Just found out my 11 YO is texting with a person she met on a dating website

[AgentZigzag]

I want to start out by saying I take full responsibility for not checking her phone and seeing this earlier, I thought we had a sensible and responsible daughter and I've allowed myself to be misled by that thought.

She left her hotmail account open on my computer about a two hours ago, and I had a nose through her in and out box and found a change of password email from this teenage dating website. (it's always been made very clear to her that I could and would look through her electronic communications and history, although this was said a while ago)

I went to the site and found she had a fucking profile on there! And messages to and from other 'people'.

But there's one specific profile who she's contacted more, he's given her his phone number, and I presume she's given him hers, because we've just looked on her phone and they've been fucking texting each other!

In her email account she's sent him photos, of some drawings etc, but things that are obviously from a child.

He's sent her a photo of himself (which she thought she'd deleted, but I managed to get it back).

On the texts, and there are a fuck of a lot of them -

-She's told him she's 13

-Lots of talking about wanking and masturbating (even after she's told him she's 13) - which she asked me about yesterday because she didn't know what it meant, and you can see from the texts she's got no idea WTF he's talking about.

-She's tried ringing him tonight she's text up to 10 to 1 at night, and from 7 in the morning.

-She's been texting him all day today - when we've been there with her!

-He's actually messaging her NOW!

I'm holding DH back from texting him to say something, because I need some advice. DH is talking about the police (if there are any of the MN bobbies I know use MN, is this that serious do you think? Is it exaggerating thinking this is a 'man' grooming what he knows to be an underage child?)

I really do feel ashamed we haven't protected her from this. We're so aware of shit like this, we honestly are, and when they're 9/10/11 YO everything seems so open and you've told them the rules and think they understand.

We got the phone for her on a contract two weeks ago because her old one broke in the summer holidays and we wanted her to be able have an OK one for secondary school (which she's just started doing the 35 minute walk to and from every day).

I'm angry for letting myself trust her and her breaking it, and for not checking her phone sooner. I don't know where to go from here. Obviously she's not got the phone and I'm looking through her email accounts (she's got two, but I can't get into one).

And what should we do about this 'bloke/man/teenager' who's texting her stuff now? Ignore him, block him?

FFS, I'm just reeling, please tell us what you think.

I'm not usually one to scream "call the police" at the slightest provocation, but in this situation I am going to scream it as loud as I can.

I am a criminal lawyer and I have dealt with cases where adult men have groomed young girls by talking about masturbation etc on dating or chat sites and have gone on to try to arrange meetings. Fortunately in most of the cases I dealt with, the "girls" in question turned out to be undercover male police officers in their 50s!

It is incredibly common and this rings huge alarm bells for me. If it turns out to be another 11 year-old then his parents should know what he us up to and the police can have a chat with him about the dangers of this sort of thing. If he turns out to be 13/14/15 etc then he needs a strong talking-to about the risks of engaging with girls who aren't as old as they say they are. If he is older then he needs the police to come down on him like a ton of bricks.

Yes, I think a lot of people have forgotten what it was like to be 11. There was lots of talk and giggling about sex, only in my day there was no internet, which is a big difference, the worst thing most girls would have looked at was a copy of More magazine.

Poor you and poor dd. I hope you get some help with police today. As waffling said, everyone here knows how easily this can happen.

It is v different from teenagers talking about sex in the park because:
-It follows you home. "in my day" to speak to me, friends had to call the landline, or say hello to my parents. There was a barrier. Now there is no escape, it's in your bedroom, it's in school etc.

-And the other thing is sex on the internet is virtually all adultmale-(nasty)agenda. When I was eleven, we talked about 'fingering' obsessively while my DS (who slipped through my net), has seen anal sex etc on the Internet. What we don't know yet is how this will Affect our dcs generation. There are signs they are suffering (nspcc report on premature sexualisation) but no one knows for sure.

However, you sound like wonderful parents who will help your dd. Once the grooming contact side of things is dealt with, a discussion about what she has seen might be helpful :(

I agree with everyone who says call the police. They will take it seriously and if it really is a young boy, they will get a talking to, and if it is an older person, then they can be dealt with.

It's not your fault, op.

Hello Agent,

I worked in a force contact centre for a few years prior to having DS 18mo ago. I wasn't an emergency operator but a call-taker for 'slow' crimes that didn't require an immediate response, such as thefts or historic reports. I have taken calls from concerned parents about this happening with their children so thought it would be helpful to tell you what I and my colleagues would do with this information.

