Responding to what they call a dramatic increase in the number of pedophile cases perpetrated though school web sites and the internet, the United States Attorney's Office of Maryland and the Baltimore FBI Division have teamed up to make parents and teachers aware of the dangers children face on the internet.

"We recognize that [internet-related crime against children] is a big problem, and it's going to get bigger—not because there's more pedophiles out there, but because more children have access to the internet," said Special Agent Peter Gulotta, media representative for the FBI Baltimore Division.

Gulotta works with an undercover FBI operation, called Innocent Images, in which officers seek out pedophiles by engaging in chat room conversations where pedophiles might be lurking. Pretending to be a young girl or boy, the officers look for people who transmit pornographic images to children and those who actually travel to meet and have sex with children so they can make an arrest.

In 1999, Innocent Images handled 1,500 cases, up from 700 in 1998. The program began in 1995, and now 15 of the 58 FBI offices across the country operate Innocent Images task forces.

To curb the frequency of these crimes, volunteers from the state attorney's office, the FBI's Innocent Images task force in Baltimore, and local police have been making presentations at teacher staff meetings and to PTA groups at elementary and middle schools throughout Maryland.

Drawing on real-life incidences, they tell educators and parents about cases in which children using the internet were lured into meeting attackers face to face.

"We use our cases as examples because they are pretty scary," said Marcia Murphy, assistant to the attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office of Maryland. "Parents had no idea what was happening to their kids."

Pedophiles using the internet often initiate contact with their victims through online chat rooms, according to the FBI, and they later visit school web sites looking for more information about the children they've encountered. Pedophiles who find pictures and information on school web pages can then show up at the school looking for specific children, federal agents said.

"Some things seem very innocent, like putting up kids' pictures on a school web page—but we don't recommend that at all," Murphy said. "A lot of pedophiles go to school web sites. We have had people in our prosecutions who have gone to the child's school because of the web site."

According to a recent report, "Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth," funded by the U.S. Congress through a grant to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, approximately one in five youths between the ages of 10 and 17 were sexually solicited or approached over the internet last year.

Only 17 percent of youths and 10 percent of parents could name a specific authority—such as the FBI, CyberTipline, or an internet service provider—to which they could report an offense.