JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

With schools now re­opened, the TTPS Cy­ber Crime and So­cial Me­dia Unit is urg­ing stu­dents to be cau­tious about what they post on­line to re­duce the risk of be­ing tar­get­ed by pae­dophiles.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing, se­nior an­a­lyst WPC Leslie-Ann Bac­quain said preda­tors of­ten mon­i­tor so­cial me­dia plat­forms, look­ing for chil­dren who dis­close sen­si­tive per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

“I’m speak­ing from a pae­dophile’s point of view, where on these plat­forms we have per­pe­tra­tors lurk­ing. Some­times we see chil­dren post­ing the name of their school or where they live. We are ask­ing per­sons to min­imise that. Be very care­ful about what you’re post­ing, if post­ing is even nec­es­sary. But that’s the era we’re in now. Chil­dren of­ten do it be­cause it’s all about the likes.” Bac­quain said there was no sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­ti­cal ev­i­dence to sug­gest there had been an in­crease in re­ports of chil­dren be­ing tar­get­ed.

“We haven’t had much, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, to re­port in re­la­tion to that. How­ev­er, when we vis­it schools, stu­dents tell us about sit­u­a­tions they may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, and we ad­dress them from that per­spec­tive. We al­so rec­om­mend that oth­er spe­cialised units be­come in­volved where nec­es­sary.”