Following yesterday's life imprisonment of Peter Chapman for the rape and murder of Ashleigh Hall after he befriended the 17-year-old on Facebook, the social networking site is today criticised for not adding a panic button, created by the Home Office's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), intended to help protect children online.

Ashleigh's mother, Andrea Hall, has said, 'I cannot blame the internet, but it is about time somebody looked at ways of introducing controls which stop people putting up false pictures and false information.' Merseyside Police have also come under fire for not realising the 33-year-old convicted double rapist had fled his home months before the murder and Andrea Hall has called for offenders like Chapman to be tagged on their release from prison: 'Them sort of people should be tagged and they should be kept an eye on all the time. I blame them for letting them out. He shouldn’t have been let out.'

Perhaps it is all too easy too look for somebody to blame. Perhaps it is all too easy to find somebody to blame, when mistakes have clearly been made by police and when one former New York City police officer who now runs a security technology firm has gone so far as to call Facebook a 'safe haven' for sex offenders. Another case recently saw a Wisconsin teenager convicted of using Facebook to blackmail dozens of classmates into sex, after he posed as a girl and tricked more than 30 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves.

The issues of online safety and sexting are ones we have considered before. It is worth repeating the insight of one parent whose 13-year-old who was abducted after being seduced online: 'When kids socialise online there is no such thing as a stranger.' Yet strangers are now reportedly responsible for half of all violent crime. (Although, on the day when a man who stabbed his ex-lover to death after seeing a Facebook photo of her with a new boyfriend has been jailed for life, a case reminiscent of the 'Facebook divorce' murder, it is worth noting that this means half of all violent crime is still committed by people known by their victims.) The latest figures from the independent House of Commons Library indicate that violence against the person has increased by 44 per cent since 1998 – from 618,417 incidents to 887,942 last year. All this comes in a month that has already seen frenzied news reporting over the reimprisonment of Jon Venables, one of toddler James Bulger's killers, allegedly for serious sexual offences. At which point it could be easy to over-react. As Davey Winder observes in Being Virtual: who you really are online:

'It is easy to get carried away with the notion that there is a predatory paedophile in every chat room, that they have overrun Second Life in the guise of age-playing avatars, that children are in danger every minute they spend online. But then it is equally easy to suggest that there is a predatory paedophile on every street corner, posing as vicars in churches and school caretakers, that children are in danger every minute they step out of the front door.

'The truth is that the Internet can be a dangerous place to play, but only if you throw your common sense out of the window as soon as the connection is made. Kids must grasp the nettle and realise that virtual life and real life intersect in so many ways.

'Adults must adopt a virtual parenting role and talk to their kids about the dangers of online sexual predators in exactly the same way they would warn about never getting in a car or accepting sweets from a stranger.'

In fact, Ashleigh's parents had sought to make their daughter aware of online dangers: 'Everybody knows the internet can be a dangerous place. 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 said she would never add a stranger as a friend on Facebook.' However, that did not stop her from breaking the rules and from telling her mother she was going to stay with a friend when she actually believed she was being picked up by the father of 'Peter Cartwright', Chapman's false online identity.

Her former classmates at Darlington College have since published their list of guidelines for internet safety. 'Ashleigh's Rules' are now being distributed to thousands of children on credit-size cards:

• If ever meeting up with somebody who is alien to you or your friends make sure that you meet them in a group of at least 2-3 and in a public, well lit and populated area.
• Inform somebody of where you are going and what time you should be back, also the name of who you are meeting.
• Don’t accept anyone on social networking sites that you don’t know.
• Remember never to trust anyone who you have met online, you don’t know what they are capable of doing.
• Never tell a stranger on network sites or chat rooms anything personal about yourself, e.g. where you live, date of birth etc.
• Never meet anyone you don’t know, simple as!

The bottom line is, there is probably more that we could all do in order to help prevent such crimes being repeated again in the future. We are all to blame for the state of our communities, for 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' I close with the following meditation:

A psalm of David

Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy mountain?
Those whose walk is blameless, who do what is righteous, who speak the truth from their hearts;
who have no slander on their tongues, who do their neighbours no wrong, who cast no slur on others;
who despise those whose ways are vile but honour whoever fears the LORD; who keep their oaths even when it hurts;
who lend money to the poor without interest and do not accept bribes against the innocent.
Whoever does these things will never be shaken. (Psalm 15)

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