A new threat to online daters

Websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn put us in touch with ‘friends’ we’ve never seen in person. And a lot of us look for partners online too. These days a third of all relationships begin that way. That’s a lot of happy stories. But what happens when you move from fantasy to reality and you meet in real life? For many the fairy tale continues as it should do. But for some the story takes a darker turn.

Threat to online daters

Some of my friends have used online dating services and one of them met her husband that way. I’ve sat in the pub with them hearing funny stories about how the reality didn’t match up to the online persona. But for some people that mismatch can lead to difficulties, disappointment or worse, to an assault or rape. You feel you know and trust your date because you’ve spent time chatting online, sometimes intimately but actually you don’t know them as a person at all yet.

Working at the National Crime Agency means I get an insight into new criminal threats. Recently my colleagues in the Serious Crime Analysis Section found a spike in rape cases relating to online dating. You might have seen the coverage about this in the press recently. One of the reasons I find my job so fulfilling is because I can help make sure the public have the information they need to protect themselves.

NCA Research

At NCA we’ve done lots of research based on real life cases reported in to us by the police and analysed by our experts. What we found was a six fold increase in sexual offences linked to online dating from 2009 (33 cases) to 2014 (184 cases). We are seeing double the number of rapes related to online dating, than those involving bogus taxis – and a lot more people are aware of that risk.

This all sounds pretty scary I know, and I don’t want to put anyone off trying out online dating. The risks are still relatively small and there are some really easy things you can do to make sure you have a safe first date. It’s good advice to keep that first meeting short and find out who your date really is behind the online persona.

Meet in public face to face

Everybody knows that you should meet in a public place for the first date – that advice is everywhere. But our research shows people aren’t always following it. In 41% of the cases we looked at, the date started at home and 72% of the rapes happened at a private residence. So the message is not just to meet in public but to stay in public for the whole date. That means that if it isn’t going well you can leave quickly without feeling you owe them anything.

Sometimes, unfortunately, people are raped or sexually assaulted. If this happens there is help available through the police or charities like Rape Crisis or the Survivors Trust and they should know that no matter what, it’s not their fault.

I don’t think anyone should be unduly concerned about meeting someone they have found through an online dating service. There are nearly 9 million people who use them in the UK and the vast majority of these dates are perfectly safe. I’ve thought about trying out online dating myself and the report’s findings wouldn’t stop me from signing up because that would be overreacting. Everyone can make their own decisions about who they meet, and what they choose to do next. But if they can make those decisions with our advice in mind, then that first date will be safer, easier and more relaxed.