Online predators

A chilling video about a teenage girl being groomed online before being raped and murdered has got everyone’s attention in the UK. The teenager was just 15 years old when she was contacted on Facebook by a man pretending to be the same age as her. She started chatting to him every day and soon developed a relationship.
 
This relationship grew over time and eventually the man persuaded her to bunk school and come to his flat. She arrived at the flat to find that he was not who he said he was and was also not alone – he had an accomplice. They raped and murdered her and dumped her body in a bush.
 
Stories like these are also fast emerging in South Africa.
 
A few years ago a young teenager was groomed on Mxit, an online social messaging platform, and was lured from Durban to Johannesburg to meet the “sixteen-year-old boy” who was actually a forty-year-old paedophile. Luckily, she was found by her parents before making it to Joburg.
 
Last year a Durban teenager was caught sending naked pictures of herself to older men she had met on Facebook. Her parents had no idea that she even had a Facebook account.
 
Marc Hardwick from the Guardian says it happens more frequently than we know. Listen below to his advice on how you can protect your children from online predators.

 

What measures do you have in place to ensure that your children are protected against online predators, in particular social media?
 

You can contact Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet him your thoughts.