Infinite Path

The murder of Ashleigh Hall, a 17-year-old student from County Durham, last October by a man she had met on social networking site Facebook has brought into focus the concerns regarding child safety online. Now, Facebook executives are set to meet the head of a British child protection agency to discuss how to keep young people safe online.

Ashleigh’s murder shocked the country as it highlighted the ease with which youngsters can be groomed. The conviction last month of 33-year-old Peter Chapman – who posed as Peter Cartwright, a young man, on Facebook – for raping, suffocating, and dumping Ashleigh’s body near her home in Sedgefield highlighted the dangers youngsters face if they give their trust too easily. Chapman was a previously convicted sex offender but was allowed to interact and arrange a meeting with Ashleigh on the social networking site. It was this meeting which led to Ashleigh’s brutal death.

There have since been calls for Facebook to install a “panic button” similar to that found on Bebo, which takes users to a site which details how to deal with cyber-bullying, hacking, viruses, distressing material, and inappropriate sexual behaviour. Facebook has so far declined to do this but Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) is hoping to persuade the social networking site to change its mind.

CEOP directer Jim Gamble has reiterated how urgent this is in the wake of Ashleigh’s death. Speaking in March, he stated the “panic button” was necessary “so that children are reassured and empowered, so are their parents, and offenders are deterred”. He also stated that “Facebook is a great environment, they are experts on advertising and engaging with young people in those areas where you can get click-through. But they’re not experts on child protection”.

Facebook has admitted that it will adapt and improve its existing systems rather than install a “panic button” but Mr Gamble has cited the 252 complaints against Facebook that have already been made this year. 40% of them – an equivalent of 101 -  have been concerns about the potential grooming of children. Furthmermore, the organisation states that 75% of the reports it received in January were about Facebook. CEOP want a “panic button” on every page, whilst Facebook have said that they will put links to agencies such as CEOP on its reporting pages.

Back in March, a Facebook spokesman robustly defended its current policy, claiming it employed an “innovative system [that] has been developed by analysing millions of reports submitted over the years and [by] testing ways to continually improve our system.” However, the spokesman admitted that Facebook was “exploring ways to improve safety” and that it “will also explore adding the CEOP button to our safety centre”.

One issue that may be raised by Facebook focuses upon the accessibility of the UK sex offenders register. In the US and other European countries, the names on the register are more freely available but this is not the case in the UK. This has made the job of removing paedophiles and sex offenders from Facebook a difficult task and whilst the company accepts that they “work aggressively to find and remove these people from the site”, they admit that more could be done at Government level in aiding them with their task.

At the time of Ashleigh’s murder, Facebook said they had been “deeply saddened by the tragic death”. They also made a statement in March stating that Facebook was “no place for convicted sex offenders” after they removed the profile of a Somerset man who was jailed in 2005 for sexually abusing a girl aged under 13.

The social networking site has stressed that they are taking the matter seriously and that they welcome the meeting in Washington this week. Whether anything substantial can be agreed remains to be seen but as world leader in social networking, Facebook should also aim to become world leader in child protection online.