Virtual-schoolgirl advert 'on dangerous ground'

A major telecommunications group has been urged to rethink advertisements in MTR stations enticing men to pay to 'date' a virtual-reality schoolgirl by mobile phone.

One2Free's new i-Date U service risked encouraging child pornography and paedophilia, the group Against Child Abuse has warned.

'The danger in these kind of games and fantasies is that some might replicate them in actual life,' the group's director, Priscilla Lui Tsang Sun-kai, said.

One of the characters the adverts feature is a cartoon schoolgirl Ron - wearing a short sailor-style uniform that reveals her navel - winking suggestively.

Ms Lui urged One2Free to rethink use of the schoolgirl character. 'The message disseminated needs to be very carefully addressed,' she said.

But she did not advocate censorship and stressed the need not to exaggerate the danger i-Date U posed.