It is also important to encode the rest of the text in order to protect from possible script injection attacks
function insertTextWithLineBreaks(text, targetElement) {
var textWithNormalizedLineBreaks = text.replace('\r\n', '\n');
var textParts = textWithNormalizedLineBreaks.split('\n');
for (var i = 0; i < textParts.length; i++) {
targetElement.appendChild(document.createTextNode(textParts[i]));
if (i < textParts.length - 1) {
targetElement.appendChild(document.createElement('br'));
}
}
}