Child Grooming Hits The Isle of Man
Insight into your Childrens Unaccompanied activity
John McCurrie, The Isle of Man's First Child Grooming Pervert Gets Sentenced
The Isle of Man is a small island in the middle of the Irish sea, it has a population of around 80,000 people, its largest town being Douglas with a population of around 30,000 and as a whole is often voted right amongst the top spots of the safest places to live in the UK. That hasn't stopped the true dangers of letting your children use the internet without monitoring them hit home though as this week new laws were tested as the first case of child grooming was tried and sentenced. 41 year old John James McCurrie was convicted and given a total of 17 months in prison for the grooming of a 14 year old girl.
"A section has been added to the Sexual Offences Act, to cover the type of crimes which have emerged since the widespread use of social networking sites, internet chatrooms and texting."
The good news is that in this case he was caught and sentenced, after only meeting the girl twice, the bad news is that with his time on remand he'll be out in literally a matter of weeks. Whilst Mr McCurrie has been placed on the child protection registrar for the next 5 years the world of online opens up many opportunities.
What this case highlights more than anything is the true dangers our children face online in a world of social networking. John McCurrie was a 41 year old married man with his own children (not much younger than the girl in question) who managed to totally brain wash a 14 year old girl. This can and does happen all over the world all of the time. The Isle of Man is considered to be as good a place to bring up your children as anywhere you can think off but even this small island isn't immune to the dangers of social networking. Even at 14 and 15 your child is exactly that - a child. You still have a responsibility to protect them and letting them run wild on the internet without any monitoring is no different to letting them run wild in the streets, getting drunk and then falling down a cliff whilst looking for their mobile phone.
