Paedophile, 36, groomed 13-year-old British lady on youngsters’s gaming web site Roblox then flew to UK to have intercourse along with her

A man travelled to the UK from Germany with the intention of having sex with a 13-year-old girl he met through Roblox.

Michael Shablinger, 36, spent months grooming the 13-year-old victim – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – after finding her on the video game platform.

Norwich Crown Court heard Shablinger, who had told the victim he was 21, met up with her in a park in Hethersett, Norfolk. He spent five hours with her until she was tracked down by her mother.

Oliver Haswell, prosecuting, said the victim has refused to say what happened between them during the hours she was missing while at the park.

But a picture of the pair kissing was later found on a ‘secret’ phone given to her by Shablinger.

Mr Haswell said the meeting at the park followed months of ‘grooming’, which had started on the online game platform Roblox when she was just 12.

Last year child safety campaigners urged Ofcom to act after a report branded Roblox an ‘X-rated paedophile hellscape’. 

The popular game in which young players create or play in virtual universes has been accused of exposing children to ‘grooming, pornography and violent content’.

After meeting on the platform in May 2023, Shablinger arranged to meet the victim   who told her mother she was ‘going to take the dog for a walk’ with a friend at 11am on June 16, 2024.

But when she failed to return, the mother then went out to try and look for the missing girl herself, and found her in a park with Shablinger.

The defendant, who said he had ‘only just met her’, then left the area on a bus.

The victim then lied to her mother about what happened, prompting the concerned parent to contact police.

Once home the victim claimed she felt unwell and went to her room.

But the mother later found her daughter ‘hiding something in her bed’, which turned out to be a ‘secret’ mobile phone given to her by Shablinger when they met up.

There were messages containing requests from him for ‘further meetings’, a picture of them kissing and telling her to ‘hide the phone’ from her mum.

Police found the phone also contain conversations about the defendant seeking a passport for the victim in order that she could ‘leave the country to be with him’.

Shablinger was arrested by Border Force officers at Heathrow Airport as he tried to board a plane to Munich on June 23.

Police seized his phone and found on it indecent images and videos of unidentified children, as well as indecent images of the victim.

The prosecutor said ‘many’ sexualised images and messages were exchanged between the two of them.

Mr Haswell said Shablinger encouraged and ‘instructed’ the victim to commit sexual acts and recorded her as she did so.

He said the victim has refused to tell police what happened when she and Shablinger met and she even sent a message to him stating ‘be lucky, I lied to the police’.

Shablinger, who was born in Austria but lives in Germany, appeared at court on Wednesday after he admitted meeting a child following sexual grooming.

He also admitted sexual activity with a child and six offences of possession of more than 800 indecent images of children.

Three of those offences related to pictures and videos of the victim – including five category A, the most serious – and another three to unidentified children, including 346 category A.

Recorder Paul Garlicked imposed an extended eight-and-a half-year extended sentence, made up of four and a half years in custody and four years on licence.

Ed Renvoize, mitigating, said the defendant accepted ‘this is an extremely serious case’ but deserved full credit for his pleas to the offences.

He said Shablinger ‘was untruthful about his age’ but insisted there was ‘no abduction or detention’ in this case.

Shablinger was also made the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) and put on the sex offenders’ register, both indefinitely.

He was also banned from contacting, or attempting to contact, the victim directly or indirectly until further order.

Roblox has no age restrictions as campaigners say UK communications watchdog Ofcom must make a ‘step change’ as it implements then enforces the Online Safety Act (OSA).

US investment firm Hindenburg Research issued damning findings after a lengthy investigation into the controversial platform.

The new law will place new duties on social media sites for the first time. The largest and most popular, as well as those which count children among their users, are set to face the strictest rules.

Platforms must put in place and enforce safety measures to ensure that users, and in particular young people, do not encounter illegal or harmful content – and if they do that it is quickly removed, with those who break the rules facing large fines.

Among the campaign groups urging Ofcom to act is the Molly Rose Foundation – established by the parents of 14-year-old Molly Russell from Harrow, North West London, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful online content.

Roblox rejected the allegations by Hindenburg, insisting safety was ‘foundational’ to the company. And Hindenburg has also stated that it is trying to profit from a fall in Roblox’s value by taking out a ‘short’ position on the company’s share price.

The online gaming platform has become successful with young children – offering a series of different games and interactive tools, as well as the ability to create your own challenges .

But the Hindenburg study raised concerns about inappropriate links which are at a child’s fingertips when accessing the site.

The report states: ‘Core to the problem is that Roblox’s social media features allow paedophiles to efficiently target hundreds of children, with no up-front screening to prevent them from joining the platform.’

It also says there are ‘digital strip clubs, red light districts, sex parties and child predators lurking on Roblox’, which has 80 million daily users.

 And Roblox was accused of being ‘an X-rated paedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech’.

Hindenburg also said it found multiple accounts named using variations of the name of disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

A Roblox spokesperson said in a statement in response to the Hindenburg study: ‘Safety and civility have been foundational to Roblox since our inception nearly two decades ago, and we have invested heavily throughout our history in our Trust and Safety efforts.

‘Every day, tens of millions of users of all ages have safe and positive experiences on Roblox and abide by the company’s community standards. However, any safety incident is horrible.

‘We take any content or behaviour on the platform that doesn’t abide by our standards extremely seriously and we have a robust set of proactive and preventative safety measures designed to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity on our platform.’

Hindenburg Research teams investigating Roblox attempted to create accounts using names of notorious child molesters and criminals.

They tried to set one up under the name of Earl Brian Bradley – a paedophile convicted of molesting 103 children – but found the username was already taken, along with a host of variants, including earlbrianbradley69.

There were 900 variations of the name ‘Jeffrey Epstein’, plus 600 hits when searching ‘Diddy’ games.

Some of these games were titled ‘Diddy Party’, ‘Run from Diddy Simulator’ and, separately, ‘Escape to Epstein Island.’

Youngsters on ‘child accounts’ – that is, under the age of 13 – were also able to search ‘adult’ to find inappropriate content.

Roblox self-reported more than 13,000 incidents of child exploitation to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023.