14-year-old Ayleen chats with a man on the online game Fortnite. Then she is killed, presumably by him. How dangerous are such chat rooms and how can parents protect their children? A conversation with a cybercriminologist.
Interviewed by
Moritz Geier
The Ayleen missing person made headlines across Germany. The 14-year-old from Gottenheim near Freiburg disappeared on July 21, and a week later her body was found in a remote lake in Hesse. The police assume a sex crime; the exact cause of death is still unclear. A 29-year-old man from Hesse is in custody who had already attracted attention as a teenager because of an attempted rape and therefore spent ten years in a psychiatric hospital. He and Ayleen met on the Internet, where they exchanged views on social networks and chat rooms in the online video game “Fortnite”. Thomas-Gabriel Rüdiger believes that such gaming platforms are far too little regulated. He is head of the Institute for Cybercriminology at the Brandenburg State Police University and has been calling for better protection of children and young people on the Internet for some time.