Family destroyed by a predator on a smartphone is a wake up call to protect our kids – parents must stop being clueless
SEEING a young child playing on a smartphone is a pretty common sight these days.
“They’re only playing games and sharing photos with their friends,” is a common refrain from many parents who are largely clueless to the huge dangers that lie within such a deceptively small device.
Consequently, after years of warning their offspring about “stranger danger”, they hand over a gift-wrapped time-bomb that, without safeguards in place, potentially gives online criminals 24/7 access to their child.
One of those “strangers” could be a monster like 26-year-old “catfisher” Alexander McCartney.
The computer student from Northern Ireland pretended to be a young girl online and tricked around 70 children — some just ten years old — into sending him intimate photos via Snapchat and other social media platforms.
He then threatened to send the photos to their families unless they carried out “degrading and humiliating” acts.
One 12-year-old girl — Cimarron Thomas of West Virginia, US — was left so “terrified” and “distraught” by his vile actions that, in May 2018, she found her father’s handgun in the house and shot herself in the head.
She was found by her younger sister and, 18 months later, her father Ben, an army veteran, took his own life because he felt so guilt-stricken that she’d been able to access the firearm.
Just think about that for a moment.
A family destroyed by the actions of a complete stranger via a smartphone.
Ben died without knowing about McCartney’s role in his daughter’s death, which only came to light when police in Northern Ireland started investigating his online behaviour after a complaint from a girl in Scotland.
As well as pleading guilty to Cimarron’s manslaughter, McCartney, of Newry, County Armagh, has put his hands up to 184 counts involving online blackmail across Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the US and will be sentenced this week.
He’s been held on remand in Maghaberry Prison since 2019 and his continued incarceration will be no loss to society, but tragically it comes too late for Cimarron and the other victims he so callously hounded.
Smartphones are stitched into the fabric of our daily lives.
As adults, we shop on them, bank on them, stay in touch with old friends and keep our brains sharp playing word games on them.
So when it comes to our kids wanting a phone because all their peers are getting one, it’s difficult to hold out past the start of secondary school.
The device itself isn’t bad, but in the wrong hands it can be.
A year ago, the Online Safety Act became law here in the UK.
Websites and apps must now be built with children’s safety in mind, and tech companies have to legally protect them from harm.
It’s a minefield
But parents must try to take every precaution we possibly can to protect our children from its murkiest corners too.
Like an illness often gives you a symptom, so too will a troubled child.
They might become withdrawn or irrationally moody, and it’s a safe bet that the explanation (or even cause) will lie somewhere within their computer or smartphone.
It might be the school bully, who can now get at them 24/7, the “mean girls” deliberately excluding them from plans, the crush asking them for nude photos or, worst of all, a monster like McCartney blowing up their innocence.
Whatever it is, ask questions, encourage them to talk about it and, if needs be, install safeguarding software or confiscate the device until the matter is sorted.
It’s a minefield and I’m glad my own kids are now adults who know how to navigate it.
Liam – so much promise cut short
SHORTLY after One Direction announced they were taking a break, I interviewed them along with my Loose Women colleague Andrea McLean.
The lads talked excitedly about their plans away from the relentless slog of band life, including spending more time with their families.
Liam laughed: “Bless her, my mum hasn’t stopped crying for the last five years . . . so she can finally stop crying now.”
Heartbreaking.
Whatever happened in that Argentinian hotel room, it’s a desperately sad ending for such a promising young man, and my deepest sympathy goes to his mum Karen, dad Geoff, sisters Nicola and Ruth, and all those who loved him.
So glad I speak Oz too
OZZY OSBOURNE has been inducted in to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame for the second time.
Owing to mobility issues, he was wheeled on stage in a fittingly bat-shaped throne that lived up to his “Prince of Darkness” brand.
But behind the scenes, Ozzy is one of the funniest and most refreshingly genuine people I’ve ever met.
Back in 2013, I was asked to ghostwrite his wife Sharon’s auto- biography Unbreakable and had just one month to deliver it.
So I moved into her and Ozzy’s LA home, following Sharon’s every move and grabbing chats whenever I could.
My plan was to get up early each morning and write up the previous day’s notes, but trouble was, Ozzy rose early too and liked to talk – particularly as, having lived in Birmingham myself, I could actually understand his fond reminiscences of a fascinating life.
For two weeks solid, I was the only audience for a daily one-man show that would rival Billy Connolly.
So congratulations Ozzy – a truly “Great Brit” who might live in America but whose heart (and accent) lies firmly back in old Blighty.
Winnin' women
RETIRED engineer David Jakins has been cleared of accusations that he used a metal replica to win the World Conker Championship.
“I’m so relieved,” says the 82-year-old from Warmington, Northants.
“We are gentlemen at the World Conker Championships and we don’t cheat.”
So it’s official.
He’s the men’s champion.
However, when he came up against the women’s champion – American Kelci Banschbach – in the Grand Final, he lost.
As Rudyard Kipling wrote when describing the early Jesuit fathers preaching to Native American tribes in the 16th Century: “ ’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
“For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
A down under blunder
THERE’S always one, isn’t there?
Australian senator and indigenous rights activist Lidia Thorpe has disgusted many Australians with her embarrassingly juvenile and prolonged heckle at King Charles – a man who loves her country so much that he travelled 12,000 miles to visit it despite ongoing cancer treatment.
Shame on her.
No one is suggesting she shouldn’t have her say, but there’s a time and place, and this wasn’t it.
Senior Ngunnawal elder Aunty Violet Sheridan said: “she does not speak for me and my people” and called her a “one-off idiot”.
Meanwhile, one commentator has observed Ms Thorpe’s physical likeness to British “confessional” artist Tracey Emin.
Given Thorpe’s posturing in a fur cloak made from possum, Tracey Ermine seems more fitting.
Crisis is growing
NEW NHS guidance says that moving bodies can be a health and safety issue for mortuary staff due to the rise in “people with excess weight”.
The number of Brits now classed as severely overweight is 30 per cent – double the level for 1993.
In his fascinating book Unnatural Causes, former forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd reflects on his long career of dissecting bodies in morgues.
He concludes: “Body fat has increased exponentially . . . few are the same shape as the dead of the 1980s when I started practising. Looking back at forensic photos from that era, I am astonished at how thinness then was the norm.”
Indeed. But thanks to processed food, a takeaway culture and more sedentary lifestyles in front of screens, we are now a nation of fatties costing the NHS a fortune.
We all need to take personal responsibility for our health, eat less and move more.
RUMOUR has it that Sir Keir Starmer’s purge of historic portraits in Downing Street continues and he has now removed William Shakespeare from the wall.
Watch this space.
Is his benefactor Lord Alli sitting for a painting even as we speak?
KATIE PRICE has had so many facelifts that passport scanners no longer recognise her.
Meanwhile, the face ID on my phone sometimes fails to recognise my increasingly droopy features because I haven’t had a facelift.
Altogether now, “Sometimes it’s haaard to be a woman . . .”