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Kids (and Parents), Beware!Dateline: 20th July, 2003Like, I imagine, every other theatre-related website, the BTG gets a lot of emails from people who want to be actors, many of them from youngsters in the 11-15 age range. Most are from girls and many of them actually enclose their postal addresses and phone numbers. Given the many high profile cases of so-called Internet Grooming by paedophiles, this displays a remarkable naïveté on the part of the kids and a worrying lack of supervision by parents. But this naïveté is as nothing compared to that shown by a theatre website which features in our New Links today. The PANIC site (Performing Arts Network in Cambridge) is a perfectly legitimate site with wholly laudable aims, to create a sense of community and self-help among those involved in the performing arts in Cambridge and its environs, but there is one part of the site which, quite frankly, should be changed completely or shut down - the Performers Noticeboard. It is full of desperate pleas from kids aged 11 to 15 to "get into" acting work. Samples:
Every single one of these gave their names and at least an email address. What on earth are the Webmasters thinking about? These are kids who are so desperate to get involved in showbiz and theatre that they are willing to believe almost anyone who will make them an offer. And interspersed with these pleas are adverts from porn film makers who are quite openly advertising for people to appear in their films. The first message appeared on the Noticeboard in October 2000, the last - the first quoted above - appeared today, 19th July. I have posted a warning on the board but I would call upon the Webmasters to either close the board down completely or moderate it thoroughly and defnitely remove all personal info that could lead undesirables to identifying and contacting the kids concerned. Articles Indices:
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