A father in the Canadian province of British Columbia contacted the police on Monday after receiving sexually explicit messages from a man his 12-year-old daughter had met playing while Resident Evil 5.
The father, a resident of Nanaimo, British Columbia, told authorities that the message exchange began on Monday when his daughter was engaged in an online multiplayer game of Resident Evil 5 for the PlayStation 3. The conversation soon moved to a laptop his daughter was using. The father took the laptop tried to ascertain the identity of the man she was communicating with, at which point the messenger became antagonistic and the messages became sexually explicit.
"It was scary," said the father on Tuesday. "He started saying some very obscene things to me. These are openings to potential sex offenders, really."
While the sexually explicit messages were not about his daughter specifically, they were so disturbing the father called the police, and an investigation is now underway.
The father later discovered that the person sending the messages, who claimed to be a 22-year-old man from overseas, had allegedly been communicating with his daughter via email for two months.
Is this another case of an older man prowling for children via online gaming? It's hard to say. The story doesn't mention any sexually explicit emails or communications with the daughter aside from the incident on Monday. It may have just been an immature reaction to suddenly facing the questioning of a parent. Indeed there is no indication that the alleged predator knew the child's age at all.
However there is a clear message here. Whatever this man's intentions were, he allegedly spent two months communicating with the daughter without her father's knowledge. Incidents like this might be avoided with more parental supervision of internet and online gaming time.
I'll let someone else argue whether or not a 12-year-old girl should be playing Resident Evil 5.
Police called in after man targets girl online [Canada.com]