The arrest of Darryl Kogan, a wealthy and well-known South Florida lawyer, prompted a flurry of outrage online.Strangers condemned him. Former colleagues said they knew nothing of his appetite for child pornography and scrambled to reassure rattled clients. Authorities, meanwhile, touted his arrest as proof that his “professional status offers no shield from accountability.”One former prosecutor wasn’t so ruffled.”I want to say it surprises me,” Greg Schiller said. “It doesn’t surprise me.”A respected career can hide a ‘dark side’Schiller, 48, spent years prosecuting online child-sex crimes at the state and federal levels. Now CEO of the Child Rescue Coalition, he said the popular image of a child predator bears little resemblance to many who commit the crime.”It doesn’t have to be some old man who scares kids,” Schiller said. “It can be anyone, anywhere, anytime with access to the internet, because adults and children now play in the exact same playground.”Kogan’s playground was Kik, an instant-messaging app popular among children. There, prosecutors say the lawyer connected in February with an undercover FBI agent posing as a 16-year-old girl. He sent a nude photo of himself and repeatedly asked that she return the favor.”Need pics to start the process,” Kogan wrote. He told her to pose with two fingers, so he knew the photo was “current.”Trump-Epstein Memorial Bookmobile brings Epstein files on tour1 of 5The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile, which contains millions of pages of the Epstein files, is out on tour in the U.S. to press the case for continued public pressure. (Provided by the Institute for Primary Facts)Authorities raided Kogan’s home in May and charged him in October with one count of trying to receive images of child sexual abuse. He pleaded guilty weeks later, cementing his status as a sex offender and forfeiting the law license with which he rose to prominence.”Here you have somebody who is exceptionally successful and, by all appearances, somebody who’s a high-level contributor to the community in his personal life and his public life,” Schiller said afterward.”But there’s a dark side,” he continued. “And unfortunately, I saw the dark side of many, many people in our community over the years.”Child predators don’t fit one profile, former prosecutor saysThere was, for example, the dentist who sought to molest an 8-year-old in West Palm Beach. After that, the decorated military veteran who helped a Boynton Beach man run one of the largest collections of child pornography in the world.And, years before Kogan, there was Palm Beach Gardens lawyer Michael Dolce. FBI agents found him in bed across from an open laptop containing nearly 2,000 images of child sexual abuse, upending his reputation as a fierce defender of abused children.Darryl Kogan appears in an undated photo, courtesy of the Florida Bar.”I think the misnomer about online child sex offenders are that they are, you know, a guy with no education living in his mom’s basement,” Schiller said.While he’s prosecuted some who fit that trope, many others are educated professionals. They come from every walk of life, every sexual orientation, every financial background, every religion. They live in nice homes, and they live in bad homes.”People have asked me for years, what does your typical online sex offender look like?” Schiller said. “And I say male, 16 to 85.”Warning signs a child may be targeted onlineWith a profile that broad, Schiller said, parents have a better chance of recognizing the signs that a child is being targeted than they do of identifying the person doing the targeting.A sudden drop in grades can be one. So can withdrawing from friends, the appearance of unexplained gifts or new electronics, or dramatic changes in behavior. In the most serious cases, Schiller said, children may start harming themselves under the stress of exploitation or sexual extortion.He added that parents don’t have to wait for warning signs to act. Some of the most effective safeguards begin with deciding when a child is ready for a phone and how much freedom they should have on it.For children who already have them, Schiller recommends using parental controls to approve new apps and limit time on social media. Phones, tablets and computers should charge overnight in a common area rather than a child’s bedroom, he said.He cautioned against making the phone itself the enemy. Taking it away whenever a child breaks a rule can make children afraid to disclose troubling interactions online, he said, especially when their phone is central to their social lives.”It’s all about communication,” he said. “It’s making sure that your child knows that they can come to you, they can talk to you. They can bring you a problem when one exists.”Those conversations need to begin earlier than ever. In his years investigating online child-sex crimes, Schiller said he watched offenders seek out increasingly younger children.”When we first started doing these cases back in 2009, my agents were posing as 15-, 16-year-olds,” Schiller said. “Now you’ll have agents posing as parents with a 5-year-old, because the offenders are looking for younger and younger and younger.”Hannah Phillips covers public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Think you can spot a child predator? Former prosecutor says think again
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