Sinister motives of talking to 'Suzi' on web

‘HAVE you ever kissed a boy?” As an opening line it was nothing if not direct.

“No? Would you like to?” was no more subtle.

Unfortunately for smooth talking mancguy19, the recipient of his offensive charm was not as he believed – a 14-year-old girl sitting in her bedroom.

Instead, it was a 33-yearold journalist working at his office desk in Darlington.

The plan was simple: Spend a couple of hours on the internet pretending to be a teenage girl and see what happens.

Is the internet really used by sex offenders as a window into children’s bedrooms, as some experts claim, or have the dangers been exaggerated by overprotective adults overly suspicious of a virtual world they barely understand?

Two sites were selected for the investigation – social networking website Netlog, and teenage chat forum, 321teenchat.com Netlog was singled out after coming under fire for allowing teenagers to upload provocative pictures of themselves.

Setting up a profile on the site took less than two minutes with nothing to stop me – or anyone else – entering false details.

Suzi, our fake teenager, was given a suitable username, and her age was set as 14.

Before signing up, it was agreed Suzi would only speak when spoken to and would avoid doing anything that could be construed as leading anyone on.

This, and the omission of a profile picture, meant we expected Suzi to be ignored.

However, 30 seconds after her profile went live, the first friend request arrived.

Ron, who claimed to be 18, said “hi”.

Suzi said “hi” back and Ron asked if she had MSN?

This was the pattern for the next hour.

People asked to be friends and when Suzi accepted, they immediately asked if she had the instant messenger service, now known as Windows Messenger.

Once on the messenger service, the conversations quickly became so predictable.

Despite Suzi mentioning at the earliest opportunity that she was only 14 – an unnecessary announcement as Netlog overlays youngsters’ ages over its pictures – every new acquaintance, with only one exception, moved the conversation with little delay to the subject of sex.

Like mancguy19, there was no elaborate build up, no small talk.

It was just: “Hi, how are you? Do you have a picture?

Can I see you on a webcam?

Do you want to see me on webcam? Have you ever kissed a boy? Would you like to?”

The most alarming conversation took place with a user who said he was aged 19 and living in San Francisco.

After repeatedly calling our teenager “huni” and saying she sounded “amazingly hot”, he asked where Suzi lived.

He followed this up with: “do you ever do meet ups?”

The truly frightening aspect was the speed with which this had happened.

In only 45 minutes from Suzi’s profile going live, a man had discussed meeting up, presumably for sex.

This was not my previous understanding of “grooming” where an offender spends weeks and months trying to gain the trust of their intended victim.

This was speed-grooming and a quick click on the profiles of Suzi’s new friends suggested it was not an isolated case.

One man who offered to expose himself on his webcam had more than 500 friends – all girls – many under 16 and some pictured in highly suggestive poses, often wearing only their underwear.

Presumably, the user had asked similar questions of these other friends and presumably he was still asking because some had taken him up on the offer.

After logging off Netlog, we signed Suzi up to 321teenchat.com More than 100 people were logged into the chatroom.

The conversations went so fast they were almost impossible to follow.

However, it was clear it was dominated by users looking to chat to girls.

Again Suzi stayed silent until she was spoken to, but it did not take long for more requests to talk in private – this time in the chat room’s own private chat function.

Once talking one-to-one, the conversations mirrored those on the messenger service – sex was the only subject anybody wanted to discuss.

Some of Suzi’s new friends were no doubt just wanting cheap thrills by talking dirty with young girls.

Although this in itself is probably illegal, the tragic death of Ashleigh Hall shows there are others whose motives are even more sinister.

The Darlington 17-year-old is not the only teenager who became the victim of a sex offender whom they met online. Newspapers around the country have documented dozens more cases.

It seems that the experts who describe the internet as an open window into children’s bedrooms are not far from the truth.

The question for the authorities and parents is how to slam this window shut.

■ In response to The Northern Echo’s investigation, Netlog deleted a number of profiles from its site and reported one of its users to the police.

Chief executive Lorenz Bogaert, who founded the Belgium company in 2003, said Netlog did everything it could to tackle the problem of adults using the site to meet children.

Mr Bogaert said: “We do what we can by providing the necessary support to the community, and we do everything we can when we know about an issue.”

He said the default privacy setting was set as high as possible for the site’s young users, adding that a 24-hour support service was available to deal with complaints about behaviour on the site.

He said all reports were investigated and incidents were reported to the police when necessary.

Mr Bogaert said that Netlog supported the introduction of an age verification system which would ensure young people could be sure they were communicating with another youngster.