Authorities bent on curbing the frequency of online solicitation of minors for sexual purposes are not leaving the Pee Dee out of the fray.

Police and prosecutors charged with tracking down and jailing child predators prowling cyberspace are teaming up with victims? advocacy entities to educate the public, namely parents and other authority figures.

Officials at the attorney general?s office, based on perceptions, are calling the problem ?huge.?

?At this point, the state has been fortunate to have avoided disaster, unlike some others, where children have been assaulted and murdered,? said Mark Plowden, spokesman for Attorney General Henry McMaster. ?In cases of Internet enticement ... that?s how they can end up.?

McMaster?s office is prosecuting the first pair of cases classified under South Carolina?s new Internet Predator Law, one of them linked to the Pee Dee.

Michael Rothermel, a 55-year-old Pennsylvania man, was taken into custody in mid-April. While working for the state, Rothermel had been living in Florence County when he allegedly attempted to seduce an undercover State Law Enforcement Division agent posing as a 13-year-old girl.

Donald Louis Brink, 32, of Charlotte, N.C., turned himself in to SLED agents in January after a similar sting conducted by SLED.

With its immense breadth and rising popularity, the online community has come to provide for pedophiles and prospective statutory rapists ample playground for seeking out victims.

Sixty-five percent of the nation?s children use the Internet from home, school or some other location, according to National Conference of State Legislatures report.

Figures regarding the frequency of the underaged being propositioned by elders via the medium are staggering: 1 in 5 children is sexually solicited online.

The possibilities presented by the unofficial count are even more mind boggling, say officials at the Pee Dee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Assault.

?We?ve all seen the billboards,? said coalition coordinator Anne Gainey, referring to the conspicuous markers posted as part of a nationwide campaign. ?But that?s just the numbers that we know of ... imagine those that we don?t know.?

It?s really important for parents to be aware of what their children are doing when they?re online, Gainey said.

?Just because they?re not outside being exposed to strangers (in person) who could possibly kidnap them or whatever, they are still being exposed to people who may not have the best intentions,? she said.

Many children who fall victim to Internet sex offenders spend large amounts of time online, particularly in chat rooms, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

But the Net?s seamy side is being exposed by Web sites working to facilitate awareness of pedophiles and other such activity.

For instance, parents and others interested can log on to portals dedicated to tabbing and tracking offenders, such as Perverted-Justice.com. With its mission to expose ?wannabe perverts on the Net,? the Web site posts usernames and photos of individuals - predominantly men - and documents their past attempts at soliciting minors online.

In the wake of the Web?s increasing availability, government officials across the country have, in addition to devising convicted sex offender registries, bolstered statutes addressing underage users.

In fact, more than half the states have implemented laws that specifically prohibit electronic luring or solicitation of minors by computer for the purpose of inducing them to engage in illegal sexual conduct. Laws that do not include specific references to electronic communication might still be used against online predators, but specific language can make the laws easier to enforce, the NCSL said.

With the Internet Predator Law, effective April 2004, South Carolina is among those states that recently have enacted legislation that authorities say might avert disastrous outcomes.

?We don?t have to wait anymore. We don?t have to wait until a predator actually touches or lures a child to a mall, fast-food restaurant or some other place,? Plowden said.

The mere act of soliciting the child for sexual contact, he said, is the crime, and hopes are that having a law on the books that strong will foster a deterrent

?Our desire, obviously, is to have the word go out that we have tough laws in South Carolina and are ready and willing to use them, before somebody from out-of-state or within state ever gets close to a child,? Plowden said.

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