Indianapolis- Imagine you're the parent who Googles your eight-year-old child's name and third on the list of items in the search list is video of your daughter dancing on a popular porn site.
Once they got over the initial shock the owners of the Indianapolis dance studio who alerted metro police that their students were being shown amongst videos of sex acts began working to regain control of the images.
"It's really even scary to think about it."
That was the reaction of the Indianapolis dance instructor who filed the police report April 12th alerting investigators to the indecent exposure of girls performing leg lifts and tumbling maneuvers while wearing tights.
Fox59 agreed to not disclose the name of the studio or the instructor due to the nature of the investigation.
"I honestly don't want to know why this porn site wants to put video of our girls on their website. All I know is I want the videos taken down and its scary because its not just our kids here this is a national thing and it is really terrifying," said the local instructor.
The videos of Indianapolis girls were first noticed in early April but they come from a competition hosted by Starquest Dance in Indianapolis in April 2010.
IMPD says they are investigating to determine if the pornographic website can be forced to remove the links to the competition video that originated on the StarQuest company website.
"It's definitely creepy and it kind of gives you a tingle down your spine as a parent," said Dr. Marc Rogers, a Purdue professor specializing in cyber security and online forensics.
As a parent of a teenage competitive dancer himself Rogers is as concerned as anyone, but as an expert in cyber security he has a different reaction.
"Not surprising," Rogers said. "Once the information is out there, if you're not monitoring where that information is going, if you're not in control of who has access to it, then it could end up in anybody's hands."
Though parents in this case were virtually powerless to prevent the videos from spreading, he is surprised StarQuest Dance didn't do more.
"They don't even get it," Rogers said. "They embrace the technology as far as they understand it's great for their own marketing, but I think a lot of companies don't understand the dangers in that once you place it out there, it's out there."
Rogers says safeguarding children online begins with parents educating both their kids and themselves about how social networking sites work and share information. From there he says you can begin preventing what gets out by using tools like privacy settings. Finally, Rogers says parents should monitor what's already out there. He says the mother who discovered the problem through a Google search is a perfect example of good monitoring.
"There's someone who has a good understanding of technologyand has used it in a proper way to prevent something from happening to their kids," Rogers said.
Despite requests, Fox59 did not receive any explanation from the pornography website. StarQuest Dance is also not responding to questions about what went wrong and what they might be doing to address the problem. Many videos were still posted on the pornography website Friday night.
Though IMPD is investigating the case, Rogers, who spent 13 years as a forensics detective, says it's often hard to determine whether a crime was even committed.
Instead, Rogers says parents need to safeguard their kids through similar searches and monitoring. When it comes to competitions, he says parents should be wary of signing waivers that give companies the ability to take photos or video of children. If you do sign a waiver he says you should ask how the information is being safeguarded and who is the person responsible for it.
