Say you're a poor child.

You're given a free laptop, or a really cheap one.

You're told not to talk to strangers on the Internet.

You're told the rules of Online Safety.

You're told what will happen.

But you know better.

You think you're so smart.

You ignore the rules.

You start "chatting" with someone you hardly know.

And before you can say "Online Predator" you find yourself in the back of some garage in Mexico, on a stained mattress, servicing and endless line of sweaty farmworkers on payday.

We warned you.

You didn't listen.

Maybe next time you will.

Ya that’s efficient all right. Trials and facts just get in the way. Who needs proof when you have a BELL???

Seriously WTF are you talking about? Sounds like if I want someone out of the way all I have to do is ring a bell and point a finger. So if I catch an actual molester in the act, do we race to the bell?

First one there gets to live!

When someone was found to be abusing a child in a Balinese village, they would ring a bell and everyone would flock to where they had secured the abuser and beat them to death. That worked quite well until a tourist went missing and relatives made enquiries. Now it is suggested to the elders that they contact the police and let Western type justice happen. The only problem with that is that no elders would ever contact the police on such a matter.

My impression is that sex tourists have got the 'message' and just don't come to Bali for sex with underage children. In any case although poverty is rife Balinese women do not prostitute themselves. To meet tourist demand women are imported from Thailand and Java, but it is not common. Balinese women are not exploited sexually in Bali although they are exploited economically and in other ways.

Rayner

I have a perfect solution. We should have online activists pose as children in third world countries and lure these predators to the children's villages, so they can have a conversation with Chris Hansen about why they bought that ticket.

That will solve everything.

We are never going to solve this problem by trying to devise even more ways to prevent predators from reaching our young.

I have been watching this for over fifty years and the problem has never been tackled at the core. There are many other cultures that do not, or did not, have this as a problem. We should take the advice and studies of anthropologists and others who have observed why this is so, and try to change our culture so that similar conditions will start to lower the incidence of child sex abuse.

In my opinion child sex abuse is a delayed deficit disorder. People who did not have satisfactory sexual experiences throughout their development, will later seek to enact those experiences when they have children in their power. If they have been reared with low or non existant empathy or compassion for others they will try in one way or another to act out these desires with terrible results.

Unfortunately those factors which make countries like America and Britain great have policies and attributes that conspire against us having any possibility of lessening abuse against children. It will take a major reevaluation of our child rearing position to effect change. Particularly now that we have so many unfeeling predators in our respective cultures.

If we are serious about affecting change and I am not so sure that we are yet, we have to take very great precautions that we do not make matters worse by altering the way in which we regard our young, and their need for relevent sexual and intimacy experiences. We need to take advice from countries such as Holland which have partially dealt with this problem by holding very free and frank discussions with children, teachers and parents in a group format.

There children directly experience group situations where their fears, concerns are freely and frankly discussed including child sex abuse. When this problem is out in the open and all parties realise how big a problem it is, and get used to their parents being there in the same room as them and discussing their fears, and desires, much of their inability to speak about how they hate it when an adult makes inapropriate remarks or gets into their bed changes. So much serial abuse gets stopped in this way. This of course takes time and effort on the part of teachers and parents. Once the effect of these discussions becomes apparent parents are more than willing to give the time needed.

Countries such as Bali in which children and then adults are reared with immense compassion for each other have never had this as a problem. Now with the advent of mass tourism and the spread of TV there are aware of this problem in the West, and how it is, and will be, affecting them. It would be impossible for many years to come to transform our society to mimic the habits, nurturing qualites and sexual freedoms that their young experience in Bali. Such intensive childrearing, and protection does not help in becoming a high producing and consuming society.

Rayner Garner

Everyone of your recent five posts at Salon is essentially the same. In other words, you are spamming.

Furthermore, your bill -- yes I went there -- would leave the decision or whether or not the molester was reoffending or was still a threat entirely up to the treating therapist. In other words, it would take the offense out of the hands of the law, the offender would remain at large, and the child -- especially if this child remained living with the offender -- would still be at risk.

Oh yes, your bill would indeed by a great boon -- to child molesters and the "therapists" who treat them. There are indeed therapists who legitimately treat offenders. May I direct readers who would like more information to Anna Salter's book "Predators." She is not nearly as optimistic as you.

Your optimism about the effectiveness of your treatment is not supported by the research. Also you stats on recidivism are false, but I think you already know this.

Drumming up a bit of business are we?