Mobile Phones, Chat Rooms and Grooming my 12 yo girl

[Gymbob]

We have parental controls set on the home PC, and strict rules about what can be accessed via her mobile.

She obvioulsy thought 'Yeah right', and accessed a chat room, well more than one. I monitor what she does on there, but being an old fogey would never have found what she was up to if she hadn't forgotten to close the app down before I went on to see what she had been doing after she had gone to bed.

OMFG, the conversations were highly sexual and filthy, and to be fair she hadn't really been indulging in the filthy talk herself, but had done enough to keep their interest - posting facial pics of herself and answering them when they paid her compliments. Those people got down to what they wanted to do to her almost straight away, but the most worrying was a squeaky clean 'teen' who has gained her trust and she is smitten. We are quite sure he is not genuine and he had begun grooming her. I have already contacted the police, and may need to hand over the phone to them.

My question is, do you know your daughter's passwords, and do you check ALL their activity? A friend of mine said her 13yo girl won't let her near her phone so she doesn't know what she does on there - surely it must be a condition of having a mobile?

[Bubbless]

i think one thing you may want to consider would be a- talking to her about it before the police get involved- she may feel youve 'not trusted her' (was a big deal to me when i was that age) and b- maybe its not as it seems? it could be friends messing about / boys from school taking the mick / anything to make this sounds less worrying?!

although, when i was 13-14 i was really interested in sex / boys / dirty conversations (although was still a virgin..) because people at school always knew words i didnt, and would talk about all of their imagined sexual conquests....

[AgentProvocateur]

I didn't know how to put restrictions on what they could access on a phone, so I didn't allow them to get a phone with Internet access until they were 15-16. I think 12 is way too young to have unfettered access to the Internet, and I think you should swop her phone for one that can make/receive calls and texts and nothing else.

Also, make sure you have net nanny or similar on home PC, and only let her use it in communal room.

[FFSIvehadenoughofthisnow]

Yes I insist on having my dc's passwords for their phones and Facebook accounts. It is a condition of them being allowed to have them.

Another rule is that they are not allowed to have mobile/Internet devices in their rooms, only downstairs where we can monitor what they are doing.

They are 14. Unfortunately we found out the hard way that, no matter how sensible you think they are, or how much you trust them, all children can be vulnerable to online pressure and bullying, either from strangers or from people they know.

Like many MNers I used to think that it would be an invasion of their privacy if I checked their texts/online activity. That was a mistake I now regret.

[Gymbob]

Bubbless Damn right she feels I've not trusted her, she's proved she can't be trusted so has lost the privilige of having a mobile. But more than that she now has no mobile for her own safety. She didn't even have a mobile until she was 12, and it has always been a rule that she uses the phone for certain things only - she knows what they are.

I am afraid it is certainly what it seems. The content was vile, she had boys /men or whatever they were sending her nude photos and asking for nude ones of herself in return.

I've not allowed her to have Facebook due to the under 13 rule. She has restricted access to the home PC and there is nothing allowed upstairs.

I have offered her a mobile with no internet access, but she thought I was joking, she wouldn't lower herself.

[anongirl09]

Hi. This could very well be a long post but I felt compelled to reply.

To try and get my point across I'm going to use my personal experience in this area as an example, so please bear with me. I'll try and keep it brief.

I accessed chat rooms and had similar discussions when I was about 10 or 11. I had fallen out with my friends and was lonely and lacking in self-confidence. At that age and when you're feeling vulnerable, those compliments are a BIG deal. Nothing much came of those chats and I don't remember speaking to the same people on a regular basis. Still, the conversations were highly inappropriate based on their nature and the fact that the people I was chatting to knew how old I was and made no effort to hide the fact they were adults. My parents never knew about any of this.

Anyway, fast forward a bit and I moved away (opposite end of the country) to a very remote community. My sister and I made friends with a large family (ranging in age from toddlers to mid twenties). I was 11 at the time. We all used to hang out in a big group, so the age gaps seemed irrelevant.

I only lived there for a short time, and then moved back close to where I used to live. I couldn't get a place at my local school so I was "home-schooled" for a term. As you can imagine, I was a bored 11 year old with no friends. When I left the remote community, I swapped numbers with the large family and we promised to stay in touch. One particular family member that I stayed in contact with was one of the oldest, a man in his early twenties.

It seems so inappropriate to me now, but at the time I thought nothing of the 100+ texts a day he used to send me. I have to get across that I was bored, lonely and isolated. My parents knew I talked to him, but they had no idea of the frequency/content of the texts. They have never known my passwords/ checked my phone. The biggest mistake was letting me have a phone in my bedroom at night with picture messaging capabilities. Enough said.

Inevitably, the shit hit the fan. I fell asleep with my phone open, next to me on the bed, and when my mum came into the room she went to move it and caught sight of the messages on the screen. Cue police interview etc etc, man duly caught and punished.

What sticks in my head about however was when my mum confronted me about this, my first words were, "It's not his fault. He didn't mean it. He's my friend." He had well and truly groomed me and although I have always been an intelligent person, at such a young age it never occurred to me that people may not be genuine.

What I'm trying to say through all of this is that you need to have a SERIOUS discussion with your daughter about WHY she feels the need to visit these sites and talk to these men. It is not normal behaviour for a happy 12 year old. So rather than concentrating all of your efforts on removing the problem, you need to tackle the CAUSE of the problem. She may be like me- lonely, shy, lacking in confidence and very, very good at hiding things. My parents didn't have a clue as I always had an excuse.

