DR reports that a 15-year-old girl from Hedensted was contacted through social media by a suspected 22-year-old man from Hungary. The girl was later found in Hungary, where a court has now remanded the man in custody.
The case is described in a press release from a Hungarian court, cited by DR. According to the court, the 22-year-old made contact with the girl via social media. With help from an unknown accomplice, he then transported her to Hungary.
The court states that the man had established a relationship with the girl in order to later commit sexual offenses against her. DR identifies the alleged conduct as grooming. The court has placed the 22-year-old in pre-trial detention.
Following the case, DR spoke with Mia Lind Winther, a psychologist at Red Barnet and an expert in digital abuse at the organization’s SletDet advisory service. She recommends that parents begin talking with their children the moment the child is allowed online. Per Winther, that makes conversations about online contacts a natural part of family life.
Winther cautions parents against relying on a child’s own judgment as the only safeguard. She notes that the design of digital platforms lets adults learn a great deal about children’s interests. It also gives them direct access to the communities children are part of.
According to Winther, adults can easily appear to be the same age as the child. That makes the situation difficult for children to assess, she says, because grooming cases typically begin with contacts that seem entirely innocent. A child may even experience a message from a stranger as something positive.
She points to platforms including Discord, the gaming platforms Roblox and Fortnite, and the social media services TikTok and Instagram. As stated by Winther, contact often moves from open forums into closed channels such as Messenger, SMS and WhatsApp. One platform dominates the inquiries the SletDet service receives, with Snapchat accounting for half of them.
DR notes that Red Barnet’s own research shows two out of three children and young people aged 9 to 17 experience something unpleasant or directly abusive online during a year. Winther says contact between an offender and a child can develop into shared secrets. Parents may notice that a child isolates itself and prefers to be alone with a phone.
Her final advice is for parents to stay calm, and she recommends interest and care before control and surveillance. According to Winther, children who contact the service say they do not want to worry their parents. That can make them hold back from sharing difficult online experiences.
Winther stresses that her advice is general and does not concern the specific case of the 15-year-old girl. She adds that responsibility never lies with the child. In her account, the offender has abused the trust the child showed.
