Vulnerable son keeps calling adult chat lines
This is a horribly difficult situation for a family to find itself in.
We will not, for obvious reasons, name the people involved.
Mr X and his wife have an adult son. We’ll call him John, though that isn’t his real name.
John has problems. He is autistic and suffers several obsessive compulsive disorders. His father describes him as very gullible. He is easily taken in by all sorts of scams and lies.
John is alone in the family home at times. He has been phoning numbers he finds on adult contact websites. These sites offer “chat” of a sexual nature, with pictures of beautiful women as the people who are – supposedly – on the other end of the line.
John has run up bills of £100 per week, or higher, doing this – and it has been going on for more than three years.
There are hundreds, even thousands, of these lines available to call, so it isn’t as simple as barring one number.
John needs access to a phone, however, to contact his mother and father, as his carers, if anything goes wrong.
His mother and father have implored John not to do this any more.
They have enlisted the help of his social worker and even spoken to local councillors. But to no avail.
They even contacted police, but were advised that an adult, no matter a vulnerable adult or not, phoning a number that clearly advertises its per-minute charges doesn’t involve any criminality.
John’s father reckons it is irresponsible of these expensive phone lines to accept John’s phone calls. Any member of the public would baulk at bills of more than £5000 per year.
He asked if Raw Deal could do anything. Mr X reckons that the companies doing this make no provision at all for vulnerable adults. Instead, they make every effort to keep any caller on the line for as long as they can to make as much money as possible.
They are, in his opinion, taking advantage of a person who isn’t fully responsible for his own actions and who is not considering all aspects of what appears to be (if you look at these adverts) a highly attractive young woman who is eager to engage in quite salacious chat.
He reckons this “just another scam”, but one that is within the law. It’s a difficult one, Mr X. As you say, there isn’t a law against this. There doesn’t seem to be any easy way to protect someone from themselves.
We contacted BT, the country’s most experienced phone provider, to ask if there was anything that they thought Mr X could do.
A spokesperson said: “Without knowing who Mr X’s phone provider is, we can only give general advice based on what we might do in such a situation.
“There are a couple of options for calls to premium rate lines. BT offers a free premium rate call-barring option to UK based 0900-0909 numbers, or an account holder can alternatively arrange to have a PIN on the line which means the phone can only be used when someone has the pin (there’s a small charge for this service).
“However, your reader mentions a specific website (Raw Deal will not be giving details of the website). Parental controls can be used by an account holder to block access to certain types of web sites. BT offers these free and they can be managed online.”
“Our advice would be to contact your service provider in the first instance to discuss your options.”
We at Raw Deal are grateful for BT’s advice, and we will advise Mr X of the options BT kindly offered.
But, sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a foolproof way to stop Mr X’s son from doing this.
It is a hugely difficult, and sad, problem of the modern world.