Dirty guys on the web: ‘My daughter (9) ended up in all her innocence on a chat site of pedos’

I was ten years old when he took over me. I had placed an ad: ‘Looking for a pen pal who loves horses’. Within days, dozens of letters were on the doormat. One was from Kris and I had no idea that she was actually a grown man. In the photo Kris sent me, I saw a cheerful eleven-year-old girl with brown curls. She loved horses. And camping. She did the latter every summer with her father, mother and sisters.

Camping without clothes

That summer Kris went camping in Belgium. She wrote that her parents had chosen a special place: a campsite where you walked around without clothes. Kris thought it was strange, but also a bit exciting. After the holidays she would write to me extensively about it. Maybe she would also send a few pictures of her holiday friends and the environment. She asked me not to tell my parents, brothers and sister. She found that embarrassing.

I promised her to keep my mouth shut. From now on we had a secret. A letter secret.

photos

For almost a year we wrote about anything and everything. We sent each other pictures from Christmas dinner and birthday parties. One day she asked me if I would also like to send a picture of me standing without clothes. After all, she had sent me a picture like that too. She wrote me that I could stand in front of the mirror with a camera. That was fun and exciting. And she could know. She did it very often.

I was almost stark naked in front of the mirror with a disposable camera when my sister acted as a savior. She found the letters and photos and called in my parents. They immediately realized that Kris was most likely a pedophile. They threw away the evidence and banned him from my life.

Not exaggerated

It is now twenty years later and I often think back to ‘Kris’. Just a few more years and then a type like him can set his sights on my very own daughter. She’s only seven and it may seem a bit premature, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration based on what I hear around me.

Jungle of Mad Men

The majority of eight and nine-year-olds are familiar with the web – the playing field for pedophiles. Almost all children of twelve years old have their own social media account with which they can spend an average of one to three hours a day. A third of the girls even spend five hours a day on it.

My stomach turns when I think that my daughter will soon be spending so much time in a jungle teeming with deranged men. The fear sets in when I read figures about sexual abuse on the internet. One in four young people is sexually approached online by the wrong men. It concerns erotic comments, a photo or sexual proposals. Paedophiles are especially targeting young children. The younger, the better.

Likes from strangers

Lisa (40) mother of Pip (12) and Jesse (7), knows all too well how naive children can be. Pip has had his own Facebook and Instagram account for a few months now.

She says: “We have set the privacy properly, and yet her profile photo – which can be viewed by everyone – regularly gets likes and comments from strangers. Recently she accepted a friend request from a total stranger boy. When I asked why she did that, she said, “He looked nice.” This answer oppresses me. Ideally I wanted to cancel her account immediately, but I can’t do that. Social media is part of a 12-year-old’s life. I have been keeping a close eye on her digital activities ever since.”

To chat

Ebony (37) experienced firsthand why it is necessary to keep a finger on the pulse on the web. Her daughter Tiffany (9) ended up in all her innocence on a chat site of pedo’s.

“Tiffany is crazy about vloggers like Enzo Knol,” she says. “She also vlogs herself and has her own YouTube channel. We gave her a camera as a gift with which she makes films at school, at home and on the street. She always shows them to us first. Sometimes children can chat with famous vloggers like Enzo Knol on Omegle, a site where you talk to strangers via webcam. That’s how she ended up on that pedo website.

She was in her room with a boyfriend. The man who spoke to her had his camera off. He asked, “Hey, how are you?” And a few minutes later: “Can I see your belly?” She did. Twice even. Then she got to see a masturbating creep. Luckily her boyfriend ran downstairs to warn us. He said, “Tiffany lifted her shirt twice.” My husband and I didn’t know how fast we had to get up. When I saw what was on that chat site, I was horrified. Images passed by of men lying in bed. Terrible.”

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grooming

Heleen Timmerman, educator at the expertise and treatment center Fier, sees more and more victims of grooming, as digital child seduction is called. She tells about an eleven-year-old girl who had more than five hundred friends on social media. “Within six months, she sent spicy photos to more than 40 strangers and sometimes made webcam dates. She did not see at all that those boys and men were taking advantage of her naivety.”

According to Heleen Timmerman, there are child molesters posing as Justin Bieber lookalikes; they send out hundreds of girls friend requests in the hopes that they will score once. There are loverboys who take over adolescent girls through forums. And pedophiles who enter the lives of young children through the chat functions of games such as Habbo Hotel and Clash of Clans. It is therefore important to inform your child well. Heleen: “It’s just like with traffic lessons. You don’t wait for an accident before explaining the traffic rules to children.”

But how do I tell a seven-year-old to be careful on the web without making her think that any boy can be a pedo? According to Ebony, you just have to be clear and honest. “My daughter didn’t want me to tell anyone, but I informed the parents of her boyfriends and girlfriends anyway. I explained to Tiffany that it is important, because it is very bad what happened. She understood. School picked it up immediately too.”

block

I am going to block as many bad sites as possible. There are programs to detect fake accounts. But above all, I bet on a watchful eye. And Ebony’s tip to set clear rules. “Tiffany is only allowed downstairs on the laptop. The screen should be positioned so that my husband and I can see it. There are also codes on the computer, so she first has to ask if she can go on it. And we broke the camera of the laptop. It will no longer happen to us that images come out from the inside or vice versa.”

This article was previously published in Kek Mama.

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