onna Rice Hughes, whose earlier notoriety was spawned by that brought Gary Hart’s bid for the presidency to an abrupt end, has become a champion of making the Internet safe for children.

  She is now the vice president of marketing and public relations for the Internet advocacy group Enough Is Enough and recently addressed an audience of 50 guests in Carlson Hall who had gathered as part of a conference sponsored by the Professors World Peace Academy.

  Enough Is Enough’s stated goal is "to educate the public about the content, availability and children’s ease of access to illegal computer pornography as well as the ease of access by pedophiles to children via the internet."

  "The most egregious aspect of the internet is that kids have access to all kinds of pornography and that pedophiles have free, easy and anonymous access to kids," said Ms. Hughes. On-line porn is the most consistent profit-making business on the Internet - $1.5 billion a year - she reported, and with 49 million kids on the Internet in the U.S., kids can easily be exposed to it. Unintentional access to porn sites by Internet users is a growing problem, she said, and the porn companies use deceptive site-names to lure people to their sites.

  Ms. Hughes sees the Internet as a place where pedophiles can easily share with other like-minded people and gain what she calls "virtual validation" – a type of reinforcement and encouragement for their criminal activities. While it is illegal to possess pictures of child porn on one’s own computer, Ms. Hughes said there are many thousands of cyber sites that specialize in child porn and pedophilia.

  The incidence of children being solicited for sex on the Internet is very big and growing, she said. She added that one in five children who use the Internet has recently been solicited for sex and that one in 33 kids has recently been aggressively solicited to meet someone for sex.

  Ms. Hughes and her organization work with three groups in trying to combat illegal activity on the Internet - the public, the technology industry and the legal community (law enforcement and lawyers). She said that public libraries – where kids spend lots of time on the Internet – is one cyber location that can easily be safeguarded against dangerous chat rooms and porn, and she encouraged parents to check their local libraries to see what filters are being used, if any.

  Ms. Hughes cited several effective server-based solutions – filters that can be installed on your computer to screen for pornography and sex sites. She also called on law enforcement to be more aggressive about enforcing existing laws against obscenity and illegal solicitation.