unpleasant topic

Because of this article about MySpace's handing over 90,000 registered sex offenders' names to the states, I started to wonder how many cases of sexual abuse of children had actually started on the internet. Nobody seems to know. This report on "Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation" has lots of scary passages. It has figures on the percentage of children who say that "they have been invited to a face-to-face meeting with a stranger," but no numbers on the number of children abused by people they met online. So I wonder. My parents told me what to do if a stranger tried to talk to me (take the candy -- never turn down free food) on the street, and they worried about it, but that wasn't a reason for me not to go outside by myself after the age of 10 or so (getting hit by cars was the reason). So why should the risk of being talked to by strangers be so bad, unless people actually end up meeting them? But there are no numbers. Is this going to be like the day care scandals of the 80's and 90's?