A CHILD protection charity has warned that action must be taken in response to online grooming following the conviction of a Met police officer.

Francois Olwage, a detective constable who was serving with the Met's specialist operations unit, was today (Thursday, April 14) convicted of grooming what he believed to be a 13-year-old girl he had met on the Lycos online chat forum.

But Winchester Crown Court heard that the 52-year-old defendant was actually chatting with an undercover police officer pretending to be the girl using the username of Smile Bear, before moving to WhatsApp using the name Caitlin.

The trial heard that after two weeks of explicit sexual conversations in October 2021, Olwage, of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, arranged to meet the "girl", who had told him that she lived in Basingstoke.

READ MORE: Met counter-terrorism officer guilty of attempting to meet 13-year-old for sex in Basingstoke

Reacting to the verdict, an NSPCC spokesperson said: “Olwage, with all his professional knowledge of the terrible effects of child sexual abuse, shamefully groomed what he believed to be a 13 year old girl on an online chat forum, before moving to WhatsApp to invite ‘her’ to meet him for his own gratification.

“Grooming is taking place on an industrial scale with online child sex offences at record levels. It is critical the new Online Safety Bill responds to the sheer scale of abuse risks children face on social media and strengthens the child protection system for generations to come.”

Adults can contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk. Children can contact Childline on 0800 1111.

Olwage is due to be sentenced at the same court on April 27.

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