Thirteen-year-old Amanda Staubs of Winchester had never met him in person, but the 14-year-old boy from Norfolk had become her best friend and confidant over several months of e-mails and instant messages.

Another girl who was about the same age, this one from Forest, began visiting chat rooms to learn about sex from experienced older men. She started a long-term friendship with one man and fell in love with another.

Staubs, now 21, said that her online "best friend" turned out to be a 36-year-old man. The men that the Forest girl got involved with served time in jail as a result of the relationships. They were about twice her age.

Both girls, who are now college students, were victimized by the men they had come to trust.

Their stories are similar to those of an untold number of Internet sex victims worldwide. According to a 2006 nationwide study, online predators solicit one in seven children, most of whom are 13 or older.

When predators contact children online, they often begin by developing a trusting friendship that becomes sexual and intimidating, said Lt. Michael Harmony of Operation Blue Ridge Thunder, the Bedford County Sheriff Office's Internet Crimes Against Children task force.

Before they met the older men in person, both girls said they were addicted to chatting online and hid it from their parents.

The girl from Forest, now 19, would wake up during the night, when her parents were asleep, sneak to the basement and talk online using a webcam. Not even her close friends knew she was dating an older man. She spoke on the condition that her name not be published.

She said that when Darryl Walizer, one of the men she had chatted with for almost three years, wanted to take the relationship further, she said no. But he was persistent and pressured her, she said.

"He had this way about him that if you didn't do what he wanted, he'd repeat himself over and over," she said. "You want to pull away, but you feel like you can't do it."

She was vulnerable at the time, she said, because another man, Sean Dunn, had ended their nine-month relationship, which had begun online. The girl and Dunn would talk by phone and chat online using a webcam.

Eventually, Walizer's pressure wore her down. In January 2005, she agreed to pick up the man from a location in Forest and bring him to her parents' house, where she said he took advantage of her.

The girl, distressed about what had happened with Walizer, told a friend. The friend told the girl's parents, who went to police.

About that time, the girl's mother found Dunn's class ring in their home and found out who he was by searching his name on the Internet.

Walizer, now 39, was sentenced in 2005 to serve four months of a five-year prison sentence for soliciting a juvenile to commit a felony.

Dunn, now 37, was ordered in 2006 to serve six months of a five-year sentence for enticing a minor for sexual material and distributing sexually explicit material.

Staubs said she had been chatting online for seven months before she agreed to meet her friend in person in her neighborhood. She said she didn't realize her Internet friend was much older until Donald Lee Williams Jr. pulled up in a van and told her to get inside. Williams took her to a hotel room, where they had sex.

He was later convicted of three counts of having carnal knowledge of a 14-year-old girl and ordered to serve seven years of a 30-year sentence.

Coping with such a traumatic experience and having to discuss it with their parents was nerve-racking and humiliating for both women.

Many young victims are too embarrassed and ashamed to go to their parents, Harmony said.

"How do you tell your mother and father you've been talking to a 36-year-old man and sent a nude picture to him?" Harmony said.

The Forest woman said that when her relationships were first revealed, she didn't want to talk to investigators.

"I lied," she said. "Then I broke down and said, 'I can't lie about this.' "

The subsequent court proceedings, too, bore heavily on the family. They were afraid her name would be in the news. She said she had to testify in front of strangers about things she didn't even want her parents to hear.

"I still wish they didn't know all the details," she said.

She said she was severely depressed and twice attempted suicide. She went to a therapist for six months and, even today, she has nightmares that the men break into her house to punish her for testifying against them.

Neither the Forest woman nor Staubs has used a chat room since their encounters.

"There's no need to be in there," the Forest woman said. "There's bad, nasty people in there. You don't need to be around that."

Staubs agrees that chat rooms are fertile ground for pedophiles and that the Internet provides an anonymity that emboldens dangerous people.

She said she thinks about the incident every day. "You kind of lose your innocence after something like that," she said.

She added: "I don't have a horrible love life. I don't distrust people."

These days, Staubs is taking college courses in Northern Virginia. She said she speaks regularly to high school students and other groups about online dangers and is a spokeswoman for the Safe Surfin' Foundation.

Educating children, she says, is therapeutic.

She also filmed public service announcements with basketball star Shaquille O'Neal in Bedford County last year.

"If anything feels uncomfortable, even the slightest bit, tell your parents," she advises.

The Forest woman said that children and teens shouldn't use chat rooms, and if they do, they should only talk to people they know, such as friends from school.

Her mother said parents should educate their children.

"Parents really need to know how vulnerable their children are," the Forest woman's mother said. "Don't think that it can't happen to you."

Staff writer David Harrison contributed to this report.