Police in the UK recently arrested and brought charges against a pedophile that used Facebook to groom up to 1,000 children - many of whom he sexually abused. The pedophile, a mailman by the name of Michael Williams, created at least eight different profiles to target youngsters, aged 11 to 16. He met most of his victims on his mail rounds, doing school runs as taxi driver and as the secretary of a football club.

Williams used disguises to hide his real identity and tricked his victims into performing sex acts on a webcam or meeting him so he could sexually assault them. He used Facebook, Bebo and MSN messenger to simultaneously chat with multiple victims and convinced many to meet him in parks, beaches and at his home where he abused them. Williams admitted to 27 charges including grooming, sexual activity with a child and inciting children to engage in sexual activity. 1,342 indecent images of children, 20 videos featuring children he met on the internet and 800 carefully archived 'chat logs' were found in his apartment.

According to Police, many of the incidents could have been avoided if Facebook had a ''panic button'' which would allow youngsters to alert authorities if they thought they were being groomed. Facebook recently announced their intention to create such a function after refusing to do so for years, claiming it would make the site appear 'dangerous'.

Source: Paedo Postie admits charges, The Sun, May 28, 2010

Tags: Social Networking, pedophiles, online predators