A victim of facebook's brutality's Mother demands Net crackdown
Posted by opeyemi 129 days ago (Editorial)
Andrea Hall said 17-years old Ashleigh had made one mistake and has paid for it with her life. She called on websites to clamp down on users who create false identities.
Ashleigh had told her mother she had gone to spend Sunday night with a friend, but a frantic series of calls to her mobile phone the next morning went unanswered.
Her body was found that night in a field near Sedgefield, County Durham, after police made a routine stop on a motorist.
Miss Hall, 39, told yesterday of the agonizing moment she finally got through to Ashleigh’s phone, only for it to be answered by a police officer. Her 'mother's instinct' made her realize that the worst had happened.
And she told of the ‘Scary’ moment she saw pictures of the accused’s ex-finance, who closely resembles Ashleigh, saying she feared her daughter had been targeted deliberately.
‘I can’t blame the internet, but it is about time that somebody looked at ways of introducing control which stop people putting up false pictures and false information, she said. The people who run Facebook and other social networking sites do have some responsibility for bringing in these controls.
Miss Hall said Ashleigh knew the risks of sharing information online but stressed; ‘We trusted Facebook and she was always told never to add a stranger as a friend. I brought her up not to talk to strangers and that applied to the internet as well.
'She had about 400 friends on Facebook but she knew every single one of them. We can’t imagine how she got to be friends with someone she didn’t know. She made one mistake and has paid for it with her life.
It's not Ashleigh’s fault what happened. All we can do as parents is try to get across to them that there are two sides to the Internet.
Miss Hall said Ashleigh, a trainee nursery nurse, had made the decision to spend sun day night with a friend at the last minute. She gave her daughter the go ahead only after insisting that she return to their Darlington home early the next day; I shouted to her to make sure she was home by 10:30. She said I will” and that was it. I never saw her again.
Miss Hall said she felt physically sick when a policemen answered her daughter’s phone number on Monday.
I felt as if my heart had been ripped out. My whole world fell apart in those two seconds.
“The policeman I who later came to her house I didn’t even get the words out. I wouldn’t let her say it. Deep down I knew what she was going to say. When the woman officer finally told her a body had been found, she collapsed.
Miss Hall, who has three younger daughter Olivia, six, Ellie, four, and Evie, one said it took her four days to summon the courage to enter Ashleigh's bedroom.
As soon as I walked in I could, smell her,’ she said. There was-a big pile of dirty clothes lying in the middle of the floor where she had dumped them;
“Like any teenager she just took her clothes off and left them on the floor thinking it was my job to pick them up.
“That was the hardest part, picking up those clothes, knowing she would never wear them again.
‘But holding them did give me some comfort, it again made me feel that she was still in the house.
Daily Sun 10th November 2009
Page 5
By James Tozer
Written by godsonosisiogu 123 days ago - 0 +
sorrowing with,
Godson.
nigeria