INTERNET CHAT ROOMS were foreign to Marshauntil she started college. Then, she would spend several hours per week talking to strangers in cyberspace.

A St. Andrew man soon became a good friend and after a year of conversing via a keyboard and monitor Marsha thought the time was right to meet her cyber pal.

"He made me feel comfortable so I decided to meet him," she tells The Sunday Gleaner.

"... Although I agreed to meet him I still did not trust him, so I took two of my friends along with me to Half-Way Tree, where we were supposed to meet.

Changes of plans

"When we got there he wanted to go somewhere else. He tried to get me to go to Stony Hill with him but I refused. He put on a 'show' and then left."

Marsha at the time was 19.

Police sources say the power of technology has manifested itself in many crimes, including murder, rape and possibly buggery. Last week police linked the murder of a Portland woman to a man she met through a mobile chat room. There has also been at least one high-profile gay killing in which it is believed the victim may have met his killers through a chat room.

While no study has been done in Jamaica on the impact on crime through chat rooms and instant messengers, a United States-based study says sexual advances against minors are high on the Internet.

"Nearly one in five of American youths who surfed the Net regularly was the target of unwanted sexual attention," according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Internet access is not widespread in Jamaica with the latest Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson polls putting the figure at 17 percent.

But Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Les Green says despite Internet access not being widespread, "our children are at risk."

Experiment

"Young people will experiment. They will push the boundaries, but they need to understand that it is never safe to meet (in person) someone who they have met on the Internet," ACP Green says.

Lisa, a 19-year-old University of the West Indies (UWI) student, nearly found out the hard way not to meet with strangers befriended on the Internet.

Three years ago, after meeting a man online and exchanging photos and phone numbers, they decided to meet in Cross Roads, Kingston.

"He tried to get me to go with him, God knows where ... I could read from the way he looked that he was about to try something ... but then a guy who I knew was passing and he stopped to say hi. He was my escape route," Lisa tells The Sunday Gleaner.

(Not real name)