Firstly, it's not an over-reaction at all to contact the police about this. They will want to know. You do not know the age or identity of the person contacting her. These messages are sexually explicit. For these reasons, the police will want to investigate it further. They will take details from you over the phone and will arrange a time that is suitable for you for officers to come round and take further details and, more than likely, seize the phone. They will then investigate the identity of the person who is contacting her.

It is innapropriate for anyone to be sending messages like this to an eleven or thirteen year old child. Even if they establish that the person sending the messages are of a similar age they would still (IME) wish to speak to them to enforce this.

You are not, in any way shape or form, 'at fault' here. You have had discussions with your daughter regarding the risks that exist through contacting strangers over the internet, and have warned her that although you believe her to be sensible and responsible, you will nonetheless check that she is keeping herself safe. And that's exactly what you've done. The next step must be to contact the police. You do not know who this person is, you do not know that he isn't making these advances towards other young girls who are not fortunate enough to have parents who are looking out for them, and it needs to be shown to your daughter that by 'doing the right thing' she is very probably preventing someone else from coming to harm.

agentzigzag

I am very sorry this has happened, it must be such a shock.

A similar thing happened to us about 18 months ago. DD was 9. It was all through a Skype Account. I was on my DDs laptop and the Skype app kept ringing. I had just been cancelling as I didn't recognise the caller but eventually I answered one. The live camera showed a man masturbating.

When I investigated the call history there were hundreds of calls from all over the world. It turned out DD had answered a random call and, being Skype, this man had seen this pretty blond haired little girl and started chatting (grooming) her.

We contacted ceops who were brilliant. It seems that a random peado had dropped lucky and within days the Skype Account details had spread across a worldwide paedophile ring. Ceops said they had never seen anything like it. dD had started off just talking to the man but it had quickly turned into him saying he knew where she lived and threatening her. She was terrified.

We have no idea how this first call happened as everything was set to private/friends only. I was heartbroken though that this had been going on for a week, in our home, and I hadn't realised.

You must speak to ceops today. They are used to dealing with young children. She will not be in trouble. It may turn out to be a 13 yo boy and your DD just being inquisitive about things he has said, or it could be much more sinister. Either way, this has to be investigated so that you can educate and protect your DD from this sort of thing in the future.

Good luck and big unmumsnetty .

Please don't feel ashamed, children of that age are very devious and I know my parents didn't know half of what I got up to.

I hope this situation gets sorted, its likely she won't quite get 'the riskyness' yet of this situation.

Oh dear sorry to hear this

First call the police

1. Please take lap top off her 11 years old dont need a lap top.

1. Have the main computer in the front room hard to chat to some bloke when dads wacthing x factor

4 get parent conrols and barr all sites which yu can chat we have a 12 ban whoch means my child can not get ino any site were you need to be over 12

5.you can get a proggramme which emails you every site they visit

6.please take her phone if its internet ready and get a model that can only text and phone and tbh she only needs it when she is going out alone i would be tempted to have it off her when she comes back from going out

1. Also olease put a timer on you pc which will mean it will come on and off at a time of your chooseing so she cant sneek downstaris and jump on line

I really hope this is a wake up call to those who think they can trust their child and have no controles and allow them to have a lap top in their room and internet ready phone

Is not the children that cant be trusted ots the people who which to groom them

Dont feel ashamed but put things in place to this cant happen again

It is saddening how common these sort of things seem to be.

Yes all too common now that parents seem to be unable/unwilling to say NO to their little darlings.

My dh due to his job has dealt with this sort of things many times-sadly-the stories he tells me of what young girls/boys get up to online is horrendous.

Kids dont need fancy phones.They dont need to be on social networking sites-hotbeds of bullying and sexualisation imo.

Please let your kids be kids and not mini adults.....

Take your dds phone and laptop / computer to the police station .

Tell her they are away to be fixed / virus removed , so she doesn't alert anyone ( she could have friends who are in contact with this person also .

Take your cues as to what to do after from the police ...they have a dedicated squad that just trace Internet crimes .

Call the police definitely, even if it turns out that this boy is a boy and they've both been honest about themselves. Even if the sex talk was curiousity rather than grooming.

There's enough adult content to be worried and upset, even if it all transpires that its as innocent as two curious teens chatting about sex...

