In the 3 1/2 years this column has run, Mike Sullivan is the first person to be profiled twice.

When I wrote about him three years ago, Sullivan was the detective in charge of the Naperville Police Department’s Internet crimes unit. Today, he helps run the high-tech crimes bureau for the Illinois attorney general’s office, concentrating 100 percent of his time on Internet child exploitation.

This means that every day, Sullivan works on these horrors: “Child pornography, solicitation for sex, performing sexual acts with a child, videotaping or engaging a child to videotape himself during sex,” he listed. “Also, harassment, stalking and cyber-bullying.”

In three years, the technology sexual predators have at their disposal has advanced dramatically.

Community sites like MySpace.com, Xenga.com and Tagged.com are popular among kids and serve as a detailed menu for predators.

“It’s not anonymous chat anymore like it was three years ago,” Sullivan explained. “These sites have documentation of maybe a year of a child’s life. There are pictures, hobbies, likes and dislikes.”

Also, the price of hardware commonly used for child exploitation has plummeted.

“Three years ago, Web cameras cost $100, today they’re $10,” he said about the small, stationary video cameras that connect to PCs. “Camera-enabled cell phones weren’t around three years ago. Digital cameras cost a lot more.”

Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan compares today’s technology with an even earlier era:

“When I was growing up, you always had Officer Friendly come talking about Stranger Danger and the guy that was going to flash you in the park,” Madigan recalled. “Now all these predators are on the Internet. Kids are being abducted. Kids are being raped. Technology has allowed criminals to do unthinkable things.”

Thankfully, the technology used capture these criminals has progressed equally dramatically.

Consider the story of Taylor March, who ran a day-care center in her Minonk, Ill., home.

Last year, March boasted in a Yahoo chat room that she was going to broadcast herself molesting a toddler through her Web camera. There were six children in her home at the time.

An Ohio police officer was in the chat room. From the offender’s Internet protocol address, he knew she was in Illinois. The officer called Sullivan’s office.

“Within 10-15 minutes, we were able to ID her and actually capture an image of the woman via her own Web cam,” Sullivan said. “We then sent it to the Minonk police chief.”

Total time elapsed between Taylor’s boast and police walking into her house: a couple of hours.

“It should have been quicker,” said Sullivan. “Unfortunately, even with us being that quick with it, she was able to molest one child.”

The fast communication between the police agencies is a result of the Internet Crimes Against Children task force, to which the Ohio officer belonged. The task force operates in 46 states.

In Illinois, 50 federal, state and local agencies are members (www.illinoisicac.org). The coordinator: Michael Sullivan.

What can parents do to keep their children safe?

“The No. 1 thing I would tell parents is that a sexual predator’s strongest weapon online is secrecy,” said Sullivan. “And a parents’ strongest weapon against sexual predators is communication.”

There’s a “grooming” that takes place when a predator prepares a child for exploitation.

“It’s the same grooming sex predators have used for decades. What they want to do is create a friendship with a child.” And, with it, the secrecy.

“He’ll say things like, `This is our secret. You can trust me. You don’t tell anyone. I won’t tell anyone.’”

The best thing parents can do, Sullivan said, is a decidedly low-tech activity: talk to your kids.

“Sit down with them. Let them show you how they search. Ask them what sites they have created. But keep in mind while you’re doing this: do not overreact. The worst thing you can do is put it into their minds that you’re going to be mad at them, punish them, or you’re going to take the computer away.”

Also, look at what they use for their screen name. See if they’re using their home address. “Explain to them how this might be harmful,” Sullivan said.

And if the kids insist on privacy and refuse to share the information?

“Kids aren’t as slick as they think they are,” Sullivan replied seriously.

“Search the community sites for them yourself. So if you search for `Emily’ on MySpace, you might not find your daughter. But if you search for 14-year-olds in the junior high your daughter currently attends, you may find her. Kids tend to list their school and their home town on these sites.”

Also, you can check their instant-messaging programs, which usually open with the user name already entered. Sullivan finds that kids usually use the same screen name on IM applications as they do on community Web sites.

Another trick: Go to MySpace and start by typing a single letter in the log-in name field. If your child uses the site, the Web browser will auto-complete the name, which you can then search for.

Finally, check out your own computer’s hard drive: Look for temporary Internet files and, especially, cookies. All of the popular social networking sites use cookies.

In addition to open communication, Madigan plans to use a low-tech approach when her 17-month-old daughter is of “Internet age.”

“We’re going to keep the computer that has Internet access in a public part of the house,” Madigan said. “It will be where I and my husband are walking around. Almost 100 percent of the kids that get into trouble have Internet access in their room behind a closed door.”

