Paedophile case highlights net dangers

A child cyber-safety expert today praised the way a UK mother handled a potential nightmare when her teenage daughter was lured into meeting a middle-aged paedophile.

The 47-year-old bachelor met the 13-year-old girl in an internet chat room and pretended to be a 15-year-old boy. The girl spent hours chatting to him every night unaware she was being drawn into a trap.

She emailed photos of herself to the man and eventually arranged to meet him in a shopping mall in Milton Keynes. The mother, unknown to the girl, kept watch from a discreet distance and was horrified when the 'boy' turned out to be a middle-aged man. She confronted him and alerted the police.

"The mother acted incredibly in the way she approached the situation, and thankfully the daughter confided in her mother over the meeting," Parry Aftab, a lawyer and founder of cyber neighbourhood watch cyberangels.org.com told vnunet. "This story could have had a very different ending."

Aftab said that parents in the UK must wake up to the dangers of the internet, predicting that such cases will increase as online charges come down. "The internet is not going to go away, it is essential to children's education, but parents must be aware of its dangers and guide their children around it safely."

Aftab said that reports made to cyberangels.org.com in the UK about scams, pornography, paedophiles and stalking are on the increase. "You have to remember its not the internet that creates risks, it's the people that use it," said Aftab.

In the Milton Keynes case, police managed to retrieve the teenage girl's email, found the man's address and got a warrant under the Sexual Offences Act. He was arrested at his house in Durham, but there was insufficient evidence to press charges.

Milton Keynes police said it was a "very disturbing case" and that parents need to be alerted to the misuse of the internet by certain sections of society.