Social networking sites and other social media platforms have brought the world together on several occasions and has also made it easier for us to gather and react to information. What social media also does is makes teenagers a lot more prone to lurking sexual predators and this is exactly what happened in Kayleigh Haywood’s case.
Haywood was brutally raped and murdered by 28-year old Luke Harlow and Stephen Beadman, after the former picked up a conversation with her on Facebook and sent her over 26,000 messages in the next two weeks. 15-year old Kayleigh agreed to meet Luke and spend the night at his place after he asked her out on the same social media conversation. Soon after he raped her and was joined in the heinous act by his neighbour Stephen Beadman.
Police investigation found the two men were addicted to violent pornography and had tried their luck with two other girls before they convinced Haywood. A moving video has now been released by Leicestershire police that re-constructs the last two weeks of Haywood’s life in an attempt to educate teenagers about online grooming and sexual crimes that make use of social networking sites.
Watch the 5-minute long film here:
Teenagers on social media always stand the chance of becoming victims of such perverted minds and the film, that has been made with the Haywoods’ permission, drill this in even further. This issue is now being faced by the whole world and the fact that social media identities are more often than not faceless makes it difficult to protect kids.
