Pervert targets kids with phone app in Cork

Children in Cork have been targeted by a paedophile sending them explicit requests and messages via a chat and messaging app on their smartphones.

The mother of one of the victims yesterday went public to warn parents of what happened to her 12-year-old son, who was targeted through the video chat and instant messaging application ooVoo.

The woman told Red FM’s Neil Prendeville Show that the man in question was naked and touching himself in a video call with her son’s group of friends last Tuesday.

“They can have a group chat where there are five or six of them on the same phone call, they can see each other and they can text each other,” she said.

“It’s their way of communicating without using their phone credit.”

The woman said the children were all aged 11 or 12 years old and are all in primary school.

“One of the other children’s mothers rang me to tell me what her daughter was after telling her, that when they were in their group chat this man came into it with them,” the woman told the radio show.

“He was completely naked, he was around 50 or 60, what he was doing to himself you couldn’t even repeat it on air.

“The kids were kind of shook up by it.

“From what the kids have told us he doesn’t talk, so when he’s saying things he types it up.

“He typed up that he was French, living in France, and he was telling the kids to put masks on their faces and to do to themselves what he was doing to himself.”

The concerned mother also warned that the man regained access to the children’s group messages even after the parents had intervened.

“The scariest part is that when I asked my child about it, he told me exactly what was happening, so I got a new SIM card for his phone thinking that it might have been linked to the phone number,” she said.

“I blocked him from the app and yet, when the child was on the app that evening, he still managed to come into a phonecall the child was on.

“He [her son] came into me and he said ‘Mam I thought you blocked him from my phone, how is he on my phone again?’

“So even after I blocked him through the app he was still able to get back into their phones.”

She described the naked images sent by the man as ‘horrible’ and said that the lewd contact occurred despite her vigilance.

“We always tell our children about the dangers of the internet,” said the woman.

“I go through my child’s phone relentlessly a couple of times a week to make sure I know what he’s doing

“ I think the last time I went through it was on Sunday, so between Sunday and Tuesday this was after happening.”

The woman said that she warned the children not to discuss plans on the app if there are strangers present, and that people claiming to live far away could in fact be living locally.