‘Internet giants are making it easier for paedophiles to seek out victims like me’

gaming he started saying things that made me feel really uncomfortable. He told me he would pay me to do sexual stuff and was talking very sexually.

“I blocked him but then he kept non-stop calling me. I couldn’t block his number as he has no caller ID.

“I feel like I am being harassed and don’t know how to make him stop.”

Another 15-year-old said she had

A VICTIM targeted by a predator online and sexually abused when she was a child yesterday told how social media giants are making it “easier, not harder” for paedophiles to find their prey.

Lucie – not her real name – now 22, attempted suicide at the age of 13 after being groomed in an online chatroom when she was 10. She was first sexually assaulted when she was 12 and it continued until she was 16.

The paedophile began grooming her by saying he had the same interests as the young schoolgirl.

Lucie said: “A 10-year-old girl wouldn’t recognise that an adult man wouldn’t have the same interests as a 10-year-old girl.

“That was how subtle the grooming was.

“We did meet up in person and that was when the sexual assaults started happening.

“Then he said that if I tried to stop the relationship he would go to my family and they would disown me and tell the police about me. I really did feel like felt suicidal after being sexually exploited by a gang of boys.

And a schoolgirl told how she used to go online “to talk to people mainly because I felt so alone”.

She said: “Some older guys started chatting to me and I sent nude pictures and videos of myself to them.

“I got compliments and didn’t know how to say no. Most of them knew I was just 13 and some of them threatened to post the

I was trapped.” When she was 13 Lucie was hospitalised following a suicide attempt and was later diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the abuse she suffered.

As a child she was allowed to use the internet freely with no parental controls and joined an “unregulated” chatroom aged 10.

She is now calling for greater safeguards on social media but says it is up to operators such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter to protect people – not the Government using taxpayers’ money.

Lucie added: “Social media companies need to tighten up everything they are doing.

“Take Snapchat for example, you are able to see exactly where someone is on a map.

“It seems to me that social media companies are actually pictures online if I didn’t send more. I feel sick just thinking about it and feel so insecure about this all coming back to haunt me.”

Dame Esther Rantzen, Childline founder and president, said: “This pernicious form of sexual abuse was where domestic abuse used to be.

“Older people need to recognise and understand that victims feel trapped because of an overwhelming sense of shame and

Safeguards

making it easier to groom people rather than making it harder.

“I’m not one of these people who thinks everyone needs to prove exactly who they are to be on social media because that is a nanny state idea.

“I think the social media companies could be doing a lot more and investing a lot more money into how they recognise these conversations.

“If you have got someone who is registered as a 30-year-old and they are regularly connecting with young girls, we need to ask them what they are doing about that behaviour.”

Detailing the effect the abuse has had on her, Lucie said: “It doesn’t go away.

“It is with you for ever. “There was police involvement when I was 13, but as is often the case, there was not enough physical evidence.”

Lucie said the predator used the decision of the authorities not to prosecute to assert she was the one who was in the wrong. humiliation.They think they will be blamed, but often they are tricked by people they believe to be genuinely in love with them.

“It is important we explain these new dangers to young people, and how they can be persuaded, cajoled, threatened into actions they come to bitterly regret.

“Teachers can play their part, and so can families. Difficult as it is to broach such a sensitive subject, parents can forewarn their children about this danger, and so forearm and protect them against it.”

A Government White Paper on Online Harms, published earlier this year, proposed setting up an independent regulator for social media companies.

It included greater penalties for those breaching a proposed statutory duty of care to users in preventing them from being exposed to harmful or abusive content.