Within two hours of meeting the "12-year-old girl" through an Internet chat room, the predatory paedophile had already asked to meet her for sex.
Unknown to him the "young girl" in question was actually a covert British police investigator. Detectives based in a specialist unit in London said the startling case illustrated the risk children faced whilst surfing the Internet.
"Families will be getting computers for Christmas, children will be using those computers ... and children will be vulnerable unless they are properly supervised," Detective Superintendent Alastair Jeffrey said on Wednesday.
The size of the issue is clear from the figures produced by his London Child Abuse Investigation Command (CAIC), which has six covert online investigators, equating to 10% of all those in the country.
Despite being the biggest and best resourced online child protection unit in the country, Jeffrey said they could generate work to occupy the entire team of 425 officers allocated to dealing with paedophiles and child abuse in the British capital.
In the last seven months, the CAIC has arrested 22 men including 14 suspects through the work of one online investigator alone.
Social networking sites
Detectives say the paedophiles focus on the social networking Web sites which have taken the Internet by storm in recent years, allowing users to create their own Web pages, exchange photos and video and to listen to music.
"That is where paedophiles can go knowing they can seek and find young children," said Detective Inspector Brian Ward.
The figures are daunting. One of the most popular sites, MySpace, has 130 million users worldwide, 31% of which are under 18.
Although most major sites have security measures, paedophiles are usually able to get round them. Once they have gained the child's trust, the men arrange to contact them through private instant messaging services run by the likes of Yahoo and MSN.
Jeffrey said 31% of young people aged from nine to 19 had received a sexual communication whilst online but only 7% of parents were aware of this.
However what shocked him the most was that one in 12 children had met someone face-to-face who they had first engaged online. He said the danger the children faced from the paedophiles was shocking.
"They will bring condoms, lubricants and on one occasion ligatures to restrain the child. It's an extremely serious business," he said.
Even those who did not set out to meet children posed a serious danger. Some exposed themselves or masturbated in front of a webcam, sent images of child abuse or pornography, or encouraged the children to touch themselves explicitly.
The type of paedophile also varied, according to Detective Constable Jonathan Taylor, a covert officer who pretends to be a 12-year-old girl during often long and painstaking inquiries.
All are white and usually aged between 30 and 50. But they can be family men, loners, grandfathers and professionals.
They target children by asking to be their online "friend" with most youngsters inundated with dozens of such requests every day.
One paedophile they monitored had around 300 "buddy" profiles, all of which were young girls, Taylor said.
"They just hit on you. They hit on children without the children wanting it," he said.
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