‘At 14, I was excited to get male attention’

Sexting / grooming

Mared Parry, left, was 14 when she started using social media. She had never received male attention before, but online she found that older men – in their mid-20s – started sending her messages.

“They began innocent, and 14-year-old me was excited,” she recalls. “To have an older guy call me beautiful made me feel special. In a sense I felt validated, or that I was actually worth something after all and wasn’t ugly like the guys my age made me feel.”

When the messages turned sexual, the Cardiff University graduate, now 21, played along for the most part, and although she never met with them, she sent the men semi-nude pictures.

“It makes me sick thinking those images still exist, and that they were able to take advantage of me so easily,” she says. “I didn’t recognise it as grooming – it felt so innocent and normal.”