Children are being lured into explicit sex and drug conversations on telephone chatlines that go unmonitored, despite material that could put them outside the law. While public alarm grows at the risks young people take by calling such chatlines, Telecom says it cannot control what people say to each other on telephone dating services. Police believe too little is being done to control and monitor telephone chatlines and protect children from adults looking for sex.
Lower Hutt schoolgirl Yasmin Ingrey, 13, was returned to her parents this week after being on the run for 11 days in the company of two adult men. She sneaked out of her parents' Petone home to see a man she met on the Hot Gossip telephone dating service.
Hot Gossip is one of many similar services, including phone sex lines, where callers can pay several dollars a minute or in lump sums on their credit cards to talk either with groups of people or one-on-one. Phone sex, while apparently illegal in New Zealand, seems to be proliferating, as advertisements mushroom in newspapers, magazines and on late-night television. Herald inquiries found that there is often little distinction between what is talked about on phone sex lines and what many people talk about - or want to talk about - on chatlines.
A Herald reporter, posing as an year-old under a pseudonym, left a message on the Hot Gossip chatline describing herself and saying she was "looking for some fun". Within 10 minutes she had as many messages, some of them sexually explicit and some with drug references. Sergeant Steve O'Connor, who helped head the hunt for Yasmin, said he was worried the owners of such chatlines were not only hard to identify, there seemed to be little or no check on who was using the service or what they were doing.
It is not an environment that is safe or healthy for children to have easy access to. Easy access is what Hot Gossip emphasises.