Don't blame yourself either. You had the right balance, trust and warning. She's stepped over a line (unless you have told her its okay to go on teen dating sites, but even then she's not a teen!) and broken you trust. Whether there is something sinister going on or not.

You HAVE to be able to trust her online, now that you can't you have to remove her ability to go online as much! I do feel for her, at 11 you're grown up but not grown up... I got in a few scrape when I was younger (not internet, real life) and its scary and shocking so don't be too hard on her either. x

Hope you are ok this morning zigzag and that you managed some sleep. Agree with others that ceops are the way to go.

Agent zigzag, thank you for starting this thread. I'm so sorry that this has happened, but I'm very grateful for the discussion it has generated. It has opened my eyes to something that if I'm honest about, I'd always considered a theoretical risk that happened to other people's children. Tis bloody obvious that I've been naive to say the least. Going to do something about it.

My DC's ONLY use the laptop in the front room, supervised. Yet my DD was still messages in fb by this man. He wasn't on her friends list, but had asked to be added.

Luckily, as it is supervised, and my DD is not allowed to accept friend requests from anyone without me checking out THEIR profile, she showed me the message as soon as she saw it.

She has Internet on her phone, but rarely uses it as she is on PAYG, gets a maximum of £5 a week credit, and she finds the net eats her credit too quickly.

I have her fb password, and check regularly. I am allowed to check her phone at a moments notice, whenever I wish. If she refuses to let me see the phone instantly, she loses it.

10yo DS1 has a mobile, but it is a very basic PAYG, no net access.

I did blink a few times when DS1 asked me what 'vajazzled' was, but on balance, decided that explaining it to him would be better than leaving him to find out some other way.

He was disgusted and just kept saying "But WHY?!"

I think being open with them, and answering questions when they ask them is best.

And NO child needs unfettered, unsupervised Internet access.

OP please come back and update us all, I hope this gets sorted for your DD's benefit x

CEOP first port of call.

Remove her mobile and her laptop. Agree with poster who said, say it's got a virus so it doesn't raise her suspicions. Supervised access only on a family computer in the lounge (or similar)

You have a responsibility now to ensure that these conversations cannot continue.

I can't actually believe that it's become the norm to give such young children free rein access to the internet. :( Please let your child be a child - and you be the adult. She should be out doing hobbies, not sitting in on her mobile phone and computer! :(

This is how it started with our DD.

It progressed to her skiving off school to see her 21 year old "boyfriend".

She was 13

He gave her drugs, alcohol and of course has sex with her. Also advice on how to abscond from home at 2am in the morning, etc, etc.

Phone the police now.

Quite likely she does have hobbies as well!
Most kids have mobile phones once they start secondary school and most kids use computers, it's hardly unusual. And the op found the messages because she was checking her phone and email account.

That is awful katie what happened to the perv?

Happened to my friends dd, lovely chap he was, thankfully her sister grassed n her just as she left to meet this 14 yr old at the train station

Who turned out to be a convicted adult paedo

He'd groomed her so nicely and so well that she defended his actions in court and refused to accept that he'd done anything wrong.

As a 21 yr old mum she is now mortified of course, but she was just sucked in

These stories are so frightening.

But eye opening at the same time

He was charged for it. Got off though as DD would not admit having sex with him.

Didn't stop him or her that time, or the second time, though....

He eventually dumped her for his cousin who has now had his baby. His new GF is 14 and two years below DD in school......

The family are "known" to the police, unsurprisingly.

Hope you rare ok this morning agent. How horribly scary.

And I agree with OYBBK - thanks for posting. Lots for all of us to think about.

DS is 11 and although he doesn't have a mobile phone yet he spends a lot of time on the laptop watching YouTube and playing Minecraft and Football Manager. We do have parental control on it and it does work as he gets so frustrated with trying to find stuff oh his favorite football team (ARSEnal). But I am guilty of thinking this type of thing could never happen to us.

This is a salutary reminder of how easy it is for them to access all kinds of stuff. And a reminder that even if we think we have covered all the bases and they know what the should and shouldnt do, they often still do!

DS doesn't have a Facebook account. I thought. Then I discovered he set up a fake one! Fake name and photo of an actor. This was over a year ago. He doesnt use it and only has two friends on it - me and my sister. But it was a surprise to me that he did it! Must delete it actually.

Fishwife - I like the sound of the programme that emails you all the sites you visit. Do you have the name of it? How do I access it?