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So far, that line of thinking has led to efforts of dubious value—McGruff the Crime Dog for the digital set. McQuade’s own organization, the Cyber Safety and Ethics Initiative, puts its energy into hanging posters promoting “good digital citizenship,” embedding ethical messages in school websites, and publishing a pamphlet called It’s Worse Than We Thought. Actually, it’s probably better. A recent study by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society suggests that the threats children face online, in particular from sexual predators, are no worse than those they encounter offline. This is in sync with other research, including the 2007 Pew Internet and American Life Project, which shows that when social networking, kids can tell a pervert from a potential friend.
Meanwhile, law enforcement officials are learning that the tough-guy approach can do more harm than good. Splain describes how one local D.A. is handling cases. “He’s like, ‘I get a call almost every day from the school resource counselor in Genesee [County], saying they’ve intercepted another phone with these pictures,’ ” Splain says. “They’ve taken the tack, we don’t want to hurt anybody. We want the school resource officer to intercede and put the fear of God in these kids. If there are further problems, let us know, but word is going out to the parents that the school is handling it internally.”
That isn’t what happened in Alex’s case. Three months after receiving the pictures, Alex was arrested. Splain called Bill Davis and asked him to bring his son to the station. There, the trooper who had taken the initial report at the Davis house joined the father and the attorney as Alex was being led away for fingerprinting. Splain recalls: “The trooper said to me, ‘Tom, when we were that age, we snuck a look at our dad’s Playboy and passed it around. What do they expect?’ ”