You are lucky in that you have caught this relatively early, it seems. She doesn't appear to have participated in anything that is likely to have a lasting effect on her.

She is also extremely lucky that she has been "found out" now, before the situation escalates and she finds herself in a similar situation to I did. Believe me, it was not pleasant. I'm 17 now, so 6 years on, and I find what happened still affects me in terms of how I view relationships and the like.

So if you take anything from my extremely long, rambly post, it is PLEASE talk to your daughter and find out why this is happening. If she won't talk to you then find someone she can talk to- family friend, teacher, counsellor etc. There's got to be a reason behind this.

[sashh]

Show her anongirl09's post.

Have a serious talk - no shouting.

Ask her what she would do if he asked to meet? What if she got to where she was to meet him and it was a 40 year old man who told her he was the boy's dad and was picking her up?

Go through the history with her, if you can. A common trick is conversations that go along the lines of:

DD what music are you into
'boy' er, don't really know, what do you like
DD I like X
'boy' yeah they are great, I love them too

This should ring alarm bells. They don't at the moment because she is trusting and taking this 'boy' at face value. If the 'boy' likes everything she does but does not state anything himself then she is being groomed - sorry.

You have done the right thing contacting the police but expect a hissyfit from DD.

When she was little you taught her how to cross the road safely. You held her hand and told her not to talk to strangers. This is now something you need to do with DD, hold her hand and teach her how to use the internet safely.

[Gymbob]

anongirl Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience with me.

Have to go out now but will come back later......thanks and thanks sashh too

[MammaTJ]

anongirl09 you are clearly an amazing young lady!! What a well written and well thought out post.

Your last point about teaching our DCs to cross the road safely etc hits the nail on the head for me really. The thing is we were taught to do those things as children by our parents. They did not teach us how to stay safe on the internet. We just have to do our best. I don't think I did a bad job with my DD1 who is now 17, I shall do a better job, with her help, with DD2 age 6 and DS age 5.

They will do an even better job of it with their own children.

[Gymbob]

....sorry for not coming back to this sooner after your lovely replies.....I actually typed out a great long post this morning then the site closed for maintenance so lost the lot.....

We are tackling the cause - we know where is stems from - and we have had referrals in the past to try and correct it. We are seeing the counsellors again shortly - must to the disgust of DD of course who says that she doesn't need any help.

Our situation is not straight forward, DD delights in attention, and bad attention is better than none at all. She will not hear of this 'boy' she is in love with not being genuine. A professional has studied the messages and told her he is almost certain that he is not genuine. There are some tell tale signs that are not obvious to an untrained eye - and I am an untrained eye - but once they were pointed out to me, well lets just say I am mortified. She was being groomed, and was totally brainwashed, in fact she still is.

Even after all this was explained, and she was asked what she would do if he asked to meet with her, she still says he is ok, we just don't understand her. We are interfering busy bodies with nothing else better to do than control her life.

She still has no phone, as I know that the first thing she will do is contact him, in fact she has said as much, but I am concerned that she will still be contacting him via mobiles of friends' at school....the whole mobile and internet thing just totally pisses me off. Lets ban it all until the age of 18!

[Theas18]

Mobile internet is a real minefield.

DD1 didn't get it till she went to uni. She had gradual increased access and less supervision at home, moving from computer downstairs to in the room at 15 then less parental controls/checking etc . We did have to sort her computer out re virus at one point in 6th form and were perturbed by various " dress my doll" type items on her history, but they were just that - paper cut our type doll sites LOL (she is a funny 'un as my dad would say!) .

DS doesn't have it mobile internet. He has laptop in room with free ish access but K9 on it (after he had a couple of " live sex click here pop ups" that he thought came from live.co.uk ....ie hotmail!) He didn't clic, it scared him silly and we sorted it!

DD2 has wifi her new phone. She's 13, I'm still collecting the phone and checking it nightly. It worries me a bit, but interestingly the wifi needs to work for the phone to be much use. Even getting free games/apps needs it and the updates are often. It's a very low end android device so actually using it for much web stuff would be slow and annoying fortunately. I won't let her have facebook on it at the moment (though she has it on the laptop she uses in the lounge).

Not much use to the op I know but I think parents need to be a lot more savvy and , yes, controlling on these matters. Maybe it's the kids they mix with at school (very academic hard working ethos and plenty of tiger mothers etc ) or that they see we are on their case for good reason, but we've never yet fallen out over it.

Gymbob. I feels so sad for your DD and want to give her a big hug. I do hope you manage to fix her feeling that "any attention is better than none" before she gets much older.

[Theas18]

Gymbob, just a probably rather mad thought. THis "boy" isn't genuine and she has been groomed by the proverbial hairy trucker named dave. What would happen if a meeting was set up that you/the police even supervise?

Would it help? " boy" wouldn't ever appear and she'd get the message? Hairy trucker appears and is arrested?? Possibly shy sweet 12yr old golden boy appears and she is vindicated......

Dunno but I think if it were one of mine who were so convinced I'd do it, with the police to help.

[lilbreeze]

Don't think I would fancy engineering a meeting. What if he's a good-looking 18/20/24-year-old? Even if he did get arrested it might add to the romance of the situation.

[Gymbob]

Sounds a bit Miami Vice Theas, but will see what they suggest. It would certainly drive home the danger wouldn't if if a 65 year old man with a pot belly was waiting for her......