All Justin Berry was looking for were some friends online. At age 13, with an absent father and clueless mother, he signed up for a social networking site and, because the site was running a special promotion, received a camera to clip onto his computer screen. People throughout the world could look at him while they interacted with him on the Internet.

“Like many young teenagers, I hoped my webcam would improve my social life,” he said earlier this year in a testimony to a congressional committee on sexual exploitation of children through the Internet. “I didn’t have a lot of friends and I was very lonely. I hoped this webcam would help me meet other teenagers online, maybe even find a few girls my age. That never happened.”

Within minutes of his appearing on one site, he received an instant message from an adult male. Others followed. They complimented him on his looks, asked him how his day was going. They seemed, to Justin, genuinely interested in him — a situation he was not used to. All of those who contacted him were, in reality, online predators.

Meeting strangers online is one of the benefits of the Internet, if you listen to advertisements from eHarmony, match.com and other social networking sites. But the downside is that, especially for teenagers who frequent sites like MySpace, those strangers can be deadly.

And while a recent study sponsored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (www.missing-kids.com) says many young people are wising up about their online behavior, a shocking 17 percent of youths age 10 to 17 report being solicited for sex online.

Justin is now 19, attending college and reportedly seeking to follow Christ. Both Justin and his attorney, Stephen Ryan, declined to talk with YouthWorker Journal because of

Justin’s pending testimony in criminal trials this fall against the predators, but his case illustrates the dangers of using social networking sites to develop friendships.

A few weeks after Justin set up his webcam, one of the men he corresponded with online told him that he would pay Justin $50 if he took off his shirt in front of his camera. The man explained how Justin could set up a PayPal account so that he could be paid online.

“I was excited about the $50 — an amount that struck me at the time as a huge sum of money,” Justin said in his testimony. “Taking off my shirt seemed harmless; I did it at the pool. The money arrived, and I took off my shirt. My viewers complimented me, and it felt good.”

More gifts arrived, along with more offers for money. And more explicit requests. One writer asked him to remove his pants. Then his underwear. Then a request to masturbate in front of the camera.

Eventually one of the men asked Justin if he would like to go into a Webhosting business with him as his director of sales and marketing. The man suggested that Justin attend a

computer certification camp. At age 13, with his mother’s consent, Justin traveled to Michigan from his home in central California for the additional training. The man picked Justin up at the camp one day and brought him to his house where the man molested Justin. He was repeatedly molested by the man and several other adult males.