WAFF.com: North Alabama News, Radar, Weather, Sports and Jobs-Student athletes form Internet Predator Team

Student athletes form Internet Predator Team

One Valley high school is taking a pro-active approach to tackling on-line predators.

They've created a team of athletes to talk to younger students about on-line dangers.

When you think of a team at Fort Payne High School, football, baseball and basketball may come to mind.

However, there is another team where athletes are just as important.

Several young men and women make up the Internet Predator Team at Fort Payne High School.

They talk to elementary and middle school aged children about the dangers of lurking on-line predators.  

"The high school kids walk into the classroom, the kids get quiet, they listen to them, they enjoy it, they love the visits from the kids, they're role models," says School Resource Officer Steven Whited. 

The idea for the team came after school resource officer Steven Whited attended a safe school conference.

Another officer spoke to them about an Internet predator who solicited, abducted, and murdered his child.  

"If it happened to his community, then our community is not safe from the dangers the rest of the world faces," says Whited. 

A message that hit all too close to home when Ralph Wilson Knight was arrested in January for preying on a 13-year old DeKalb County girl.

Investigators say Knight had been sending messages to the teen for months on myspace.  

"I hope the younger kids learn what needs to be kept to yourself, basically don't talk to strangers," says Chelsea Harrison, a Fort Payne High School student.    

"I just think that if they learn now they won't be the next person on TV," says Fort Payne Senior Jeremy Underwood.

The last thing this team wants to hear about is another statistic.

They teach children through a series of presentations about how predators be-friend their victims.

"If they like drawing, if they like hiking the predators going to relate to them, he loves to do the same thing."

"Hopefully what we're doing is going to keep a child from getting abducted on the Internet," Whited says. 

The Internet Predator Team at Fort Payne High School was recently recognized by the Fort Payne Police Department for their community service, and school officials were so impressed with the group that they've made them an official club at the school.