Snared in the web of deceit

TALLSCOTSBOY wasted little time. Minutes before, an internet chatroom message had been posted saying that a 14-year-old girl, who had recently moved to Scotland from the US, was looking for friends. With barely a pause, tallscotsboy came calling.

"Hi there," he replied to the message placed on ukteenchatrooms, a popular site aimed specifically at young teenagers.

"I’ve just seen ur new to edinburgh," he wrote in the mangled spelling of the internet age. "I live in Edinburgh, so if u want someone just as a friend nearby im here. I’m 26 m (male) so if im too old or the wrong sex i understand. hope to hear from you soon." He signed himself Dave, which may or may not be his real name.

The kind act of a stranger, taking pity on a young female new to a foreign country? That would be the charitable interpretation and the one that parents of young teenagers would like to put on it.

However, even amid all the adverse publicity surrounding the disappearance of two British teenagers last week along with older men they had first come into contact with on the net, events were to turn out very differently.

Within a few minutes of initial contact, Dave had urged a switch in conversation to his private Yahoo instant messenger system instead. He gave the excuse that restrictions on his computer system meant he could not converse otherwise. He was clearly at work.

Later, on the messenger system, internet grooming commenced.

Scotland on Sunday set out last week to find out how easy it is for paedophiles to make contact with children via the internet. Both 12-year-old Shevaun Pennington and Jenna Bashir, 14, now both returned to their families, were lured away from home by older men they had befriended online.

Chatrooms are effectively meeting places that both children and adults use to meet like-minded people. But as the conversation with Dave - now calling himself Simba - demonstrated, it is all too easy for sexual predators to make contact.

After spending time in friendly, confidence-winning banter, Dave made it clear he had more on his mind. After sounding out his subject’s "maturity", Dave asked if she would like to lose her virginity. He went on to suggest "wrestling naked" in private and discussed having full sex.

"U ever fancied being a model?" he asked at one stage. "I’m a keen amateur photographer and always fancied having a model to take pics of if you fancied it."

"Of course tasteful," he thoughtfully added before asking: "Would u do nudes? Would it help u relax if I’m nude too?"

This type of internet encounter is, sadly, far from rare. Back on ukteenchatrooms and in the one-to-one chat facility, a user called Pompey spent little time on small talk before turning the conversation to sexual matters. Horny21, from Manchester, immediately asked our 14-year-old for a mobile phone number and phone sex.

Chris-Uk asked if she had a boyfriend and what she was prepared to do. He repeatedly asked what she was wearing and urged her to pass on her e-mail address.

Despite the obvious dangers, chatrooms are an important part of youth culture and mostly an enjoyable way to make new friends. Surveys by the University of Central Lancashire’s Cyberspace Unit show that one in five children aged nine to 16 use them regularly. But as our experiences show, innocent fun can soon turn into danger for the unwary. As well as turning internet grooming into a specific offence, children’s organisations now want the police to mount US-style sting operations to catch paedophiles who routinely exploit the loopholes in chatroom protection.

The practice appears to be widespread. More than half of the children who use chatrooms say they have had conversations of a sexual nature. More than a quarter say they were asked for face-to-face meetings.

But although one in 10 confess they went on to meet somebody in person, according to the children’s charity NCH, many turn out to be other children.

Not all are so fortunate. Psychologists have built up a detailed picture of how sexual predators operate on their child victims. Paedophiles routinely scan the profiles that children submit to chatrooms, disclosing their real names, ages, locations, hobbies and photographs.

The ‘grooming’ then develops in stages. First comes ‘friendship’, when the paedophile is likely to request an innocent picture of the child. There may be discussion of home life, to create the illusion that the adult is the child’s ‘best friend’. A key stage is ‘risk assessment’, when the paedophile asks about the location of the computer and how many people use it. He wants to establish the likelihood of detection.

The ‘exclusivity’ stage comes next. The adult, trying to engender trust, introduces ideas such as: "I understand what you’re going through and so you can speak to me about anything."

