Net predator caught trying to lure girl, 12, away

A MAN'S attempt to abduct a 12-year-old Scottish girl failed just as he was about to take her on a plane to Spain with him. He realised too late she had no passport, reported several British newspapers.

During the three hours she was missing, her parents were unaware of her absence, thinking she had left their holiday villa in France to play outside.

After finding her sobbing in Marseilles Provence airport, police stormed the plane the man was on and caught him.

The 41-year-old Belgian man, whom she met via an internet chatroom, managed to lure her out from her family's holiday villa in Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer, south of France, said Times.

They had met four months earlier on a social networking and role-playing website Gaia.com, which describes itself as 'an online gathering of environmentally and spiritually conscious people'.

The man, who told her he was 28, apparently e-mailed her, saying he would find her when she arrived on holiday, said The Daily Telegraph.

Police said he had arrived in the resort last Tuesday, and waited three days before luring the girl away from the villa where, according to Le Figaro newspaper, she had been staying with her parents, brothers and sisters.

A French police spokesman said: 'It was the middle of the day and her mother and father assumed she was out playing. In fact, she had left in a taxi with a man she had met in a chatroom.

'Over the previous four months, she had been chatting to a man whom she believed to be a 28-year-old. She had told him where and when she was going on holiday and he had clearly followed her there.'

Horrified

The spokesman added: 'When the parents were notified, they were horrified to learn their daughter had been found at Marseille airport.

'It seems she had at first gone with the man willingly, but he abandoned her at the airport when he found she had no passport.'

Officers boarded a plane and arrested the man just ten minutes before it was due to take off.

The man, who lives in Spain, told police he was the girl's uncle, but he was arrested and remanded in custody in the town of Luynes over the weekend before being charged with child abduction.

The girl has since been reunited with her family in their holiday resort.

Mr John Carr from the Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety said this was a classic example of why parents needed to talk to their children about the importance of not revealing personal information over the Internet.

He said: 'It's about talking to your child and keeping open channels of communication, so they feel that they can come and talk to you if something untoward does happen.'

Campaigners in Europe have been lobbying governments to set up an all-ports alert system similar to the Amber Alert system in the United States, which would notify air and shipping ports across the continent when a child is reported missing.