| With the rapid adoption of technology and the increase in juvenile access to technology, online exploitation of children has taken several forms. One of these forms is colloquially referred to as "travelers" by law enforcement, where an adult offender uses the Internet to locate a child victim, arranges a meeting, and travels to that location for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity. Using open records requests, a sample of 164 cases was obtained from a Texas law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction, which included demographic information on the offender and the intended victim, as well as the arrest location. Due to open records limitations, all of the cases represented proactive law enforcement stings and contained no juvenile information. The case information was processed through custom written scripts to consolidate it and generate the distance from the offender's residence to the arrest location.;The arrestee demographics matched that of prior studies, in that 100% of the offenders were male, 79.3% of the offenders were white, they were most often between 20 to 30 years-of-age (M = 34.96), and 69.6% were involved in unskilled occupations. The intended victim was female 84.9% of the time, and the most frequently targeted age was 14 years-old. The distances traveled ranged from 1.3 mi to 483.34 mi (M = 48.72). Statistical analysis suggests that aside from a weak negative correlation to victim age, the distances traveled are not influenced by any offender or victim demographic. Contradicting the assumptions of law enforcement who work these cases, the distances suggest that there is no observable minimum distance an offender will travel to avoid detection and apprehension before offending against a child. |
