Video: Parents Warned About Internet Predators in Lee County

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TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) –  There are sexual predators who want to prey on your children using the internet. That’s the message Lee County Sheriff Jim Johnson wanted to convey to tonight’s North Mississippi Medical Center’s Spirit of Women program at Parkway Baptist Church. Johnson said the internet is a good and safe device if you monitor your children’s use of it. He told those in attendance about an undercover program began in 2006 by the sheriff’s department that revealed how many sexual predators preyed upon children in Lee County strictly over the internet.

“These children that we posed as, these underage teenage girls don’t even exist, he points out. “And these men were lured in through sexual desire of their own and we made over sixty something arrests in about a year period. And this was all strictly done through the internet it was never a physical meeting over anything,”
Johnson says it is important for parents to be involved in their children’s social internet sites like Facebook, and Snap Chat. And he says children need to be encouraged to let responsible adult figures know if they are approached inappropriately on the internet and to pass that information on to his office.