Do you think that the typical Internet sex offender lies about his age, pretends to be another child, then abducts his victim after tricking the boy or girl into a secret tryst?

Well, that isn't the way it happens, an expert on online sex crimes argued before the United States Senate yesterday.

Dr. David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire told the Senate Commerce Committee that, after studying hundreds of cases, his research team found "a different reality."

• Teenagers, not young children, are the typical online sex crime victims. And the "predominant crime scenario" rarely involves violence or abduction. These take place, respectively, in only five and three percent of cases.
• The overwhelming majority of adult offenders do not conceal who they really are. 80% are "quite explicit about their sexual intentions towards these kids."
• Violent sex crimes are atypical in these cases. By the time the adult and the teenager have met, the former has typically engaged in weeks of "very often quite explicit online conversations that play on the teen's desire for romance, adventure, sexual information and understanding."

  Finkelhor characterized these teenagers as "troubled youth with histories of family turmoil and physical and sexual abuse."

• In 73% of the cases studied, the teenager went to meet with the adult offender more than once.

  "Half the victims were described by police as being in love with or feeling close friendship with the offender," Finkelhor told the committee.

  In 25% of the cases, "the teenager ran away from home to be with the offender."

Finkelhor said that, given this research, educators and authorities need to rethink what puts kids at risk on the Internet. The big risk factors do not include having a blog, a MySpace account, or giving out personal information.

"What puts kids in danger for these crimes is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers, and having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web—" Finkelhor argued, such as "going to sex sites and chat rooms, and interacting with lots of people there."

"To prevent these crimes, we have to take on more awkward and complicated topics and start with an acceptance of the fact that some teens are curious about sex and looking for romance and adventure," he concluded. "So we need to educate them - about why hooking up with a 32 year old has major drawbacks like jail, bad press, public embarrassment; and why they should be discouraging, not patronizing, sites and people who are doing offensive things online, fascinating as they may seem."

Finkelhor heads the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. His report is based on hundreds of cases taken from police agencies, and several national studies of youth Internet users.