At this point, it’s not clear whether Jane Doe initially went with Arroyo voluntarily. In most cases, according to Finkelhor, a juvenile “goes off in a voluntary way with someone they know is an adult—either because they think they are in love with them or as some sort of an adventure. Usually, the juvenile knows that the person they are talking to is considerably older; they are interested in this and make arrangements to meet them.”
In 75 percent of these types of cases, the abuser and the juvenile have multiple meetings prior to the abduction. And about half the time, Finkelhor said, the adult is someone they already know and trust. In such cases, the Internet is just a vector for the sorts of sexual exploitation that happened well before the digital age.
“The scenario that people tend to imagine, based on the newspaper stories and some of the police accounts, is that the danger to children is that they give information to someone acting as another kid and get abducted,” Finkelhor said. “Those are extremely rare—we estimate that forcible abduction took place in only five percent of these Internet-related sex crimes.”
