Chatroom 'victim' to return home
Published: 05 Feb 2001 13:23 GMT
A fifteen-year-old girl who was allegedly lured to Europe six months ago by a man that she met on the Internet is due to return home Monday.
Lindsay Shamrock met 35-year-old German Konstantin Baehring in an Internet chatroom, and according to her mother was manipulated by email and Web-based chat into travelling to meet him in Greece last August. The man is now facing charges of abduction and sexual assault.
It has taken six months to track the teenager down and she claims she travelled to Europe voluntarily and is in love with the German. He is also protesting his innocence but the girl's mother is not convinced. "I thank God my daughter is safe... this ordeal has caused great suffering," Lindsay's mother Stephanie Lavoie told a news conference in Thessaloniki at the weekend.
Greek authorities have seized Baehring's computer and disks from his home, and are investigating a possible connection between the suspect and illegal pornography rings.
Two other men have also been arrested in Florida and Ohio for helping the girl to travel to Europe on a false identity. The arrests come a week before the sentencing of seven Britons accused of participating in the world's biggest ever Internet paedophile ring, the Wonderland Club.
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