Speaking before a conference on child exploitation, U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith told prosecutors and federal agents about his own childhood brush with a sexual predator more than 40 years ago.

Smith said he was walking to his elementary school in Bethesda, Md., when a man who often parked near the school summoned him to his car.

The man exposed himself and solicited sex. Smith said he ran away and his mother later contacted police.

"One of the most searing episodes of my youth," Smith told reporters after his public remarks Wednesday.

"I've never forgotten it. I never will forget it."

Smith told those in the audience that the man who exposed himself was later found guilty of murdering the little brother of a lifelong friend back in Maryland.

That friend, Rick Neumann, told The Oregonian that the man suspected in the 1966 slaying of his half brother was never charged or convicted of that murder.

But the suspect, he said, is now serving a prison term for a sex crime. Neumann said it remains unclear whether the man suspected in the killing of his brother was the same man who Smith said exposed himself.

"It could well be," Neumann said, "because it was right in the same area where Gordie used to hang out."

After his speech before the Oregon Child Exploitation Conference, Smith told reporters that his personal confrontation with the flasher four decades ago only shows that "perverts" have long preyed on children.

"The problem has always existed," he said. "We simply must do more as parents and public officials."

Smith recently co-sponsored a bill that proposes new ways to curtail the flow of child pornography on the Internet, including new penalties for Internet service providers that knowingly fail to report such images.