15-year-old saved from online grooming through Appoġġ helpline
A 15-year-old girl whose father suspected she was being groomed through an online relationship was one of the 20,000 people the Foundation for Social Welfare Services was able to help last year. In its annual report that was launched on Friday, the FSWS said it had worked 20,020 cases last year, an increase of just under 2,000 cases from 2019. One of the agencies' success stories, saw that timely guidance and intervention from staff members manning the 179 Appoġġ hotline saved a 15-year-old girl whose father called the helpline because he believed that his child was being manipulated through an online relationship. The client reported that his daughter told him she had fallen in love with an unknown person that she had met online and wished to travel to the UK to meet him. The father was concerned that his daughter may be communicating with someone much older than she was and did not have genuine feelings for her. After meeting with the girl and her parents, a safer internet administrator determined that the child was being groomed and made contact with Facebook, the platform on which their communication was being exchanged, with the Facebook security team discovering that...