Facebook predator had sex with minor

Natalia Burgess. Photo / Supplied

The so-called Facebook predator has broken her silence amid revelations she has had sex with at least one 15-year-old boy - and claims to have slept with other teenagers.

The mother of one victim has also come forward saying police could have stopped her a year ago but failed to act when approached.

The bizarre world of Natalia Yvette Burgess, 28, has been unravelled by
the Herald on Sunday.

We have exposed a myriad of online fantasy worlds driven through social networking websites and aimed at schoolboys - a week after
we revealed that Burgess was the woman at the centre of a police inquiry.

Burgess has created multiple fake Facebook personalities in which she
has posed as a number of attractive teenage girls.

Among others, she has used the names Amie Marie West, Laura Jane
West, Jordz Williams, Becca Maria Jullienne, Abby Jane Zoe William
and Racheal Marie Drent.

The Herald on Sunday has also established that she has carried the fantasies over into real life, claiming to have had sex with boys more than 10 years her junior after meeting them online.

The mother of one teenage boy says her complaint was ignored by police - and she still doesn't know if her son slept with Burgess at the
illegal age of 15.

And the mother of another teenage boy who Burgess had sex with has said a senior police officer was removed from the case after he told her boys
were less affected as victims of sexual predators than girls.

Police confirmed that both women had been in contact with officers over
issues relating to Burgess.

However, a police spokesman said they had no recollection of the
issues the mothers had raised over police attitudes or lack of action.

Common fantasy themes have also emerged from the online world
Burgess inhabits:

* She will approach the mother of teenage boys she has had sex with to
tell them that she is pregnant. Burgess uses images of pregnancy
scans and photographs of positive pregnancy tests as proof.

* She claims to be the mother of a three-year-old child fatally injured in a car accident. The story shifts between the accident just happening
- or the child being on life support about to be disconnected.

* She will use one online persona to tell victims that another false
identity has committed suicide, describing how she found the body and
detailing the reasons for the death - sometimes making an emotional
connection to the boy.

* When the schemes go sour, Burgess will threaten the families of the boys she has become involved with. The threats will include claims of connections to criminal gangs.

Burgess was back on Facebook last week using profiles which the Herald on Sunday has connected to some of the false identities she uses on the internet.

When we contacted her, she said she had hired a lawyer who was handling media queries.

But she also said she had gone to church on Sunday morning with her
religious family where she had to cope with the public revelation that she was the woman dubbed "the Facebook predator".

She said she did not carry out the online scam alone - and named as an
accomplice a man who had previously called himself a victim.

"He knew about the fakes because he helped me do one," she said.

Investigations into Burgess by the police continue with inquiries
focused in Christchurch where up to 40 students at St Thomas of Canterbury school were caught up in her online world.

Police say Burgess used multiple online aliases with false photographs to convince the boys they were forming internet relationships with girls
their own age.

The mother of a Wellington teenager told the Herald on Sunday she
was horrified to find Burgess was still targeting teenagers after her 15-year-old son entered a physical relationship with her.

The woman - who cannot be named for legal reasons - said she first
met Burgess among the spectators at a school cricket match when her
son was aged 15.

She said she asked her son if Burgess - about 23 at the time - was "a bit old" for him "but it was sort of palmed off".

"It's not easy questioning your teenagers too closely," she said.

It later emerged Burgess had first met the boy's 18-year-old brother
through NZDating.com.

But she said Burgess learned her son had a younger brother and she
approached and "friended" him over Facebook.

The truth of their relationship emerged months later after the
teenager disappeared one evening.

At a family meeting after he returned, it emerged he had been seeing Burgess and had been having sex with the older woman.

It later emerged both her boys had lost their virginity to Burgess but it was only the 15-year-old who she continued seeing.

The woman said Burgess not only saw her son for sex in the evening
but would also do so during the day, when the boy would have been in
school uniform.

She said Burgess would take the boy to parks and reserves for sex.

Then Burgess rang the woman. "She said she was pregnant to one or the
other of the boys. This was our first grandchild and it was one or the
other of the boys."

The announcement was a bombshell - and one that the woman was
determined to get to the bottom of. She began demanding DNA proof
"and that's when the death threats began".

The woman said the threats came from both Burgess and an online
persona who claimed to be her sister.

The family were convinced there were two people although later discovered the other persona was false.

The house was "egged" on a number of occasions, and the doorbell was rung at night with no one at the door.

In the months that followed, she said Burgess turned up at her son's
part-time job to tell his colleagues that she was pregnant to him.

"They (her sons) thought they could handle it but she's obsessive. She
weaves in these stories. She finds out about all their friends and weaves in people in the neighbourhood.

