Miss America Laura Nelson is a beautiful twenty-year-old woman who can pass for a teenager, and she is doing just that to help the Suffolk County Police Department seize sex offenders. This beauty queen posed online as a 14-year-old girl to help Long Island Police arrest eleven alleged sexual predators. Way to go Laura Nelson!

Interview with an Offender
The entire operation was video taped and aired on Fox’s America’s Most Wanted Television Show, hosted by John Walsh. In an interview between Miss America’s Laura Nelson and a sex offender, the following facts are revealed by the offender as ways parents maybe able to help protect their child or children.

Grooming a child
The offender discusses “grooming” which is a common word among offenders. Grooming is defined as a way of getting a child ready for the act of a first meeting or if living with an offender the act of the first sexual encounter.

Low self-esteem
The offender, points out his victims had low self-esteem and no one cared what they were doing online or off. The offender then works to build up the child’s self-esteem by telling the child how pretty they are or how nice they are etc. To the child it may seem like the offender is the only person who understands them or actually cares about them.

Unsupervised children
The victim he referred to had an alcoholic parent, a mother, who, when the mother was not drinking, she was working. The father was not in the picture at all anymore. Most children are from single parent or divorced homes, where it is difficult for one or the other parent o know what the child is always doing.

Power and Control
The sex offender is less concerned about the age of the child. Sexual abuse and child molestation or rape has more to do with power and control, not sex. People often confuse the issue of sexual encounters with children as having only to do with the sexual act, and that is incorrect. The thrill according to offenders comes in the hunt online or off line for a child, the grooming of the child for the meeting and the power and control over the child and situation in general.

Risk Management
The only real consideration a sex offender has involves the risk management aspect of the situation. The question is will he or she be caught, can he or she be caught, what is going to happen to him or her if he or she is caught.

Advice to kids from a sex offender
Kids should always be aware of who they are speaking to and why. If the child is ever uncomfortable speaking to someone or sex ever comes up, instantly stop speaking to him or her. Tell a grown up immediately.

To see the actual interview and additional excerpts from the work Miss America Laura Nelson did in seizing sex offenders and working with the Suffolk County Police Department in New York follow the links below.

Laura Nelson Interview with Simon a convicted Sex Offender.

Laura Nelson’s video diary regarding her experience about working with police to seize sex offenders is available here.

Karen Daborowski AMW Producer talks about seizing sex offenders.

Angels above you, angels below you, and angels all around each of you until next time we meet.