OFFICER TO TELL HOW TO KEEP KIDS FROM INTERNET PREDATORS

Parents have no choice about getting a computer education, said police detective Michael Sullivan.

"If you have a computer and have access to the Internet, your child can view pornographic sites and come into contact with molesters, no if's, and's or but's about it," said Sullivan, a computer crimes expert who will speak Tuesday night at Southeast Missouri State University.

"If you don't educate yourself about these things, your child will be a victim," he said.

Sullivan, the lead investigator for the Illinois attorney general's task force on child pornography and Internet investigation, will give a presentation for the public at 7 Tuesday at Dempster Hall's Glenn Auditorium on the university campus.

"This is designed to help parents see how the people in these different computer communities relate to each other," Sullivan said.

He will go over the different types of crimes committed on the Internet, explain how sexual predators get into certain Web sites and show different types of computer software to block out undesirable information.

During the evening, Sullivan will also give an Online demonstration showing how sexual predators can make contact with children. The detective will select some chat rooms, where online conversations take place, and create a fictional child to join in.

"I ask the audience how old the child should be and we create a personal profile, and then we allow the predators to approach," he said.

No photographs will be shown, but the chat room language is lewd enough that he takes a break to permit people to leave.

"We can't control the content from the Internet," he said.

Only eight states have computer crime investigation units, he said. Internet crimes remain unknown territory for both parents and police.

"There's not much training for parents offered besides what we're doing," said Sullivan, whose primary job is detective for the Naperville Police Department in suburban Chicago. "And police are not prepared at all. Most don't even understand e-mail yet."

But ignoring technology won't make the issues go away, he said. In the 18 months the computer task force has operated, 40 people have been arrested for child sex crimes.

Most of those arrested are middle-aged men, middle to upper class, with the means to buy a computer, Sullivan said.

"This is not a crime committed by the lower end of the economic spectrum," he said.