Well back then, I can't really believe it was me. I left school with no
qualifications. It's not the best start. By the time I got to 45
I had nothing. No money, no friends, no job. I felt...
worthless.
And that's when they get you.
Where does my story start?...I don't know.
Sorry. We were good at one time...it was...
Sam always found it hard to make friends, even when he was a little boy, and I've
always been shy...but at home he was happy. We were happy.
Did I find them or did they find me? Hard to say really. I like searching the internet for stuff.
Videos mostly. I can see now that the internet can be a dangerous place.
You find one thing, and then it leads to another, and before you know it, that's all
you're watching. You start to sound like them. You ARE one of them.
We haven't got much money, but they all need computers these days for their homework. So I saved
up and got him a computer. He loved it. He had a horrible time at school, but then
he'd come home and have all these...friends on the internet.
How far did it go? Well, I met some people from the internet, went to a few meetings,
gatherings. I saw stuff that made me really angry. Given the chance, I would
have done something.
I suppose if I had, well, you and me wouldn't be having this conversation.
How far did it go? I don't know. I can't know what was in Sam's head.
The things he looked at, the things he wrote. I can't believe he meant them.
The police said I almost lost him. He was about to get involved with these people at...a totally different level.
I've had lots of jobs, loads. Every time same pattern. People say something, I get angry, I get fired.
I started going to classes to improve my IT skills at the local Adult Learning Centre.
The Job Centre said I had to go to classes, so I went.
I was at the induction, and we were going through the computer use policy. I talked about Sam and all the time
he spent on the internet talking to people.
I had been there a week or two. I made some stupid joke. The teacher heard it..."Hello, here we go again," I thought.
But this time it was different. Sara, the teacher, she said "I'm not going to throw you off the course."
She heard me out.
It's embarrassing to think what I must have sounded like. And then she said
"Michael, we need to talk about this."
The tutor came up and found me afterwards.
"Do you have any idea WHO your son is talking to?" he said.
It was a real shock once the penny dropped.
It was a strange time for me.
I'm not exaggerating when I say everything I believed in stopped making sense.
Sara didn't just talk at me. She made me talk with other people.
There are all sorts of people round here, and none of them were anything like I had in my head.
Nothing I'd been told was true.
And all it took was someone to have a bit of faith in me.
It's strange. All the time I thought my boy was safe in his room, he was actually being groomed.
It made me realise we were living in a bubble.
I was alone. I wasn't even talking to the neighbours.
I was isolated and so then Sam was isolated,
and, without that contact with the rest of the world,
he was completely vulnerable to those... people on the internet.
I almost lost my son.
So that's it. I'm a different person.
Back then, I can't really believe it was me.
What would I say to them? What would I say to them?...Hello
I'm sorry. I've got nothing! Sorry.
Oh my...Do you know I have exactly what I want to say up here,
and then you point that thing at me and it's like "urrrrrgh!"