Since young, most of us have been warned about child predators and the dangers of the internet.
One mother, Helen Bong, a Malaysian who married a Singaporean, experienced this firsthand after a stranger tried to chat up her seven-year-old daughter Caroline on Facebook.
Bong and her daughter, a Singaporean, are currently living in Malaysia.
In a post on Kum’s Facebook page on May 6, the 39-year-old shared snippets of the disturbing conversation where the Malaysian man was unaware that he was actually speaking to Bong instead of her daughter.
The man had started off with a simple friendship request on Facebook to her child, with a message on May 3 saying “hi”, Bong told AsiaOne.
She also told us that she made the Facebook page for her daughter about three years ago.
Around the beginning of the conversation, the man had asked the girl personal questions like her location.
PHOTO: Facebook/Caroline Kum
He also asked her if she wanted a brother.
“I can be your brother, you can be my sister too,” he said, adding that he wanted to befriend her as she was “very cute, like a princess”.
Additionally, throughout the conversation, he repeatedly asked the child for her handphone number.
The conversation went on for three days and as it progressed, the man said even creepier things.
PHOTO: Facebook/Caroline Kum
For instance, he asked the girl to meet him and go to a friend’s house “to do homework“.
At one point, he even asked her if she wanted to have a child with him.
When Bong replied the man saying that Kum was just seven years old, he said: “It doesn’t matter how old you are. Do you want to?”
PHOTO: Facebook/Caroline Kum
He also kept telling her “to try it” and that “it won’t hurt”.
Eventually, Bong blocked him on May 6.
In the Facebook post, she said that this “isn’t the first time” something like this has happened and thankfully, it occured under her watch.
“I already said that [my daughter] was seven years old! How could he? And he kept asking [my daughter] if she could go out,” said Bong.
When AsiaOne asked Bong how she felt about the way the man talked to her daughter, she said: “I’m surprised. Even though I kept mentioning that my daughter was only seven years old, he still said that it is okay.”
Despite the traumatising incident, Bong told us that she will still let her daughter use social media but will guide her closely.
Sexual predator luring young girls to his home
Bong’s daughter isn’t the only child that has been targeted by creepy men.
Between August 2020 to February 2021, a man named Davis Khor Khai Gin enticed at least four girls, aged between 13 and 17 years, to his flat.
Some incentives he used to entice the girls include cash and job offers. These were done through Instagram.
He performed sexual acts on three of these girls, but the fourth managed to escape his clutches.
The man was sentenced to 12.5 years’ jail and 13 strokes of the cane by the High Court in March.
