Habbo Hotel children's site labelled a 'paedophile haven'

A Channel 4 News investigation has found that a popular online game site targeted at teenagers showed explicit interactions of a sexual nature.

Habbo Hotel attracts 10 million unique users per month and is considered to be "the world's largest social game and online community for teenagers".

But Channel 4 News producer Rachel Seifert spent two months playing under the guise of an 11-year-old girl, and encountered the interactions to be "sexual" and "perverse". Ms Seifert said:

Channel 4 News found the site to be filled with pornographic, sexual chat despite it being aimed at children as young as 13-years-old.

John Carr, a child safety expert who played the game with the news team, told the programme:

In a statement, Paul LaFontaine, the chief executive of Sulake, the company which owns the website, told Channel 4 News it is committed to ensuring that children are safe on the site:

Further investigations into Habbo Hotel found that it is not the first time the site has been linked to inappropriate sexual allegations.

Last year paedophile Matthew Leonard, 21, of Billericay, Essex, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment after he admitted grooming young girls he had met in Habbo.