This is based on a real life story.A 12-year-old girl who had vanished from her home in the United Kingdom to meet up with
a 31-year-old man she first met online is back home with her parents. Before she disappeared she was just a schoolgirl living in an ordinary suburban home. She liked punk and heavy rock music and football and spent hours surfing the Internet. The child's parents had been aware of the risks their daughter could face while using the Internet. They "had their concerns about the time she spent online, but were not unduly worried. The child's parents urged her to spend a little less time on the Internet and not to give out personal details when chatting online. The child had talked about her "American Internet boyfriend," but still her parents passed it off as nothing more than a figment of their young daughter's imagination. The child was a quiet girl, and her parents never imagined that her long hours spent in chatrooms would lead to an international search. Considering that the girl is back home and seemingly unharmed, the child's story turned out happily, unlike many other stories reported about young people who have face-to-face encounters with people they first meet online. But now that the ordeal is over, new details have surfaced about the life of the man with whom the child had been e-mailing for five hours a day and planning a romantic weekend in Paris. Toby Studabaker has emerged as an alleged predator. During their
investigation to find the pair, law enforcement allegedly discovered sexually exploitive images of
children on his computer and sexual allegations involving two underage girls in the U.S.The Federal Bureau of Investigation is continuing their investigation into claims that Studabaker assaulted his 12-year-old niece and a complaint that he gave a 9-year-old girl some "sex lotion" 5 years ago.Studabaker claimed that the child had lied about her age, saying she was 19, but records found on his computer suggested that he knew her real age. In a sense, this ordeal could be a reality check for parents who think they are doing enough to prevent their children from becoming prey to online sexual predators. Keeping the computer in a common area and instructing your children to not give out personal information on the Internet are good approaches to the problem, but not always going to be completely effective. In this case, the 12-year-old girl was spending hour after hour on the Internet. The Internet is like any other public place and should be treated as such. Allowing a child unmonitored access to the Internet is like putting him or her out on a street corner and not watching what happens. Beware!