She added: “It’s OK to have a computer in their bedroom. Just not a computer connected to the Internet.”

Which makes centuries-old, common sense parenting techniques the best preventative measures against high-tech crimes against children.

PALMDALE, Calif. — Postings on the popular Web site Myspace.com have led the parents of a missing Illinois girl and a private investigator to believe that she may be in Southern California. 

Jessica Liccar, 16, of Crete, Ill., has been missing since June 2 when she crashed the family car. 

The girl was taken to a hospital but released before her parents arrived and hasn’t been seen since. 

Liccar’s parents believe she is traveling with 17-year-old Simon Sotheras, and postings on the social networking site revealed information that the pair may be in the Palmdale-Lancaster, Calif., area. 

Liccar is 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds. She has reddish-brown hair and braces. Her possible companion is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds. 

Anyone with information is asked to call 800-487-0947, ext. 9.

Overnight, MySpace replaced the convenience store parking lot or mall fountain as a gathering place for kids starting in junior high school or earlier and going pretty much all the way through high school and well beyond.As you indicate, each young user gets a home page containing a personal photo and a self-composed profile, as well as a message board to exchange info with friends and a blog spot to post thoughts with friends and others.

MySpace thus is doing stuff on the Web that people used to do on the streets. So, your real fix is to use the same parental powers and tactics that work for other hangouts and batten down for youthful howls of protest.

Put down your foot and demand they give you the same access they give to their friends and other MySpace members. Then, add that MySpace page to the Favorites in your own browser and make a daily practice of checking things out.

Better yet, take a couple of minutes and set up your own MySpace account so you can watch your children’s MySpace space as a logged-in user. Signup is quick and simple.

Because I report about it, I may be the oldest person with a MySpace account, but if you just go to www.myspace.com and browse the postings, you will find a range of age groups where kids registered as being ages 14 and 15 are communicating with 30- and 35-year-old men and women and where few holds seem to be barred. MySpace operators post warnings that children must be 14 and must not lie about their age, but there is nothing to stop a much younger child from joining.

Depending upon the age of your children, you should consider intervening in how they set up their MySpace accounts to minimize the potential for what I consider hurtful and outrageous overtures from stalkers, general creepy people and high-pressure sales gimmicks.

When a person signs up for a MySpace account, many privacy and security options can be set to minimize the downside on this Internet phenomenon that brings huge upside socializing for its audience.

For example, you can discourage unknown people from getting through to your kid by requiring that a valid e-mail address be provided before that person can be added to the Friends list that is the heart and soul of this Web service designed to foster socializing.

Likewise, you can set the account to hide your kids from being listed to all comers when they go online; you can stop others from passing along e-mail links to download your kid’s photo and restrict blog posts to only people you know. You can even block the feature where music from a favorite band gets played when your kid visits somebody else’s area on MySpace, which will guard against sexually and racially offensive lyrics.

As a parent, you even can order your children’s accounts closed by going to www.myspace.com and clicking on the Safety item at the bottom of the page.

You also can find links in a special parents’ area that point to software that can be installed on a computer to let you monitor every keystroke the kids make and to otherwise watch and censor their access.

A 16-year-old girl from Detroit, who tricked her parents into getting her a passport and then flew to the Mideast to be with a man she met on MySpace.com has returned to Michigan.

U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded Katherine R. Lester to turn around and go home before she reached the West Bank. Lester arrived at Bishop International Airport in Flint late Friday and was taken to a private area to be reunited with her family.

She disappeared Monday after talking her parents into getting her a passport by saying she was going to Canada with friends, sheriff’s officials said.

She apparently planned to visit a man whose MySpace account describes him as a 25-year-old from Jericho, Undersheriff James Jashinske said.

MySpace.com is a social networking Web site with more than 72 million members that lets users post photos, blogs and journals. It is owned by the same parent company, News Corp., that owns FOX News. There have been scattered accounts of sexual predators targeting minors they met through the site.

Lester apparently contacted the man from Jericho about three months ago, Jashinske said. Jericho, a city of 17,000, is a relatively calm area of the volatile West Bank.

The FBI traced the teenager to a Wednesday flight from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Tel Aviv, Israel. At a scheduled stop in Amman, Jordan, U.S. officials persuaded her to return home, FBI agent Robert Beeckman said.

“Thank God she was returned safely,” Lester’s father said Friday afternoon while awaiting her arrival.

Terry Lester said his daughter is a straight-A student and student council member. “She’s a good girl. Never had a problem with her,” he said.

MySpace forbids youngsters 13 and under from joining and provides special protections for those 14 and 15 — only people on their list of friends can view their profiles. Older users also have the option of restricting certain personal data so it can be seen only by people they have identified as friends.

