Interesting Facts for the date of July 6 in History:1189 King Henry II (England) dies at 56, 1483 England's King Richard III crowned, 1777 British General Burgoyne captures Fort Ticonderoga from Americans, 1912 5th Olympic games in Stockholm, Sweden open, 1923 (1 st lady) Nancy Davis Regan is born, 1944 170 die in a fire at Ringling Bros Circus in Hartford, Connecticut, 1958 Alaska becomes the 49th state, 1965 Rock group "Jefferson Airplane" forms, 1988 Carlos Salinas de Gortari elected president of Mexico, 2006 North Korea's ICBM launch also launches oil prices and we are going to feel it at the gas pumps.

Please, if you feel you would like to help in the fight against Internet Child Predators, log onto www.perverted-justice.com and see how you can help the cause.

Now for the blog: Many of us have seen the Chris Hansen/Dateline episodes on child predators. Well, after seeing the 4 th or 5 th episode and being thoroughly disgusted by what I saw... I wanted to help. Dateline works in conjunction with an Internet watchdog group called Perverted Justice and local law enforcement for these stings. I visited perverted-justice.com to see what I could offer to the cause. On the site there is a link to available "positions" people like me can fill. I decided to offer my help as a "Human Shield".

Basically a Human Shield logs onto one of the many of the Internet chat sites: Yahoo, MySpace and such, posing as an underage child (15 years old or younger). The goal is to keep these predators occupied with a fake child (you) as opposed to soliciting an actual minor. There is no glory in this. You don't send the police kicking down predator's doors to cart them off to jail (unless they actually send you child pornography, or disclose information concerning other molestations). You take up their time, and at the end of the chat employ some scare tactics.

Believe me, if these perverts are not talking to you, they will be looking for another child to have inappropriate conversations with... or worse. I was skeptical of this program at first, but that changed very quickly. I created a profile on Yahoo with the screen name kim_hottie2006 and went to work. From the chat link on Yahoo's home page, I entered the 'Romance" sub-heading (which is not a adult section of Yahoo), and entered one of the numerous Colorado Chat Rooms. Within 5 minutes I was getting instant messages from adult males.

One of the first questions I am always asked is "a/s/l", which means: age, sex, location. To this I would reply 15/f/Aurora. 15 years old, female, residing in Aurora. The decent guys out there would say things like "Oh...sorry", or "Bye", and I received no further messages from them.

Then there was the other breed of chat room subscriber. They would say things like "Oh... I'm too old for you" (but continue to talk to me), or more bluntly "Do you like older men?" I would say "I don't know, maybe" or something to that effect. As the conversation continued I would tell them about my troubled home life, living with a single parent (my mother) who works all the time. I would portray myself as somewhat rebellious, or a "bad girl".

Not even 5 minutes into these conversations the guys would turn to sex. They would ask if I was a virgin, if I'd ever had oral sex, and much...MUCH worse. They would send me nude photos of themselves. Ask me for photos or if I had a wed cam. I always said I didn't any pictures or a web cam. They would always ask me to describe myself. Many of them would actually want to meet, some even discussing what we were going to do sexually on our little encounter. Most of them asked if I was a cop or was going to get them into trouble (I wish), to which I replied, "of coarse not...". I would set up the meeting for that day or night depending on what time I was chatting. I even had one guy ask me if I had 5 bucks because he driving from all they way from Castle Rock, was low on gas, and didn't get paid until Friday. I let this guy come and didn't twist him (I'll cover the "twist" next) until the next day when I logged onto the chat room and he found me again. He told me how he actually drove to Aurora, ran out of gas (of coarse me and my 5 bucks didn't show), and was somewhat upset. He wasn't so upset to detour him from still wanting to molest a 15-year-old girl still though. I'm not sure how he got back home, because before our little chat went any further I twisted him.

A twist is performed after you have chatted with a particular pervert for quite some time. I always made sure that the conversation had achieved a quite inappropriate level; he had sent me nude photos if he had them, and I even tried to get a phone numbers or addresses. This is when I would say, "I'm actually a 31 year old male, member of Anti-Internet Predator Group, and I'm turning this chat log and photos (phone number or address if I had it) over to the Police and Yahoo. This is meant to scare the daylights out of the perv and hopefully dissuade future solicitations of minors. As I said, by this time he had chatted about all kinds of sexual subject matter, possibly sent pornography to a child (or what he thought was a child), solicited this child for a sexual encounter, and supplied personal information with which he could be positively identified. Needless to say, when I twisted them, they were scared.

I never made the first contact! I could not believe the response from adult males I received... even after stating I was a 15 year old girl. Sometimes I would have Instant Messages going with 4 or 5 guys at once. It was crazy. This is when I did in fact realize the need for Human Shields. "Wow," I realized, "... in one hour I have protected children from 5 sexual predators, scared the daylights out of them, and hopefully made them think twice about conducting themselves in this manner again."

Now for the one gripe I do have. It is with Yahoo. I make sure to turn the timestamp feature on in my instant messenger while chatting with the predator. I would then copy and past the entire chat log into Word, and email a copy to Yahoo. Yahoo has a link labeled "report abuse" which led to a form that was to be filled out. I would complete the form including my screen name, the predators screen name, and paste in the chat log. After sending off my first "report of abuse" to Yahoo... my screen name kim_hottie2006 was deactivated. "This is funny." I thought to myself. Could this possibly a mistake? I created another screen name and profile... kim_badgirl2006. Once again I sent a "report of abuse" to Yahoo with yet another predator's chat log. This profile was deactivated. Is the third times a charm? I repeated the whole process, and the screen name was deactivated again!

Well, obviously this was not a mistake. Furthermore, because I had the predator's screen name in my copy of the chat log, I went to go check on them. Sure enough these guys were still active. I even managed to have another inappropriate conversation with one of my previous perverts. Yahoo killed my accounts... and let these perverts continue to prowl the net! I was in shock; I almost got sick to my stomach. I can't believe this happened and I really question Yahoo's logic and integrity. This is why Yahoo gets TWO BIG THUMBS DOWN from me!!!

Well, enough of my blabbing for now... I'm sure your eyes are tired from reading just as my fingers are from typing. Please, if you feel you would like to help in the fight against Internet Child Predators, log onto www.perverted-justice.com and see how you can help the cause. God Bless.

Timothy J Miller is a Mortgage Professional, Marketing Guru, and 45-day coma survivor residing in Aurora, Colorado for 31 years.