Facebook Murder Victim's Parents Urge More Care Online

The family of a teenager who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender she met on Facebook is urging parents to talk to their children about who they meet on line.

Peter Chapman, 33, was jailed on Monday for a minimum of 35 years for the murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall.

Teesside Crown Court heard he posed as a teenage boy on Facebook and met her.

In October last year, Ashleigh was attracted by a picture of a young, bare-chested man that Chapman - calling himself Peter Cartwright - had posted on the website.

Later that month, Ashleigh told her mother she was going to stay with a friend.

Text messages showed she thought she was being picked up by "Peter Cartwright's" father. Mother of Ashleigh, Mrs Andrea Hall, warned parents to find out who their children were talking to on the internet.

She said: "Just put the message out that please, parents whose kids are on Facebook, please ask them to tell you who they're talking to. You just don't know who is behind that photo."

Facebook issued a statement after Chapman was sentenced saying it urged people not to meet anyone they had been contacted by online unless they knew who they were, "as there are unscrupulous people in the world with malevolent agendas".

It said there were a variety of measures people could use to protect themselves from unwanted contact and that Facebook strongly encouraged their use.

Prosecutor Graham Reeds QC said: "Having invented 19-year-old Peter to make contact with girls, he now decided to invent Peter's dad in order to persuade Ashleigh that it was safe to get into his car.

"The plan he devised was calculated and wicked and it worked."