Child-Sex Stings on Internet

Stephen Hudak, reporting for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has put together an informative piece about the identification and arrest of middle-aged men who troll the Internet for young boys and girls. Perverts have been repeatedly successful at luring adventurous and naive children to rendevous with them for purposes of sex.

One incident involved a 39-year-old former camp counselor, Donald Mularski, who was recently released from prison for criminal sexual conduct with a child. He signed on to an AOL chat room and lured a 13-year-old boy to a hotel room where he raped him. Mularski was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In another incident, a 38-year-old father of two, David Pedro Villanueva, used the Internet to lure a 14-year-old Akron area girl into having sex with him. An investigation revealed he had tried to arrange similar trysts with three other girls he met online. A court sent him to prison for five years.

And, there are many others.

"In any one given hour, probably 400 to 500 kids around the country are contacted for some kind of a tryst of a sexual nature," said Robert Cornwell, executive director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association.

That's right, folks. In any one given hour, 400 to 500 kids are contacted.

To counteract the growing trend, law enforcement detectives now patrol Internet chat rooms attempting to identify the perverts before they can harm a child. The detectives do this by impersonating naive and troubled youngsters and, thereby, lure the criminals into identifying themselves. Once their identity is known, the perverts are arrested and sent to prison.

I've only one comment. Laws are currently not tough enough on these perverts. In my opinion, luring a kid via the Internet leaves no doubt that the pervert is guilty. They've documented their premeditations, methods and intentions. There is no way to plead mistaken identity or misinterpretation of intentions. Based on those facts, sentences should automatically be doubled for child-sex crimes perpetrated via the Internet.