WWW- Three Chicago teenagers have been charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl they met through MySpace.com, a Web site popular with teens and young adults.

Tony Pacheco, 17, and Angel Alverio, 18, were arrested Sunday along with a 15-year-old boy whose name is not being released because he is a juvenile. Pacheco, of the 6400 block of North Hamilton Avenue, and Alverio, of the 1500 block of West Wilson Avenue, were being held Monday on $400,000 bond. A Juvenile Court judge found probable cause to detain the 15-year-old, said Andy Conklin, a spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

Pacheco and Alverio, both students at Senn High School on the North Side, had been corresponding with the girl on MySpace.com, Assistant Cook County State’s Atty. John Henning said at the teens’ bond hearing Monday. Henning did not know how long the teens had been corresponding.

The pair allegedly set up a meeting with the girl, who is also from Chicago, at an undisclosed location on July 24 and drove her to the home of the 15-year-old in the 4800 block of West Walton Street, Henning said. There, they allegedly drank alcohol and played video games, he said.

“The victim passed out and when she woke up,” she was being sexually assaulted, Henning said. That pattern was repeated several times, and the last time she awoke she was in an alley, Henning said.

Parents, school leaders and law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned that teens who spend time on MySpace and other social networking sites can fall victim to sexual predators.

Experts say as more homes have computers that are linked to the Internet, the threat to children will only grow.

“The problem is definitely increasing with the growth of social networking sites,” said Judi Westberg Warren, president of Web Wise Kids, a California-based group that educates parents and children about the perils of the Internet.

Warren said that six years ago, about one out of four children was being solicited by Internet predators. That number has dramatically increased since then, she said, pointing to data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that estimate that at any hour there are about 50,000 sexual predators online.

Also on Monday, authorities said a Mt. Prospect man already on probation for having sex with a minor was charged over the weekend with aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving a 15-year-old Elgin girl he met on MySpace.com.

Thomas B. Zuffante, 21, of the 1-100 block of South Elm Street was arrested Friday and allegedly admitted having sexual relations with the girl in his parents’ home, said Mt. Prospect Police Detective Bob Riordan.

The abuse allegedly occurred between April and June. Detectives conducting a check of Zuffante’s MySpace account discovered he was having numerous conversations with girls under the age of 17, police said.

Zuffante, who was also charged with manufacturing child pornography, is being held on $140,000 bond.

A spokesperson for MySpace, reached through Edelman public relations, said the company “does not comment on ongoing investigations.”

In June, MySpace.com instituted changes to protect younger customers, according to a news release supplied by Edelman. The site already prohibited kids 13 and younger from setting up accounts. Under the new changes, MySpace users who are 18 or older can no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old’s friends’ list unless they already know either the youth’s e-mail address or full name.

Also, the Web site recently allowed MySpace.com members to set their profiles to allow communication only from friends in their network.

Last month, U.S. Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) held a congressional hearing in Chicago on legislation aimed at protecting children from sexual predators who visit online social networking sites.

On Monday, Kirk said the latest arrest signals how much of a threat pages on sites such as MySpace.com can pose. The Federal Trade Commission recently warned parents of predators using social networking sites like MySpace.com, Kirk said.

“It’s a big problem and one that people in my generation poorly understand,” Kirk said, adding that when he talks to teens they say among their biggest problems is dealing with “creeps online”.

Warren and other experts say it’s up to parents to monitor the sites, discuss the perils of the Internet with their children and make sure they know with whom their children are corresponding.

Police said a resident found the 14-year-old Chicago girl in an alley in the 3200 block of West North Avenue. She told police she drank a large amount of alcohol and became ill, police said. She picked Pacheco, Alverio and the juvenile out of a lineup at Grand Central area police headquarters, police said.

Public defender Sandra Bennewitz said that Pacheco was a junior at Senn and that Alverio was a senior at the school and the captain of the football team.

Chicago Public Schools spokesman Mike Vaughn said that school policy did not specifically address Myspace.com or similar sites. Although there have been no systemwide efforts to address Internet safety, some schools have held seminars to teach students about the potential dangers of the Web, Vaughn said.