In the past, parents warned their children not to open the door to strangers and taught them what to do if a stranger calls when the parents are not home.

"Unfortunately, the world has changed, and now the digital realm is here and some parents don't have the experience to suggest to their kids how to protect themselves," according to Jared Henry, a Palmyra police officer.

These days, sexting cases, which he considers one of a parent's worst nightmares, periodically cross Henry's desk. Borough police receive one or two complaints a year about it.

"It's a mere fraction of what's happening," he said.

Point of origin

What do parents to do if they find sexually explicit photos on a child's cellphone? Determine where the photo came from, where it went and to what extent has it been distributed, said Mike Corricelli, a U.S. postal inspector.

As part of his job, Corricelli goes into schools to speak to students about the dangers of sexting and what they post online. He also works undercover to capture online child predators. He talked to more 2,200 children last year through schools and youth church groups.

"We can talk to these kids until we're blue in the face," he said. "If the parents don't get involved, their guardians don't get involved, we can't do much."

Lebanon County school officials: Sexting happens, but not so much in school

Several years ago, Corricelli gave a presentation at Palmyra Area High School. About three weeks later, he was at the Palmyra Public Library and saw a girl he recognized from his presentation. She went to a bank of computers and sat down.

"She's got her head on a swivel, which makes me immediately wonder what she's doing," he recalled.

The student went to the last computer, dug into her purse, pulled out a thumb drive and plugged it into the computer.

Corricelli walked up and asked her what she was doing. The girl, whose face turned red when she saw him, was uploading images, he said. They were not naked images of herself but "stuff I'm sure her mother didn't want her doing."

He said he has done two presentations on online safety for parents in the Palmyra Area School District. In a district with about 1,400 families, fewer than 75 people showed up for each, he said.

"The best way for us to combat sexting and online enticement is by doing a better job paying attention to what our kids are doing and where they're going," Corricelli advised parents.

Too many parents believe online communications are like diaries — privileged, he said.

"A diary doesn't go out of your house," he said. "Online communication goes all over the world."

Now with GPS-enabled phones, if a child takes a photo and sends it unknowingly to someone who is a predator, the predator can use commercially available software to find the child's address, he said.

"We tell the kids how to protect themselves," he said. "Whether they want to do it or not is up to them. Most kids believe it's not going to happen to them."

The best tool for parents is to pay attention to what their children are doing online, Corricelli added.

He tells parents they should check their children's Internet-accessible devices randomly and often.

Palmyra program

The Palmyra Area School District has an aggressive program teaching students beginning in elementary school how to protect themselves online, said Corricelli, who helped them develop some of the curriculum. They teach what is safe and what to do if they are contacted by a would-be predator.

"The more kids get educated, the more who take it seriously, the less victims that we have," he said.

Predators can sit in the privacy of their home and contact 50 children, Corricelli said.

"If one responds, then great (for the predator)," he said.

Corricelli does the same thing but in reverse. He works undercover by going online and pretending to be a child — hunting for what he calls the hunters.

"Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not, but if you get enough chum in the water you'll get one," Corricelli said. "And the predators are out there."

Henry said he follows predators the same way, spending hours at a computer tracking them.

"With this era we live in now, I don't need to go door to door talking to people face to face gathering evidence when it's now at my fingertips," he said.

Most children won't tell their parents about receiving or sending nude photographs of their boyfriends or girlfriends, Henry explained.

"Only when a parent looks at their phone do we get involved," he said.

At the county level

"We're familiar with it, unfortunately, a little more than we'd like to be," District Attorney David Arnold said about sexting.

There are several factors that have to be taken into consideration when prosecuting cases involving sexting, the most important of which is age, Arnold explained. If the case involves an adult sending certain types of photos, he or she could be charged with sexual abuse of children, commonly known as child pornography.

A Pennsylvania law that came on the books in 2012 states that if the case involves minors the charge is transmission of sexually explicit images by a minor. That could be a summary offense or misdemeanor, depending on the circumstances.

"We don't like to put felony convictions on juveniles if we can avoid that," Arnold said. "It's kind of an understanding that what they did is a criminal action and they need to be accountable for it, but at the same time it's not something that follows them for the rest of their lives with a felony conviction."

Punishment can include a fine, probation and possibly being sent to a juvenile-detention facility, Arnold said. There is also a diversionary program similar to Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition through which juveniles could have their records expunged.

'Handful of cases'

Although advances in technology may make sexting among minors easier, Arnold said he is not aware if it is more prevalent that it has been in the past.

"We've had a handful of cases in Lebanon County," he said. "(A) new statute was effective in December 2012. ... We haven't had any cases come in since then. That's a good thing — in the last year we didn't have any. We did have a handful prior to that new statute coming into place."

Arnold admitted that it is possible potential sexting cases are not reported to law-enforcement authorities.

"I would also venture to guess that parents may find these things on students' phones or computers and not report it," he said. "I'm confident that it happens more than we see it, but that's OK if the various parties want to handle it.

"The simple solution to the problem is don't send photos of yourself naked or partially naked to anybody," he added. "If everybody would follow that rule it wouldn't be an issue."

If a student receives a photograph, Arnold said, they should not don't keep it in their phone or computer and delete it.

"It is taken very seriously by the law-enforcement community," he said. "We don't relish prosecuting juveniles, but if the law says we have to, then we have to."

Viewing this on a mobile device? Click here.