A 14 year old girl was today charged with criminal recklessness for attempting to organize a meeting with an older man.
The girl, whose name has been withheld for legal reasons, is alleged to have contacted 25 year old Philip Oldsmith over the social networking site Facebook. It is claimed that she misrepresented her age and attempted to set up a romantic liaison with him.
Oldsmith apparently became suspicious about her age claims due to her intimate knowledge of Pokemon characters and alerted police.
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman commented, "The risk to a single man of inadvertently meeting with an underage girl is now so great that we feel it is in the public interest to criminally prosecute in cases like this. His entire life could have been destroyed by this act of recklessness."
Oldsmith was unavailable for comment, but released a statement through his solicitor: "Mr Oldsmith feels that he is very fortunate to have become suspicious before the proposed meeting could take place. The consequences should it have gone ahead do not bear thinking about."
The girl could face up to six months in prison if convicted.
