This story on the ABC website reports the on-line existence of a 170 page manual on how to sexualy abuse kids in a step by step manner, and includes tips on victim selection, approach, and getting kids not to tell.
The local constabulary seems to feel they are legally powerless to supress it, although they are “interested” in speaking with the author, who goes by the pseudonym “the mule”.
Leaving aside for the moment what fate we would all be “interested” in meeting out to this mule, this strikes me as a chance to gather some intelligence on the enemy’s methods & tactics.
I’m a dad of an autistic eight year old whom I’m told appears to be more attractive than the median, but I also want him to grow up as “free range” as possible. Now I also volunteer at the school and at summer camps, so I’m a little leary of googling & downloading this garbage, but perhaps there are some more intrepid dopers who might feel like doing a bit of digging and reporting back on some of the techniques, so we can reality-check our street proofing.
We’ve already covered the basics with trusquirt: don’t get into cars, keep your distance, always report creepy grown ups, and had him practice some simple techniques to defeat a grab & go attempt. Maybe there’s other aspects we haven’t thought of covering yet.
It would also be interesting to know if any law enforcement or kid’s services dopers think this “manual” describes credible threats, or if it’s another “Anarchist’s Cookbook”, an infamous internet bomb making pseudo-manual that was more likely to blow up anyone trying to make any of its recipes…
I’ve come across serial sex offenders who have written all sorts of things about their deviant interests, such as very long, intricately detailed erotic fiction, complete with graphic illustration. Most people don’t spend that kind of time on something they don’t have a serious interest in. I would be surprised if the “manual” was anything other than what it purported to be. What little I’ve heard about it appears to describe actual “grooming” techniques serial offenders are know to use.
I’m interested, too, and I’m willing to try to read it, but I’m not sure if I want to be searching the internet for “How-to manual for molesting children”. That sort of thing leads to visits from Family Services. A more careful search only turned up sites discussing the news articles. Also, I noticed the police in the article only said it was legal in Orange County, FL. How would I check to see if it’s legal in my area?
The first thing to realize is that it’s many many more times likely that someone your boy knows and trusts will be the person who abuses him. In descending order of liklihood are: Parents, grandparents, uncle/aunt, cousin, friend of the family, teacher/preacher. That is to say the more you trust someone, the more likely they are to be the one who takes advantage of that trust. Crime is like water, it always flows along the course of least resistance. Someone who is trusted is given privacy with the child, someone who is close to the family is given time with the child.
Creepy grownups, grab & go, etc. are not your real worry. If you want to teach your child, tell them that no adult should show them pictures of naked people, no adult should touch their private area or ask to have their private area touched, no adult should start telling you how they want to do something with you that has to stay secret. If any of those things happen, try to get away, scream your fool head off, and tell the first person you see regardless of whether the person you’re running away from was someone you trust and respect, or a creepy guy in the bathroom at McDonalds.
Your diligence is admirable, but in this case it would be better to let professionals read the source materials, and for you to read their summary of it. Pravnik’s book looks like a good place to start.
I took a few courses in law school on child abuse, and reading the professional material was pretty difficult. I can’t imagine sitting through a how-to manual from a pedophile.
Sage Rat, who is always very sagey, beat me to it. The real threat is from people your child trusts. If your child spends time with adults alone, then ask him about what they are doing together. Kids can molest other kids too, so ask your child about his time with his friends.
Pretty much every child knows to avoid the weirdo in a van giving out candy. That’s not where the threat is going to come from. The most common pedophiles are family members, followed by people in positions of authority over children (e.g. coaches or teachers).
The biggest red flags to watch out for are adults who want to spend time alone with your child (coach taking one child out to pizza after the game) and when your child wants to avoid an adult. This last one is difficult when it comes to family members. Often when a child says he doesn’t want to go to grandpa’s house the parent doesn’t think it’s because he’s getting molested. The parent might make him go anyway so that he can spend more time with his grandfather. So be on the look out for signs your child wants to avoid a particular adult.
