'My 11-year-old daughter was groomed on Facebook by a paedophile.'

Hannah’s 11-year-old daughter was chatting with a friend on Facebook and was asked to turn on the webcam. She felt strange about it, but also obligated to do so. She used a teddy bear to hide herself.

An 11-year-old girl sitting in her bedroom, chatting online, a stuffed toy the only barrier between her and her predator.

Of course, she didn’t know he was a predator. His Facebook name was “Jack Smith”. They had 32 mutual friends. She guessed she must have known him. His profile picture was blurry, but it was definitely of a teenage boy wearing a school uniform.

“I didn’t want my daughter to have Facebook: the legal age is 13 and she was still only 11. Her older sister had it and all the kids at school were talking about it; she said she felt left out,” Hannah wrote for The Independent.

“She would pester me daily: ‘It’s not fair, Maddy has it, Kate has it, why can’t I have it? Please mum please mum please mum’.”

Hannah’s daughter thought she was sharing laughs and thoughts and emojis with a friend of her friends, Jack Smith. Until she turned the webcam on and saw an adult man masturbating while watching her holding up her teddy bear.

“My daughter’s first sexual experience was seeing the penis of a paedophile masturbating in her bedroom,” Hannah wrote.

“His method was simple yet highly effective. He managed to make ‘friends’ with other girls at her school and by the time he came to request my daughter, they had 32 mutual friends.”

Listen: The person who fought back after being sexually abused as a child. Post continues below. 

The girl shut the computer. She signed off. But he kept going – this time through messages. Sexually abusive, explicit, horrible, awful messages sent from a man in his late 20s to a girl less than half his age.

Hannah found out when the police came knocking. Another mother had found “Jack Smith” on her daughter’s Facebook. She’d reported him. The police followed a trail that lead them to at least 38 other girls, Hannah’s daughter included.

“When the police read the messages to us it was hard to take in at first. A mixture of shock, disgust, bewilderment, despair and sadness all combined,” Hannah wrote.

“I failed to educate my daughter about the exact nature of how paedophiles work: Did I assume he would have been dressed up as The Big Bad Wolf with the words ‘sex offender’ tattooed onto his face? I felt very ashamed at my lack of awareness, I felt like a fool.”

Today, the results of a survey into the online habits of six-year-old children were released in the UK.

The surveyed looked to 1,500 parents and found almost half (44 per cent) of children aged six are browsing the internet, social media and streaming online videos without supervision. They’re doing this alone in their bedrooms. A third of the children are on Whatsapp, and three-in-five are using apps such as YouTube.

These six-year-olds are now as internet savvy as 10-year-olds were in 2013.

Young minds. Young bodies. So vulnerable, and yet growing up in a world where free reign online has become the norm for children their age. I wonder how many of the parents surveyed had also heard the pleas:  'It’s not fair, Maddy has it, Kate has it, why can’t I have it? Please mum please mum please mum'.

"Jack Smith" ended up being a man in his late 20s who lived in the same suburb.

"He was just around the corner from us. He was the smiling assistant who helped us in our local supermarket. He’d have a joke with us and offer to help with our packing," Hannah wrote.

"I have no idea if he specifically targeted my daughter because he knew who she was or whether it was just a terrible coincidence. I’ll never know."

With more and more kids online, the average age becoming younger and younger, it's terrifying to think how easy it is for predators like "Jack Smith" to enter into the bedrooms and private lives of children while still being the anonymous "smiling stranger" at the grocery store.