"I don't know if she knows herself where the truth ends and the facts
begin. She tells so many stories."

The woman said she and her son went to police. She said the police
pursued the case - although the initial detective sergeant investigating the case was replaced after he told her that boys pursued by sexual predators were not as affected in the same way as girls.

She said the officer seemed unsympathetic, calling at one stage to tell
her: "You need to get both your boys tested for STDs and HIV."

It emerged later that Burgess was not pregnant and had not been.

She had claimed to have had a 3-year-old daughter in Westport, yet
this also appeared to be untrue.

The woman said the stress of the case placed immense pressure on the
family and left her so run down she fell victim to an infection from which she struggled to recover.

"It nearly killed me."

Her son had previously been a model student but began truanting, and eventually had to be transferred to another school after teasing over the case turned to bullying, she said.

The police involvement did eventully lead to Burgess ending contact.

The mother of another teenager said her son was also nominated as the
father of a baby that Burgess never had.

She said her son initially met the Laura and Amy West personas
over the internet.

He was upset to be later told that Amy West had killed herself, before finding solace in the online friendship of another of her "sisters" - Burgess.

The mother said she followed the advice of experts and kept tabs on
his internet access.

This led to Burgess becoming her Facebook friend - and finding common
ground after Burgess claimed to be a mother to a three-year-old girl.

The woman also developed contact by text message with a persona
claiming to be Burgess' father.

After three months of online contact, Burgess' "father" offered to take
her children - a boy aged 15 and a girl aged 14 - to Rainbow's End
amusement park in Auckland.

The woman said she now realised that it was foolish agreeing to let her
children go with someone she had only met online.

But back then, believing the man she had known online for three months, she agreed to her children going on the trip.

Burgess turned up at the house and said her father had been delayed and
would meet them at the amusement park, she said.

The woman got a panicked call from her children hours later who
had been left at a house in South Auckland. She said they had not been to Rainbow's End - and that while away she had used her daughter's
phone to make a 111 call reporting an accident involving her "daughter".

The woman said she went to police in South Auckland to lay a complaint and was unhappy when told that Burgess was known to officers and would not follow through on threats.

Eventually, after repeated complaints, Burgess was issued with a trespass notice.

Burgess then emailed the woman saying she was pregnant to her son,
sending emailed pregnancy scan pictures and images of positive
pregnancy tests as "proof".

She said it was unclear when Burgess had sex with her son. "He was
either 15 or 16."

To the woman's horror, there are photographs of Burgess and her son on internet pages in bed together.

"I really feel for the families of these boys in Christchurch. If the police had questioned her 12 months ago it could have spared them.

"What the hell does a 28-year-old woman want with a 15-year-old boy?"

The Herald on Sunday spoke to others who had similar stories of contact with Burgess, including a woman and her daughter, 23, who been stalked by her for years.

Burgess had met the woman's daughter in a Manukau bar when she was 17 and had a photograph taken with her.

Burgess began visiting the girl's workplace, leaving gifts including a necklace - and using the picture of the two of them to create
an online profile.

With her mum, she eventually visited police.

Burgess was subject to a legal order which forced her to not use the girl's photograph.

This week, both women went back to police to make a fresh complaint after they found photographs of the girl - now a young woman - used on a new internet profile.

The young woman asked the Herald on Sunday to publish her
picture to let the world know: "I am not Natalia."

She said the use of the picture had become so widespread she would be
approached by men when she was out socialising who believed they had
online relationships with her.

The Herald on Sunday has managed to trace ownership of the website back to a Facebook profile used by Burgess.

One woman who met her online said Burgess had six phones and multiple online personalities.

She claimed she was mother to a child - and claimed to have fallen
pregnant to her online friend's boyfriend.

The claim caused disruption in the relationship - even though Burgess was not pregnant.

Burgess then claimed her daughter was fatally injured in a car crash.

She said Burgess turned up at her home to say that her daughter was
on life support at Middlemore Hospital and it was about to be turned
off.

Police were called and Burgess was removed, she said.

The questions around Burgess are as close to home as her neighbours.

The Story sisters - Jayne, Matilda and Roberta - said the older
woman would wait outside their home to talk to them.

They said she always had one of a number of phones to her ear and
pretended to speak into it, although it appeared at times there was no one to talk to.

Matilda Story said Burgess had told them that she had been visited
by a Christchurch teen she had met online: "She told us she slept with a
16-year-old boy."

And Roberta Story said she also claimed to have a relationship with a
teen neighbour who had been killed in a car crash.

"She never knew him. Dad keeps telling us to stay away from her, and
we do. But she keeps coming around."