One sex offender even pretended to be a ROAD outside a girls' secondary school to entice teen students to accept his friend request.


Fake social media accounts pretending to be chicken nuggets and ice-cream are being set up by paedophiles to lure primary school kids.

One sex offender even pretended to be a ROAD outside a girls' secondary school to entice teen students to accept his friend request.

Another tried to persuade a primary schoolgirl to lip sync to a song wearing only her underwear, the Irish Mirror reports .

Social media safety expert and forensic psychologist, Dr Maureen Griffin, said despite the success of ‘stranger-danger’ initiatives, warped offenders have “come up with new and novel ways of gaining access to children’s information”.

In a presentation for the Ennis Mental Health Association in Clare, Dr Griffin said that fake accounts are a big issue by those seeking to access children’s information.

She said: “At primary school level, I have dealt with accounts set up pretending to be chicken nuggets and ice-cream in order to friend children.”

Another filthy pervert set up a fake social media account and posed as a road outside a girls’ secondary school.

She said: “Over 400 girls at the school accepted the road as a friend. The owner of the account was a known convicted sex offender who made no effort to contact the girls, he didn’t follow them or meet them in real life or wait outside their school.

“He simply collected their photos, pictures from teenage discos, girls’ sleepovers and a range of selfies.”

Dr Griffin said that one of the best ways of protecting children online is to make sure you know and trust their followers and friends.

She warned that “any site that is targeted towards children, adults with a sexual interest in children will use that site.”

The expert gave the example of the site of musical.ly aimed at children.

She said: “Musical.ly took off by storm here a year ago at primary school level. When it started, it was a very, very cute site. It was a place where children could lip synch to their favourite songs and involves short little videos of the children dancing around singing their songs and posting the videos online.

“It is for 5, 6 and 7 year olds and I dealt with a case during the Summer of a girl on musicall.ly, who had 20 followers - she did not know four of them.”

She said: “One of her followers told her that he would get her more likes for her songs if she sang her song again - this time in her underwear.”

Dr Griffin said: “She was at primary school. She saw nothing wrong with dancing around her bedroom singing her favourite song but broadcasting that to people you do not know is where the difficulty lies.”

She said that nine years ago, when she started talking to schools, students were happily using children’s sites such as Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin up to 6th class and 1st year.

Dr Griffin said that such sites are designed for children aged seven to 14 years of age and they are considered to be a safe introduction to social network sites because they are monitored by real people in real time.

However, Dr Griffin said: “I am now being told by students from 3rd and 4th class that they are too old for sites like Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin, that these sites are for babies and these students are telling me that they are now on Facebook and Instagram where that same level of monitoring isn’t in place.”

Dr Griffin said that she believes that “online, children are subjecting themselves to mental health stresses they would never subject themselves to in real life”.

The expert said that on a daily basis, children and teens are looking for approval and validation seeking ‘likes’ and it is worrying when it is left unchecked.

Dr Griffin said that sites such as Facebook have addressed the issue of fake accounts “by requiring businesses/organisations/causes etc. to set up pages instead of accounts. This way they cannot access all of our data”.

She said: “Offenders setting up fake accounts is only one aspect of online risk that our children face. I believe it is crucial that children know and trust their online friends and followers, as quite a lot of the online challenges our children face come from someone in their friends/followers network, be it online bullying, their account being hacked or images being taken and re-purposed.”