Incident Description
Parent informed the headteacher that her daughter (Year 4) was being groomed on Snapchat by a male who looked in his 30s.
He had sent her semi-nude images and had requested images back.
Her older brother discovered the communication after the girl had left her phone on the table in the kitchen.
He saw it buzzing constantly so picked it up and saw the username ‘baby cakes’ and gave it to his mam.
She saw semi-nude images of a male in his thirties.
The mother contacted the police who tried to track the username.
It was discussed by the MASH team but with no further action
Both parents were devastated that their daughter had been in their words ‘so easily’ groomed
Guidance for Safeguarding Response
- School leaders got the incident number from the mother and contacted the police to check if there was anything else they needed to know as a school
- Their concern was other children could be using snapchat and could also be being groomed
- The police shared that the image shared may be a recirculated image from the internet and shared the source was outside of the UK.
- School offered emotional support through counselling and identified ‘safe’ adults in school to talk to with regular check ins.
- A series of class sessions were carried out to reinforce the importance of identifying risks online and critically evaluating online relationships and sources of information
- School added the NSPCC link about Data shows how criminals are using private messaging platforms to manipulate and groom children in their next newsletter https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2025/data-shows-how-criminals-are-using-private-messaging-platforms-to-manipulate-and-groom-children/
- Information was recorded on school’s system (Category: Online safety outside of school and Grooming concerns
Additional actions which could be considered:
- Pol-ed sessions with the class/key stage such as ‘What is grooming?’
Agencies Involved in this Incident
Communication with the police