I am aware that this subject does not headline missing children, however there are many children and young adults who go missing and are sadly later found dead due to the dangers internet chats can lead to and the latter meet up with these chat partners. Some of them are found again, alive, with a traumatic story to tell.
Others are “groomed” over the net, and are brainwashed over months or even years. Some come back home and through counseling can manage to lead a normal life after that, others are not so strong, and even take their own lives due to frustration about the past, and see no way forward.
I would like to use a recent case from here in Germany to highlight the problem of chatting over the internet and then meeting up without a clue WHO they´re meeting with; a case of a young girl called Melanie , aged 23 years. Unfortunately she was killed in an horrendous manner, and had she followed a few simple rules of internet chats and how to do so safely, she may still be alive today.
Melanie had made a new friend in cyberworld, a man who used an “internet username” by the name of 'SARAH', so Melanie was under the impression that she was chatting to a girl. He managed to get her to trust him to the point where they made an agreement to meet up. On Tuesday evening 26th October 2010, they met up at a Fastfood café, and for the first time Melanie realized what had happened. Too late ! She was brutally murdered and her body was hidden in the woods. A search began immediately; dogs sniffed her as far as a riverbank, and there it ended. However, the police searched Melanie´s computer and managed to get enough information to enable them to make an arrest and the culprit showed the police where he had hidden the body.
Benjamin F did not sexually abuse Melanie
I will admit to also meeting up with “cyber friends “; people I had never met in my life before, only people I had chatted to on the internet. However, I had known these people for a great length of time; we had exchanged photographs of each other as well as chatted using a webcam. Only after that did we exchange telephone numbers and literally spoken with each other every now and then. I will also admit to then still feeling rather cautious as I had to fly to another country in order to meet up! My plan was to have a back-up and my family knew where I was going and also had contact with the person I was meeting at the other end. I had a lovely weekend and everything went as well as planned !
Anybody who chats on an internet site/social network , and it is suggested to meet-up personally, there are a few rules which have to be applied BEFORE doing so:
- Make sure you know exactly who you are chatting to by using a webcam.
- Exchange photos to enable you to make sure you have the correct person on the other side of the line. Webcams are best for that. It´s a live picture !
- Make sure you have known this person for a longer period and collected enough information about them to make you feel at ease.
- When a personal meet-up takes place, ensure you do not go alone the first time ! If it is a genuine person you are meeting, he/she will not mind if you do so.
An excellent story to read about “grooming” is this :
IN LOVING MEMORY OF KRISTIN DANIELLE HELMS – a young girl who fell victim to an internet sexual predator.
Kristin began chatting to a man at the age of 14. Two years later, after helping the police to arrest this same man, Kristin took her own life.
Please do not hesitate to add a comment. I am sure there may be more rules we can put out there or suggestions to help prevent this LARGE and WORLDWIDE problem in the future.
5 comments:
In the UK many young girls fall victim to Inetrnet grooming,some are lucky enough to escape relatively unscathed others will never truly recover from what happened to them.
One teenage girl from the East of England has vanished with a man she met on Bebo,this man uses several different names and has groomed many girls in the past.Each victim has been groomed,traffiked and then abused,he even tried to kill one of them when she tried to escape.
The best hope is to educate children,teach them from a very early age not to trust people they don't know in real life.
http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/Parents/InternetSafety/
This is a timely article as more and more people are meeting via the internet. The rules of engagement are quite different than those we use when we meet someone in person.
I also found this article to be very informative regarding the tips on how to meet someone safely and think the webcam idea is very good.
A very good article and a reminder to all of the dangers of meeting people from the internet.
It can be fun and perfectly safe, so long as the simple rules are followed. Many children go missing after meeting predators on the internet and so many of these cases could be avoided if they were just taught the basic rules.
I too have met people from cyberspace in real life but, as an adult, I also had my strategies in place. Like you Zannie, I had chatted for a long time, swapped photos, chatted on the phone - and all stories stacked up. I was still nervous and aware.
It worked out superbly for me and I have great friends for life.
However, I listen to my young nephew who uses an internet games site and he tells me how 10 year olds are encouraged to 'sneak out' and 'don't tell your Mum'. Because I am more aware than most, I have managed to persuade his Mum to close his gaming account - and I passed on information to her about his friends who are being 'sucked in'.
Our children ARE vulnerable because they interact via the internet. They don't have the clues and the 'nouse' that we had when we were young.
Thanks for this excellent article Zannie.
You captured the worries and concerns but, more importantly, you gave a focus to the strategies that could be adopted to keep our children safe.
I appeciate the time and effort you put into raising awareness about this important issue.
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