year-olds who had received the intervention had improved behavior — that is, they were significantly less likely to be aggressive or hyperactive than the 3-year-olds in the control group.

This new study looked at those children a year and a half later — much closer to school entry — and found that the effects on behavior persisted. The children whose families had participated in the intervention when they were younger were still less likely to manifest those behavior problems — aggression, hyperactivity, difficulty with attention — that can so often make it hard for children to do well and learn and prosper when they get to school.

Some children were enrolled in a second stage of the project, and the books and toys and videotaping continued as they visited the clinic from age 3 to 5; they showed additional “dose-response” effects; more exposure to the “positive parenting” promotion meant stronger positive impacts on the children’s behavior.

“The reduction in hyperactivity is a reduction in meeting clinical levels of hyperactivity,” Dr. Mendelsohn said. “We may be helping some children so they don’t need to have certain kinds of evaluations.” Children who grow up in poverty are at much higher risk of behavior problems in school, so reducing the risk of those attention and behavior problems is one important strategy for reducing educational disparities — as is improving children’s language skills, another source of school problems for poor children.

But all parents should appreciate the ways that reading and playing can shape cognitive as well as social and emotional development, and the power of parental attention to help children flourish. Dr. Weisleder said that in reading and playing, children can encounter situations a little more challenging than what they usually come across in everyday life, and adults can help them think about how to manage those situations.

“Maybe engaging in more reading and play both directly reduces kids’ behavior problems because they’re happier and also makes parents enjoy their child more and view that relationship more positively,” she said.

Reading aloud and playing imaginative games may offer special social and emotional opportunities, Dr. Mendelsohn said. “We think when parents read with their children more, when they play with their children more, the children have an opportunity to think about characters, to think about the feelings of those characters,” he said. “They learn to use words to describe feelings that are otherwise difficult and this enables them to better control their behavior when they have challenging feelings like anger or sadness.”

“The key take-home message to me is that when parents read and play with their children when their children are very young — we’re talking about birth to 3 year olds — it has really large impacts on their children’s behavior,” Dr. Mendelsohn said. And this is not just about families at risk. “All families need to know when they read, when they play with their children, they’re helping them learn to control their own behavior,” he said, so that they will come to school able to manage the business of paying attention and learning.