It makes you think about online safety.
Warning: details of this story and video may be distressing to some.
The influx of social media continues to grow which means more and more people are connecting with strangers everyday. Sadly this can quickly become sinister as online grooming remains worryingly prevalent.
In 2015 Kayleigh Harwood was brutally raped and murdered by a stranger after being groomed online.
In October of that year, the 15-year-old girl received a Facebook message from a man she had never met. Luke Harlow began messaging her with things like ‘‘I can’t wait to meet you 🙂 xxxxx’ and ‘Do you wanna be my girl?? xxxxx.’ Before the young girl’s murder, 2,643 messages were sent between them.
Harlow was grooming Kayleigh, along with two other young girls he had also been speaking to. But it was Kayleigh that finally agreed to his requests to spend the night of Friday 13 November 2015 at his house.
She spent the next day with him too, and in the early hours of Sunday 15 November, having been held against her will by Harlow and by his next-door neighbour Stephen Beadman, Kayleigh was raped and murdered by Beadman.
The new video, released by Leicestershire Police, aims to highlight the dangers of speaking to strangers online. The five-minute film has been shown in Schools around England in 2o16.
It follows the final two weeks of Kayleigh’s life and how she was groomed by Luke Harlow and neighbour Stephen Beadman.
Beadman was sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape, false imprisonment and murder of the teenager. Harlow was given a 12-year jail term for false imprisonment and grooming.
”Kayleigh’s Love Story is as a warning to young people, both girls and boys, about the dangers of speaking to people they don’t know online. The film highlights just how quick and easy it can be for children to be groomed online without them or those around them knowing it is happening. Its purpose is to protect children now and in the future and to stop another family losing a child in this way.” Leicestershire Police said.
