Dangers of internet predators - ‘Brainwashing’ of 13-year-old

ANY parent who still basks under the illusion that the internet is nothing more than a fun place for younger teenagers to enjoy should take account of the words of the father of a young Irish girl who was contacted online by a cunning Canadian paedophile and seduced into having sex with him.

“She was brainwashed,” the Irish father told the court in Alberta, describing the circumstances in which Jashua Robert Tremblay, a 34-year-old married man, groomed his then 13-year-old daughter online before coming to Ireland to have sex with her.

The girl’s father — a sole parent — was horrified when he discovered that his young daughter had been lying constantly to him, pretending to be staying with friends when, in fact, she had arranged to meet Tremblay. He told the court that his daughter had become so intoxicated with the older man that she had become delusional and had dreamed of moving to Canada and marrying him on her 18th birthday.