Lakai, Sage Rat, and Pravnik, thanks very much. Seems I needed that reality check a bit more than I thought. The SD’s pretty amazing, really, I wouldn’t have a clue on how to talk to someone from a DA / crown attorney’s office irl.
Our family is pretty small, so I don’t have a lot to focus on there, but as he gets into more activities, I will look for those red flags in coaches and so forth. Especially when he starts going to summer camp next year. After all, background checks just mean they haven’t been caught yet.
Too bad this wasn’t a manual on abusing cats, we could have turned this over to 4chan…
While the very concept is disturbing, there is a non-zero chance that this is a work of fantasy. Plenty of people spend plenty of time writing material regarding sexual fantasies that they have no intention of, or even desire to, carry out in real life. It seems like an actual pedophile would be a lot more careful covering their tracks. I’d bet that this is a piece of fiction.
I wouldn’t. I’ve seen the comments on YouTube. Many pedophiles seem to have this urge to tell others, but only when they won’t get caught.
If the information matches what actually works, then I would be pretty sure the writer or someone they used as a source has had experience. It’s not like, say, bomb making, where there might be some legitimate reason to have the knowledge necessary.
I mean, let’s say I wanted to write such a book. I might have some general ideas on how to do it based on my previous explorations of psychology and the fact that I’ve had experience taking care of children. But surely there would be a lot of practical information I would never have even thought of.
The only person I could think of with that knowledge would be someone who is an activist in dealing with this stuff, and I can’t imagine such a person getting their jollies from a book that would encourage what they are trying to stop.
I was thinking something along the same lines. If the writer displays specialized knowledge about sex offenses involving children, he likely either came about it professionally or personally, and you wouldn’t expect somebody with a professional interest to anonymously write a lengthy document about it from the POV of a sex offender and make it available on the internet under a pseudonym. A 170 page single sided document is pretty thick, not quite a half inch, and seems to indicate a certain affinity for subject matter that most find repellent.
As audacious as it would be for an actual sex offender to attact unnecessary attention to himself by puttting such a thing on the internet, it still wouldn’t surprise me - a lot of offenders seem to bounce back and forth between secretiveness and recklessness bourne out of obsession. One of the writers of prepubescent erotica I mentioned earlier, apparently thinking he had a best seller on his hands, actually attempted to shop it around to publishers using his prison cell as a return address. This did not bode well for him in subsequent parole hearings and the like.
As a caseworker who works with children, I would also be highly interesting in reading this manual. If I know what the other side is thinking, I can better ward off such behavior. Sadly, my google-fu has failed me, as have the ‘shadier’ websites I know. Somehow I think this 170-page manual probably doesn’t really exist except in the “I heard from a friend of a friend that it exists, so I told the police” type of manner.
It might not be on the internet. From the link in the OP, police say it’s circulating around central Florida. Meaning that it’s probably being circulated by hard copy, otherwise why would it only be found in central Florida?
It definitely exists, unless Florida law enforcement is lying to the press about having a copy of it in their possession and completely making the whole thing up, which is extremely unlikely. I’d be surprised if a copy was still easily available on the internet - nobody wants the kind of heat that comes with passing around something that’s making headlines like this.
For those who are tempted to download the manual (if it exists) for any reason, including honest self-defense, my advice is…don’t.
I speak not from personal experience, but experience nonetheless. I happen to have inside information that our local police department uses software that has access to ISP records, and scans for users downloading certain kinds of data from certain kinds of URLs in a certain kind of list.
I am enough of a skeptic and a computer professional to doubt the existence of this at first glance, but after doing some checking, I am pretty sure it exists and works as advertised. The only way you could be assured of escaping this kind of dragnet would be a good anonymizer, and I know of at least one of those that was breached by the perverts…uh, the boys in blue.
