Professionals in education, child care and protection today heard from a mother whose child was groomed online, before he was murdered. Lorin LaFave spoke at a conference in Hereford, which aims to raise local awareness for the problems of child sexual exploitation (CSE).

At the conference, which was held at the Hereford Academy on Wednesday, April 27th, Ms LaFave spoke about her eldest son, Breck Bednar, who was murdered in February 2014 by Lewis Daynes, an online predator. Breck was just 14 years old when he was killed.

Although Breck grew up in Surrey, Ms LaFave speaks at conferences all over the country sharing her story, highlighting that predators are online, and they are targeting children, and this is a widespread problem.

Speaking to the Ross Gazette before her presentation, Ms LaFave said that a key warning sign to look out for is an “extreme change in personality.”

She explained that although many children become more opinionated as they reach their teens, in Breck’s case, his ideology was changed. Ms LaFave said that Lewis, who met Breck while they were playing online video games, indoctrinated Breck and isolated him from his friends and family. Breck would say that Lewis had told him that he didn’t need to go to school anymore, because he could get him a job with Microsoft. He would also say Lewis told him he didn’t need to go to church, as he no longer believed in God. With every change, it was always pre-fixed by “Lewis says...”

Lorin, becoming increasingly concerned, called the police. “I knew my son was being groomed, I just didn’t know why he was being groomed,” she said. She feared that Lewis could have been a terrorist, trying to pull Breck in to a criminal world. But when she called 101 to report it to the police, she said that the officers she spoke to did not have the adequate training to deal with the problem. As Breck was a boy, they did not believe he was being groomed by a dangerous individual. The police did not do a criminal background check on Lewis, and if they had done, they would have found that a 15-year-old boy had reported he had been raped by Lewis.

Lewis enticed Breck to his flat in Essex in February 2011, and his parents never saw him again.

The conference is currently ongoing in Hereford, and professionals from all over the county are there, finding about how children can be protected from predators. To read the full report, see next week’s edition of the Ross Gazette.