WINFREY: So this high-tech new world has taken the sexual abuse of children to a whole new level. Computers, cell phones, chat rooms, MySpace, Facebook, digital cameras are just some of the tools that these cunning criminals have at their fingertips. Last fall, you all came together to help pass crucial legislation in the hunt for online child predators, the Child Protect Act. Later in the show we're going to tell you how children are already being rescued. But today, your teachers are really -- real people who have suffered at the hands of these predators, and maybe one thing that one of them says will be what saves your child today. That's what Alicia also hopes. Here is part of her videotaped testimony before Congress. ALICIA: "My name is Alicia Kozakiewicz. For those of you who don't remember those headlines, I am that 13-year-old girl who was lured by an internet predator, transported across state lines to Virginia -- in fact, not so very far from here -- and enslaved by a sadistic pedophile monster. I walked out the front door and found that the boogeyman is real and he lives on the web. He came for a 13-year-old girl for a sex slave. He came for me." WINFREY: On New Year's Day 2002, 13-year-old Alicia, a shy girl from a close- knit family, stepped out of her parents' home and into a living nightmare. She had agreed to meet a friend she'd been chatting with online for six months. ALICIA: Once I got near him something changed, and I realized that this person's a monster. WINFREY: Thirty-eight-year-old Scott Tyree lured Alicia into his car and drove her to his home in Virginia. Over the next four days, Alicia says she was raped, bound in chains, shocked with volts of electricity, and hung by her arms as he beat her 13-year-old body. The man who abducted Alicia bragged to his friends about the girl held captive in his basement. He even videotaped her, bound and chained, and shared those images over the internet. ALICIA: He tortured me. He treated me like an animal, a dog. I basically did whatever I had to to survive. It's like I'm a whole, entirely different person. That man did kill that little girl. He did. That girl's completely dead. WINFREY: So, after four days of sheer hell, Alicia was rescued by the FBI. How did they find you? ALICIA: One of the friends that he was talking to about abducting and turning into his sex slave, talking about me to, he came forward. I suppose he got nervous that this was now going to be on his hands if he murdered me, that he is now a suspect as well. WINFREY: So he was telling a friend that he had you held captive, and the friend told on him. ALICIA: He had showed a live video of me via webcam broadcasting, and he looked at it and he noticed a face in the newspaper and it was mine, and he came forward and told the FBI, and the FBI was able to locate him. Absolute miracle. WINFREY: Absolute miracle. So he had left you chained? You were chained to the floor when the FBI came in? ALICIA: Yes. By a locking dog caller. WINFREY: By a lock and a dog... ALICIA: When I said he treated me like a dog, he did. WINFREY: He did. So you were chained to the floor. ALICIA: Yes. WINFREY: And he would, what, go out and -- did he work? ALICIA: That was the thing. He would say he was leaving, but I always thought it was the perfect test that, "Oh, yeah, I'm leaving for work." And I never knew if he was really gone or not. What if he was still there and if I screamed for help? He was going to kill me. WINFREY: So was it that kind of situation where you had been communicating with him on the Internet? ALICIA: Yes, I had been talking to him for a little over six months -- about eight months, actually. And he groomed me. And in doing so, he brainwashed me. And that sounds crazy, but he did. He took apart the 13-year-old girl that I was and created this creature that he wanted me to be. WINFREY: Could you talk about grooming for a bit, because I think that is really, you know, I've done hundreds of shows about this, and it's the hardest thing to get across to people how -- I was just saying earlier, the people who do this for a living are really good at seduction, and seduction starts with the grooming process. Can you talk about specific things that he would say to you? ALICIA: Well, just imagine that you're 13 for a minute. Remember being 13? And, you know, there's days where the world's wonderful and there's days where it seems like the world just hates you. And there's somebody there, always there to tell you that it's going to be okay. And simple things like getting in a fight with your mom, because you wouldn't clean your room, and he'd say, like, "Oh, well, why would she treat you like that? You're an adult." Or you get a bad grade in school, and he'll look at the answer that you got wrong and say, "Oh, no, this is right. You're just really smart." Or you get in a fight with friends at school and some really, really harsh things are exchanged, horrible words, and you tell him, and he says, "Have I ever called you those things?" "No." "Have I ever steered you wrong?" "No." "Have I ever hurt you?" "No." "Well, I'm your real friend." WINFREY: So, when you first went to meet him, when you started to approach him, or the moment you were with him, you sensed that something was wrong here, right? ALICIA: Well, it was New Year's Day 2002, and it was completely out of my character to do this, because I'm somebody who -- I'm scared of the dark. I am. I hate the cold with a passion, and I never went outside alone after dark, ever. And yet it's the coldest, darkest, iciest night of the year, and I walk out my front door to meet a total stranger. It's something that's so out of my character, and just shows you an example of how intense the brainwashing is. And I can remember standing behind a tree and thinking this is really stupid. My senses came back to me for a second. And by that time, I heard my name being called. Next thing I knew, I was in the car and he was squeezing my hand so tightly that I thought it was broken. And he was telling me warnings, you know, "The trunk's cleaned out for you." And at that point, I realized, "Okay, well, you're much bigger than me, and the time to fight and kick and scream is over. I need to do whatever I need to do to survive, no matter how humiliating or degrading." WINFREY: He told you that even, you know, shortly after you got into his car? ALICIA: Yes. WINFREY: Did you think you were going to be killed? ALICIA: I definitely wasn't getting out of there alive. WINFREY: Yeah. And I understand that you've also seen some of the video that he took of you. ALICIA: Yes. WINFREY: Yeah. ALICIA: The FBI had to show it to me to confirm it was me, and it was the hardest thing. Nobody should ever have to look at that. Nobody should ever have to see themselves being abused through the abuser's eyes. That was so hard. That was only a few months after I came home. WINFREY: So what do you want to say to kids 13 years old right now? ALICIA: I talk to kids a lot. I go into schools and I talk to kids about this. And it's so scary, because they're making the same exact mistakes I did. You know, they're talking to people freely and they're putting out information, and it's so much scarier today, because there's social networking sites. That wasn't even around when this happened to me. So there's this whole other level of danger that they really need to be aware of. And it's horribly sad. WINFREY: So Scott Tyree pleaded guilty to charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and travel with intent to engage in sexual activity with a minor. He was sentenced to 19 years in a federal prison. What's interesting -- I heard the producers said to me that you won't say his name, and you won't say his name because you think that -- well, obviously, know that he's a monster. And I was saying to them, I think, certainly, you have the right to do that, and you should do whatever you need to do to move forward and to cope, but I think so often these predators get described as monsters, and that puts them in a different kind of category, when in fact they really are just the guy next door. They really are just the guy next door. You neighbor. So I thought that your line about "the boogeyman is real" -- yeah, he lives on the Internet, and often lives next door. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Alicia.
