Its most recent Utah incarnation is an alliance forged by state residents and Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

Shurtleff joined JoAnn Hibbert Hamilton on Thursday night at Eastmont Middle School in Sandy to speak to parents and children over 12 about ways to combat inappropriate material appearing in their neighborhoods and on their computers.

"The problem of pornography is worse than people even realize," said Becky Overacker, 50, sitting among about 100 people in the audience. "People are ashamed, so it's hidden. It's seductive."

Shurtleff unveiled a set of new strategies to help parents ensure the safety of their children when using the Internet.

He distributed several handouts that detailed approaches to monitoring home-use of the Web. They included methods of identifying possible sexual predators in chat rooms, reminding sons and daughters that people online might not be who they say they are and keeping the home computer in a common area.

Hamilton also talked about the threats of allowing children to see sexually suggestive magazines in stores.

"We haven't been enforcing Utah's Indecent Public Display [to minors law]," Hamilton said. "The public isn't aware that we've crossed the border."

That law makes it illegal to display any material in any place where a person under 18 years of age has a right to be if that material - among other things - contains nudity, partial nudity or sexual acts.

Hamilton is the president of Citizens for Families, an organization that seeks to cultivate a wholesome community environment for children. Its Web site, "Strengthen the Family," is http://www.strengthen thefamily.net/. Her group already has persuaded many Bountiful businesses to conceal sexually oriented magazine covers.

If parents understand the problem of sexual addiction - pedophilia, for example - they will be able to combat its causes, she said in an interview before the meeting.

"I don't think that this is an impossible thing to deal with," she said. "All a pedophile is, is a good boy who perhaps was exposed to inappropriate material or was sexually abused and then moved into a sexual addiction. Then, they went on to more explicit things. That's why we have sex addicts abusing kids."

Scientists, however, say the causes of pedophilia are not known. Possibilities include brain disease, hormonal changes, genetics, learned behavior or the result of sexual abuse.

No matter what the cause, Douglas Goldsmith, a psychologist and the executive director of The Children's Center in Salt Lake City, said society "should be extraordinarily concerned about children being exposed to pornography."

Researchers don't know what the impact of viewing pornography is on children, he said in an interview before the meeting. The concern is that children who are exposed to Internet pornography can view people in warped situations and believe that behavior is normal. "The answer is supervision," Goldsmith said.

mcronin@sltrib.com

Some harsh facts

* Nine in 10 children ages 8 to 16 have viewed porn online - most of them by accident.

* The average age of first exposure to Web porn is 11.

* Nearly half of all children ages 11 to 17 with an Internet connection surf for porn sites.

* One in 5 children ages 10 to 17 has received sexual solicitations while on the Internet.

* Kids can bypass most blocking software with a single click of the mouse.