Teens targeted in text chatrooms

1.00pm - By LEAH HAINES

They are typical pre-pubescent Kiwi girls.

The six 13-year-olds sitting together are squeaky-voiced kids who gabble conversations littered with "like", rarely look you in the eye, and cover their faces, still too young for pimples, as they giggle behind their hands.

Yet these somewhat gawky third formers are just what the grown-up men lurking in a popular teenage chatroom, were looking for until it was closed down on Friday.

And the girls' naivety, combined with the beginnings of teenage recklessness, appears to make them vulnerable.

They've all been propositioned by older men in the chatroom - so easy to get to it's only a couple of keypad touches away on their mobile phones.

The men demanded phone sex, text sex, or to meet in person. One girl twice arranged to meet in person teenage boys from Vodafone's "Teenzone" chatroom, only to find they were older men.

Luckily, both times she watched with a friend from a nearby fast food restaurant, and checked them out. One never realised she was there. The last time, she and her friend ran off.

"He was really freaky. Then he saw us run. He was like dodgy. He was texting us 'why did you run away' and all this. He looked 40. He looked really old."

But running away did not stop men hounding her. This girl has had three mobile phones after being pursued by men who convinced her to give them her number. Her parents have had to change their phone after she agreed to call a "boy" from home. Another had a phone replaced after a chatter would not leave her alone.

Though Microsoft closed its internet chatrooms last year to protect children from sexual predators, in New Zealand mobile phone chatrooms, arguably more dangerous, have been left untouched.

Children may know about them, but their parents and the authorities, it seems, have been largely unaware they exist.

A parent who called Vodafone last week to ask about keeping her 13-year-old safe in its chatrooms was advised to send him to Teenzone, which it markets as a "wrinkle-free" zone.

But the Herald on Sunday discovered Teenzone was full of deviant older men. After we told Vodafone about our findings last week it contacted the companies sharing the site and pulled the plug late on Friday.

Posing as a 13-year-old girl and using nicknames including Britfan, Yungchik and Cindi2, we were propositioned by more than a dozen men claiming to be aged from 18 to 38.

One 26-year-old soldier from Christchurch kept up a relationship for more than eight days, sending our girl text "huggs" and "kisses", calling her "sweetie" and "hun" as he tried to develop her trust, while asking her to describe what she was wearing or whether she wanted phone sex. He sent her a text describing masturbation.

On Friday a 38-year-old Auckland man claiming to be a furniture maker asked to meet her in person after vividly describing the sexual act he wanted to perform on her.

Like the others, he was repeatedly reminded she was just 13 and asked why he was hanging around a teenage chatroom.

The Herald on Sunday is supplying transcripts of the text conversations to Auckland's police child exploitation team, which is investigating and will talk to the men and warn them they are being watched.

But our investigation also revealed New Zealand lags behind Britain in practical measures to protect children from sexual predators.

There, the Children's Charities Coalition for internet Safety (CHIS) has lobbied for a code of practice for mobile phone operators that bars any under-18s from text chatrooms or from viewing adult content on their phones.

Phone companies have agreed to the code, which comes into effect early next year, following high-profile cases where children were abused after meeting adults in internet chatrooms.

Speaking from London, CHIS spokesman John Carr said the charity recognised mobile phone rooms were even more threatening to children and began pushing for the code before the concept really got off the ground.

"Our point is very simple: whatever dangers exist in the fixed internet world, you can multiply by 10 when it goes mobile," he says. "By definition the possibility of parental supervision and support go out the window when the internet ends up in your hand."

Vodafone UK was one of the first to sign.

According to Mr Carr, the age ban was simple to achieve. To enter a phone company chatroom a person must register on a central database and prove they are 18 or over. They are then given a pin number that is linked to their age.

In addition, the UK has passed the Sexual Offences Act, which makes it illegal to "groom" a child under 16 online or by phone with the intention of meeting them at a later stage.

Here, Vodafone New Zealand says it is planning to implement a similar procedure that would bar under 16-year-olds from chatrooms in about a year. The Telecom policy of allowing only 18-year-olds to chat, is impossible to enforce.

Vodafone infotainment manager Kieran Cooney said he was revolted by what we revealed was going on in Teenzone.

"We are taking a lot of steps as a result of being made aware of this," he said.

"It's been such a popular area, for it to be misused like this. It's been an area where New Zealand has come together. It's a great little community and for it to be sullied in any way is something that we really dislike."

In the meantime, Vodafone was advising customers chat was not recommended if they were under 16, and taking a stronger line generally.

Liz Butterfield of the internet Safety Group has been warning parents and children about the dangers of online and text chatting.

Though the organisation takes a pragmatic approach to online safety, recognising the safety benefits in cellphones, Ms Butterfield and the government agree it is time for New Zealand phone companies to consider similar codes of conduct to those operating in the UK.

In the meantime she says parental awareness is the key: "Every single talk I give to a parents group, even when I used to have a very old phone - an embarrassing one, according to my daughter - I used to hold it up and say, 'look, I don't need access to internet chatrooms, I can do it from here'."

In the same week the Teenzone drama has unfolded, doctor Matthew Boyd had his prison term for having sex with underage girls he met in an internet chatroom extended by nine months.

"There's no way of having a safe chatroom," says one teenage girl. "You can't really. You never know if they're lying about their age or anything."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY