'Coming at us like a tsunami' Carol Vorderman issues distressing warning over online abuse

express.co.uk:

Carol Vorderman has issued a worrying warning concerning trolling and online abuse following her experiences investigating the introduction of chat rooms 20 years ago.

Carol's warning comes after the Online Safety Bill was introduced to parliament earlier this month by Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries, who met with a number of celebrities including the Countdown star to discuss their experiences of online abuse at a roundtable.Speaking to the Conservative party member, the Welsh national, 61, told how she first gained an insight into the world of online grooming when working as a journalist.Carol said: "So back in the late nineties I was very actively involved as an investigative reporter and I had the only tabloid column introducing people to this new thing called the Internet."So Piers Morgan was the Editor of the Daily Mirror at the time and I had this double page and little Sarah Payne was murdered and because of that we had a lot of emails coming through from readers who were saying [about] this new thing called chat rooms."So I started investigating this and it was horrendous," she explained.Carol went on: "So up until that point online a grown man, just as Pete [Andre] was saying now, let's say a grown man as an example, who would go into a chat room, groom a child, no crime committed."He would arrange a hotel room with the child, no crime committed."This child could go into the hotel room, we actually had a situation where the police were outside, still no crime until a sexual assault took place," she revealed.However, the star told how she then started seeing changes made.A post shared by Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders)"So then the virtual world became real as far as the judiciary were concerned", Carol said.She.