Shawn Lester told The Saginaw News that her daughter has “never given me a day’s trouble. … I just don’t understand with all these new laws protecting America how a 16-year-old kid could get out of the country.” She said her daughter never had a boyfriend and seemed to be content with that.

Katherine and her mother live in Gilford, a village about 80 miles north of Detroit in Michigan’s agricultural Thumb region. Her father lives in Grand Blanc Township.

Jashinske said deputies confiscated the family’s home computer and were taking it to the FBI’s Bay City office for analysis. He said it remained unclear whether any laws had been violated because of Lester’s age. The age of sexual consent in Michigan is 16; Katherine turns 17 on June 21.

“I’ll be honest with you, we don’t know if a crime’s been committed,” Jashinske said.

The Grand Forks School District has blocked the popular MySpace.com Web site on its computers, citing safety concerns and negative behavior nationwide linked to the site, including bullying and stalking.

“Outside of our schools, adults posing as youth have gained access to student chat rooms, which has led to tragedy in some cases,” said an April letter to parents signed by Ron Gruwell, assistant superintendent for secondary education, and Jody Thompson, assistant superintendent for elementary education, for the Grand Forks schools.

“Unsuspecting students have posted enough personal information that predators are able to locate their home or school address, thus becoming easy targets for predators.”

The Web site has become a favorite of child predators, cyber bullies and con artists, the letter said. Also, children, mostly ages 9 to 14, use the anonymity of the Web to post messages about others that would not be said face-to-face, the letter said. It went on to urge parents to talk to their children about MySpace, and to go to the site and register.

“Parents should be aware of what their children are writing and what others are posting on their Web sites,” the letter said.

NAPERVILLE, IL, United States (UPI) — Police in Naperville, Ill., arrested a man accused of soliciting sex with a 14-year-old girl on the Web site Myspace.com, the Chicago Tribune reported Sunday.

Jay Coffield, 44, of Morris, Ill. was arrested at a coffee shop in Naperville after relatives of the girl alerted police to the meeting, the newspaper said. Coffield was taken to the Will County Jail in Joliet, Ill. and charged with indecent solicitation of a child, a felony.

Police posed as the girl and had several online chats with Coffield before the meeting, the newspaper reported.

This arrest marks the second time in six weeks that Naperville Police`s Internet Crime Unit has used Myspace.com to arrest a suspect for alleged solicitation of a minor. John R. Wentworth, 27, was arrested May 9 in a similar case.

MySpace.com is described as an Internet site devoted to social networking. Any rational adult who’s spent more than a few minutes on MySpace might well conclude that it, like much of cyberspace, appeals to the lowest common denominator. I won’t bore – or repulse – you with specifics. Let’s just say that you probably wouldn’t feel comfortable with your mother, unless mumsie is Madonna, visiting many MySpace pages.

Tasteless photos and cartoons and deviant thoughts litter the website. Catchphrases rule. Banal ideas are expressed in crude English.

There are folks, often women, seen in shopping malls carrying on lengthy cell phone conversations. You might ask, as I have, is there really another person on the other end of that long, mind-numbing conversation? Hearing snippets of chatter along the lines of “I just had a taco, I like tacos, do you like tacos?, what are you eating?,” I’ve sometimes wondered where in the world the callers find anyone willing to put up with such extended blather.

Now I think I know. My guess is that they get their phone buddies on MySpace. There are some very lonely people there.
Obviously, MySpace isn’t my place. But some adults might find what they’re looking for there, and that’s their business. Unless, of course, if what they’re looking for is a child to molest.

The biggest problem is that MySpace, which claims to be “a place for friends,” has become a playground for sexual predators. To register, a user only has to be at least 14 years of age. That restriction is easily ignored. There have been numerous reports of crimes and attempted crimes against children in which the site has played a role.

MySpace may be a victim of its own success. With a reported user base in the tens of millions and a quarter of a million people signing up daily, the three-year old site may not have been prepared for the abuses it’s experienced.

In April, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Advertising Council, and News Corporation, which owns MySpace, started running public service advertisements intended to raise awareness of Internet safety. In May, a law targeting “social networks” and Internet chat rooms was proposed in Congress. The legislation would block access to those sites in federally funded schools and libraries.

Many schools have already decided on their own to limit access on their computers. In a move that was guaranteed to fan the flames of teen outrage, a school district in Illinois recently took action to hold students accountable for what they post on websites such as MySpace. Actions like that are usually condemned as censorship. To which the appropriate response may well be, so what? Children don’t have the same rights as adults. And acting goofy online at taxpayer expense isn’t constitutionally protected, no matter what the ACLU may claim.

