Predator stopped in Seattle

Police arrested a 42-year-old man outside a shopping mall when he was rendezvousing with "a 13-year-old girl" he'd been "grooming" in online chat. "The receptive young girl never existed; detectives had posed as her online, trading sexually explicit banter with the suspect as part of a ruse to catch Internet pedophiles, The Olympian reports. Tech-savvy policework like this is happening more and more worldwide, and if I linked to all the coverage, this news service would just be about that. So I'm linking to this short, clear-cut article in case it's a useful discussion point for family discussions on chatting with strangers online. In many of these stories, 13-14 is the age level particularly vulnerable. This story points to several tactics of predators, including their perusing and using young people's online profiles in blogs, IM, chat, etc. (so kids need to be careful about what they reveal in them). Police also noted two approaches these people take: quick, predatory attempts to meet kids offline and patient "grooming," or relationship-building using various communication modes - chat, email, IM, phone, etc. - over weeks and sometimes months so targeted kids don't feel they're talking to strangers. (Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this piece out.)