To illustrate the characteristics of sexual predators on the Internet, we first want to talk about a specific case: in Russia, between the 1970s and 1990s, there were a series of murders and sexual assaults: Andrei Chikatilo, a middle-aged man, murdered more than 50 people, the vast majority were young women and boys (boys and girls), after being expelled from school where he taught for mistreating his students , found work as a factory worker, as a result his criminal activity took shape.
Taking advantage of the trips he had to make, he used the stations as a place to capture his victims. They are always vulnerable children or young people who do not know the railways. His story was told years later in the famous film “Citizen X”. “.
- Sexual predators are an endemic evil that has existed throughout history.
- However.
- As with other types of crimes.
- Their actions have changed over the years.
- Andrei Chikatilo adapted to his time: he used the stations as a meeting point to contact his victims.
These behaviors have been improved as new information technologies have emerged, such as the Internet, the management of social networks, chats or forums allows to connect with more people, the space in which they move facilitates the selection of victims, which can generate a plausible lie, very easy to maintain by the form of contact used.
Grooming refers to how sexual predators harass the Internet. Speed of information and lack of security are two of the main factors driving the practice of these crimes.
Studies have shown that abusers are generally men of different ages, although the highest incidence occurs between 18 and 50 to 60 years. Likewise, the most vulnerable victims are the young.
Although we have already performed a small physical characterization, there are several psychological characteristics that would explain their strategies and the way they are:
Sexual predators know how to adjust the situation to their liking, they continually create cognitive distortions that disarm the victim, in this way they manage to trick the other person to get some benefit from it, with a child it is usually very simple.
The sexual predator will create an imbalance of power in which the child will be subjected to his or her wishes. At the beginning of the dialogue, you will try to master the conversation to achieve what you want: you want to get the satisfaction you feel when you have control over someone It is possible that in front of adults, in a daily situation, there will be a change of roles and the sexual predator becomes an easily dominated person.
They create a situation of comfort and convenience with the environment: they identify with the problems of others, understand and care about what is happening to them, their tastes and desires, etc. They know how to adapt to situations. The sexual predator’s low self-esteem makes it difficult for him to maintain a healthy relationship with people his age, so they approach people who are more vulnerable and much more accessible.
They treat the victim as an object to satisfy their sexual desires. Contact through a screen, without seeing who you are talking to, promotes the loss of consciousness that the other is a person. The victim is treated as a ‘thing’. In this way, the predator justifies his criminal acts by blaming the victim, claiming, for example, that it was provoked by the victim.
Currently, one of the questions that society asks is: “How do we protect children and young people from such predators?There is no doubt that young people are among the population most affected by these crimes and cybercrime in general. born on the cusp of technology and childhood and adolescence are phases in which they create their social ties, in this way communication is the most important thing for them, so we must pay close attention to the websites they visit, as we do with physical spaces.
“We need to give a broader dimension to the virtual world, a greater importance to the question: where were you?