'He wanted her to say she loved him'

LIKE many other girls her age, 12-year-old Chloe Burns used to spend a lot of time on the Internet. She would tell her grandparents about the friends she met through various chatrooms - all except one.

They had no idea about the 46-year-old man she had been chatting to and who had been sending her pornography. It was only when he called her at home on Teesside that they became suspicious.

"She had given him her home number and he phoned the house," explains her grandmother, Marian.

"My daughter, who is very Internet-wise, answered the phone and he thought it was Chloe. When he realised it wasn't, he put the phone down. That raised our suspicions, especially as she was becoming more and more secretive.

"We went straight onto the site and found pornographic imagery. He was asking her to say that she loved him and he told her that he was going to come up and see her."

Chloe had been in contact with the man for about ten months and when police traced him, they discovered he was a 46-year-old from Greater London, not the 17-year-old he had made himself out to be.

Although he was given a warning, the police were powerless to act.

Marian says: "They managed to trace him but they said there was nothing they could do. In the end, it's my granddaughter who's been punished.

"She's been really badly affected by it and is only now beginning to relax. She's not allowed to use chatrooms at all and when she does use the computer, she's very carefully monitored but it's not her fault. She was the vulnerable one. Children think they're safe sitting behind their computers but they're just being lulled into a false sense of security."

Chloe's story is an increasingly familiar one. The Internet may be a superb resource for children but can also pose dangers to nave youngsters.

Five million children in Britain have access to Internet chatrooms and it is not uncommon for them to set up meetings with people they have met on the net. A study carried out by the Cyberspace Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire last year found that one in ten young users had arranged secret liaisons with their chatroom friends without their parents' knowledge.

There has been growing concern among experts that anonymity of net chat means young people are being groomed by paedophiles, often pretending to be children themselves.

Only yesterday, a 22-year-old man from Hertfordshire pleaded guilty to embarking on a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl he met in a Microsoft Internet chatroom.

The case coincided with Microsoft's announcement of plans to cut back its chatroom services because of concerns about child safety. The only chatrooms which will continue will either have their content monitored for inappropriate messages or will be run on a subscription basis, allowing users to be easily traced.

Child safety campaigners have welcomed the move, although many believe it does not go far enough in protecting vulnerable young users. Some have also expressed fears that children will switch to independent chatrooms that are even less safe.

Alisdair Gillespie, senior lecturer in criminal justice at Teesside University and a member of the Home Office's Internet Taskforce on Child Protection, believes paedophiles will still be able to use the net to groom youngsters. "The other providers haven't shut down their chatroom services so it will be interesting to see what they do, but the real problems lie elsewhere," he says.

'MSN was undoubtedly used by adults and paedophiles to talk to children and the chatrooms were getting very sleazy. You could read incredibly provocative stuff on there but closing them down doesn't necessarily mean these people are going to go away. They will just find somewhere else."

There are hundreds of chatrooms operating independently. Internet Relay Chat (IRC), for example, is a virtual meeting place which can be accessed by anyone who downloads the programme needed to run it, while ICQ operates through an instant messaging service.

"That's where most of the sites are and that's where the underground stream is. There are hundreds of channels and because they're not run by an Internet service provider like Microsoft, you don't have any of the issues of monitoring. Parental nannying controls don't work," says Mr Gillespie.

"People think that if you're chatting through instant messaging you have more control because you can only chat to people on your buddy list - but anyone can ask to be your buddy. You have no idea who you're adding to your list. I could set myself up as a 16-year-old and no-one would be any wiser."

BY cutting back it's chatrooms, Microsoft hopes to protect young chatters, although Mr Gillespie believes part of their motivation is a fear of being sued. And yesterday, Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin called for a clause to be inserted into the Sexual Offences Bill to make provision for punitive damages to be awarded against chatroom providers whose service had been used for Internet grooming.

The Government is already planning to introduce a specific offence of grooming of children on the Internet, which has cross-party support and could become law by the end of the year. But while Mr Gillespie believes this will be a deterrent to some paedophiles, many will carry on.

"We have been trying to stop child abuse for 500 years and the Internet is just another tool for paedophiles. No matter what we do, children will continue to be targeted, so we have to educate them.

"They have to be told about safe chat, that they shouldn't give out their real names or arrange to meet up with anyone they've met in a chatroom, and parents should think very carefully about where they site the family computer.

"No-one wants to stop children having fun but if the computer is in a public place in the house, the chances of them being in danger are drastically reduced."

* Some of the names in this article have been changed.