On the other hand, regulating access to social networking sites is much easier said than done. One need not have the technological prowess of Internet inventor Al Gore to circumvent many blocking measures. Add to that the government’s general clumsiness in securing whatever results it intends and there realistically isn’t much reason to think that legislation will have a great impact.

If there’s going to be anything close to a resolution of the problems inherent to MySpace and similar sites, it’ll have to be initiated by parents. Knowing where children go on the Internet, what they do there, and with whom they communicate are essential. There is monitoring software that can help.

Kids might scream about their privacy being violated, but families aren’t democracies. They’re dictatorships and part of a parent’s responsibility is to protect their children as best they can for as long as they can.

Last month a reporter wrote in the Los Angeles Times that she’d covered many disquieting events in her career, “But in nearly two decades of journalism, nothing has made my insides churn like seeing what my 13-year-old daughter and her friends are up to on MySpace.com.”

MySpace isn’t for everyone. We can only hope enough parents realize that in time.

Question: My children have set up MySpace profiles, even though they were not supposed to. They insist that only their friends have access to their profiles, but how can a parent be sure? How do I know?

I just entered my daughter’s e-mail address and went straight to her page, although I could not go any further because I had to be a member to log in. Even at that, I was surprised at the info that was available.

They think they are so smart about how they manage their profiles. What can we do?- Nancy Heslin, via e-mail
A: Overnight, MySpace replaced the convenience store parking lot or mall fountain as a gathering place for children starting in junior high school or earlier.

As you indicate, each young user gets a home page containing a personal photo and a self-composed profile, as well as a message board to exchange info with friends and a blog spot to post thoughts with friends and others.

Put your foot down and demand that your children give you the same access that they give to their friends and other MySpace members. Then add that MySpace page to the Favorites in your own browser and make a daily practice of checking things out.

Better yet, take a couple of minutes and set up your own MySpace account so you can watch your children’s MySpace space as a logged-in user. Signup is quick and simple.

If you just go to http://www.myspace.com/ and browse the postings, you will find a range of age groups where children registered as being ages 14 and 15 are communicating with 30- and 35-year-old men and women and where few holds seem to be barred. MySpace operators post warnings that children must be 14 and must not lie about their age, but there is nothing to stop a much younger child from joining.

When a person signs up for a MySpace account, many privacy and security options can be set to minimize the downside on this Internet phenomenon that brings huge upside socializing for its audience.

For example, you can discourage unknown people from getting through to your child by requiring that a valid e-mail address be provided before that person can be added to the Friends list that is the heart and soul of this Web service designed to foster socializing.

Likewise, you can set the account to hide your children from being listed to all comers when they go online; you can stop others from passing along e-mail links to download your child’s photo and restrict blog posts to only people you know. You can even block the feature where music from a favorite band gets played when your child visits somebody else’s area on MySpace, which will guard against sexually and racially offensive lyrics.

As a parent, you even can order your children’s accounts closed by going to http://www.myspace.com/ and clicking on the Safety item at the bottom of the page.

You also can find links in a special parents’ area that point to software that can be installed on a computer to let you monitor every keystroke the children make and to otherwise watch and censor their access.

Many kids have turned to the Internet for a place to hang-out and MySpace has become the predominate setting for mingling and chatting.  Everyone has different uses for the Internet and kids are especially vulnerable.  There are some things you can do to make it a little safer.

First, if you are a parent, I recommend signing-up and creating a new account for yourself.  It only takes a couple minutes to do this.  You will need to provide an email address and a little information about yourself.  You can browse and see what your kids are doing this way. Remember to add their profile to your favorites so you can keep an eye on them. 

Viewing other people’s profiles could be a real eye opener.  Start viewing the profiles and blogs of other users.  This may even prompt you to limit your kids access to the Internet and possibly encourage you to buy some child safety or monitoring software.

Even though MySpace posts a warning indicating that you must be 14 years of age and to not lie about your age, this does not prevent predators from talking to your children.  You can prevent unknown people from getting through to your child by requiring that a valid e-mail address be provided before that person can be added to the Friends List.

Also you can hide your children from being listed for all to see.  You can stop others from passing along e-mail links to download your child’s photo and restrict blog posts to only people you know.

Many users’ profiles will play music when you enter.  You can block the music so that your child will not be exposed to sexually and racially offensive lyrics. There is also the option of closing your child’s MySpace account. Here are some frequently asked questions and this is the page for safety tips.

There is also software you can buy to help keep your kids safe.  CyberSitter makes a program to help and 4SafeInternet provides a service that is billed monthly.  For a minimal fee, 4safe says they can block pornography and other offensive material.