The child hooked, the adult then moves on to the ‘sexual’ stage, asking questions such as: "Have you ever been kissed?" and "Are you a virgin?" If the child responds positively, the relationship is free to continue. The adult then begins sending child pornography to the child to lower inhibitions. One common trick for escalating the level of contact is to obtain mobile numbers by asking the child to send a text message.

Shevaun Pennington, from Wigan, met 31-year-old Toby Studabaker, a former marine who served in the Afghan conflict, after meeting in an internet chatroom months earlier. Studabaker, whose computer system contained child pornography, spent weeks planning the trip and arrived at Manchester airport early last Saturday. There he met up with Shevaun, who had told her parents she needed her passport to get a children’s bus pass. From Manchester, they flew to the Continent, sparking an international police hunt. On Wednesday, Studabaker, who claims he thought Shevaun was 19, turned himself in to German police, while she flew home to be reunited with her family.

Jenna Bashir disappeared from her home in London two weeks ago after striking up relationships with older men in chatrooms. An e-mail from one 17-year-old described himself as "Ur future hubby". She was found by police on Friday and returned home.

Both girls had spent many hours unmonitored in internet chatrooms, suggesting a common lack of parental supervision. One recent survey for the Home Office found that although nine out of 10 parents were concerned about paedophiles contacting their children through chatrooms, two-thirds of parents never or rarely knew who their children were chatting to or what they were talking about.

Although most had heard about filtering devices that prohibit certain types of conversation, 75% had not taken any action to install them.

According to children’s charities, basic safety guidelines are commonly ignored. As children snared by net paedophiles inevitably have computers in their bedrooms and are unmonitored, computers should be placed somewhere in the house which is used by everyone. Parents should, but rarely do, get involved in internet chatrooms themselves and even take part in chat sessions.

Liz Atkins, head of policy at the NSPCC, said that once contact was made in a chatroom with an unsuspecting child, events can escalate very quickly to mobile phones, text messaging and eventually face-to-face contact. "Parents should help ensure their children are using the internet safely by making sure their children know never to use their real names in chatrooms and never to tell anyone personal details such as their address or mobile phone number."

Parental supervision aside, the government has been forced to act following a series of high-profile cases in which sex offenders have groomed and met children. In Scotland, Colin Johnston, 25, was placed on probation for 12 months and ordered to undergo psychological counselling after pleading guilty at Edinburgh Sheriff Court earlier this year to indecently assaulting a 12-year-old girl he had met through an internet chatroom.

The scale of the problem is growing. There have been 25 prosecutions in the past three years in Britain involving adults arranging to meet children over the internet then raping or sexually assaulting them.

Legislation to criminalise ‘internet grooming’, providing some protection for vulnerable youngsters, received its second reading in the House of Commons last week.

The Sexual Offences Bill creates a new offence for any adult who arranges to meet a child under the age of 16 with intent to abuse them sexually either at that meeting or on a subsequent occasion. Those convicted will be liable to up to five years in jail. The draft regulations, expected to become law by the autumn, also establish a ‘risk of sexual harm order’, designed to prevent adults sending children "sexually explicit communications" such as pornography or indecent text messages by mobile phone.

The Scottish Executive justice department says internet grooming is covered under existing Scots law but that it is considering whether the law needs tightening in the light of the UK Sexual Offences Bill.

But legal experts and charities have urged the Executive not to allow Scotland to fall behind.

John Mackenzie, a technology law expert with Glasgow firm Masons, said: "If there is a difference between Scotland and England, then there is a danger that Scotland will be seen as a soft touch by this sort of person."

Despite the legal moves, Britain still has some way to go before it reaches US levels of protection. In America, the FBI has mounted sting operations for the past eight years, logging on to chatrooms used by children and young teenagers, usually under the assumed identity of a 12-year-old girl.

But most specialist police units dealing with computer crime concentrate on financial fraud, hacking, viruses, pornography and paedophile rings. Fewer resources are directed at the problem of preventing online ‘grooming’.

But NCH, the children’s campaigning group, believes it is time to step up the resources devoted to eliminating the crime. "It would be a deterrent if every paedophile who went on the internet believed they were just as likely to meet a policeman as a 12-year-old girl," said John Carr, the charity’s internet adviser.