Journalists made an experiment - they created a fictive profile of a 14 year old girl called “Maria” in Latvia's most popular social networking portal www.draugiem.lv. Soon "Maria" received indecent letters with proposals for sexual relationship from several men (20 to 54 years old), as well as invitations to earn money by "dancing" and exposing herself in front of the web camera.

After all, to be confident that potential molesters have serious intentions, fictive "Maria" responded to the invitation to meet with men in real life – of course, journalists did not show up, but it turned out that all men had serious intentions, they came to the meeting to fulfill their sexual fantasies with a child.

Unfortunately, the existing criminal law in Latvia stipulates that criminally punishable action is committed only if a person commits immoral acts with a minor against the will of the minor or if such have been committed by a person who has attained the age of majority.

However, the fictive "Maria" case provoked discussions in the Latvian society: law enforcement institutions are preparing an amendment of the criminal law, according to which encouraging children to sexual actions on the internet will be stipulated as a criminally punishable action; teachers have started to rise awareness about this problem in schools; parents become more interested in information about internet safety and how to protect their children.

It proved to be an appropriate moment for investigating what exactly is going on in social networking sites, how easy it is to get invitations for sexual relationships from pedophiles and how badly such situations can finish. Can adults help through similar actions to those of the Latvian journalists? Can they help with catching and punishing the guilty ones? Or at least to stop those harmful and illegal actions!

Maija Katkovska, Net-Safe, Latvia