Georgie

Georgie was 13 years old when she fell in love with someone she "met" on the Internet. He said that he was 15 and his name was Johnny. "We talked about everything — pop groups, TV programmes, boy-girl stuff. That's how it started," Georgie remembers. They exchanged photo­graphs: he sent her a photograph that showed the top part of his head, and a little bit of his eyes. He told her it was like that because he had a problem with his computer.

They ended up talking on the phone and very soon he asked her out on a date. Luckily, Georgie's mother in­sisted on going with her. She hid behind a big poster and watched what happened. Young Johnny turned out to be a 47-year-old man.

"When I saw him, I didn't know what to think, because I was shocked," Georgie says. "I thought it was maybe his dad or something. I was scared as well. Then my mum came over and spoke to him. She told him to go."

It took Georgie a few weeks to get over the shock. It was her first love, and no first love should be like this.

Linda

14-year-old Linda T. from California wasn't so lucky. Her online friend, who claimed to be 16, turned out to be a bald 49-year-old man with a criminal record. He lured her to his flat and kept her there for a week. "It was hell," Linda says.

The man was arrested and jailed, but Linda's saga didn't end there. In the following years, she learned who her friends really were and fought her way back from se­vere depression and bouts of shame and guilt.

"Now, looking back, I can see that there were some warning signs that there might be some sort of problem. But I ignored them," she admits.

She hardly goes to chat rooms at all now: "There's one friend t talk to online, but mostly I just use e-mails. And I wouldn't arrange to meet anybody, ever. You don't have to go on the Internet to meet people".