Horrors on the Net

IT WAS not to be. Symon Wells and his sister Katy had taken time and love to make this colourful get-well poster for their hospitalised mum, who was fighting a rare form of blood cancer.

Pictured at home, giving the thumbs up and with 16 written kisses, these devoted children so wanted to give her a boost, as only youngsters can with their parents.

But 37-year-old Valerie never came back home.

Five weeks after being admitted to QA Hospital in Portsmouth, and three days before Christmas Day, she died in the arms of husband Kevin.

It was a merciful release from mylodisplasia syndrome, a particularly virulent form of leukaemia.

The devoted couple had been married nearly 14 years, and Kevin, then 35, was stricken with grief, as was their 13-year-old son Symon.

Katy, then nine, managed to put on a brave face.

"It was an unpleasant time of my life, to be honest," said Kevin, now 50. "When you see someone who you care for lose three or four stone in weight and then become a shadow of who they were, it is very difficult to cope with."

But cope the widower did as he juggled with the often-conflicting demands of childcare and a successful business with 55 people on the payroll.

Kevin, the co-founder of home improvement company Dura Glaze, based near Fareham, employed nannies to care for Symon and Katy at the family home in Warsash.

His sister Denise, now 43, also helped out, as did Valerie's elderly mother, Margaret.

By a terrible irony, Margaret had the same form of leukaemia, but it leapfrogged in severity to rob the pensioner of her precious daughter.

Somehow, despite everything, Kevin and his children managed to get their shattered lives back on track.

As time healed, fate handed him the greatest of gifts - love.

Kevin and Christine married in Mauritius in October 1995.

Three years later they moved to Port Solent near Portsmouth, away from the inevitable memories that the family home contained.

It was at the new house that Christine delivered a bombshell to her husband, putting into place the last jigsaw that was to see Kevin embark on a plan to give parents peace of mind as kids log on to the cyberspace equivalent of Pandora's Box.

Kevin said: "We were sitting on the patio talking about Operation Ore, which had exposed individuals across the world who had been using the Internet to download pictures of children being sexually abused, and how the internet was failing children.

"Christine suddenly told me she had been abused at the age of 13 by someone in her street.

"She told me she was embarrassed telling me, but I told her she shouldn't be.

"I thought something should be done to stop these individuals fuelling their perversions on the Internet.

"There are ten million web pages on a daily basis relating to obscenity and pornography.

"The awful truth about Christine, coupled with the constant bombardment of pornography on my personal computer, compelled me to start a crusade."

Kevin spent the next two years searching for the right hi-tech gatekeeper that would filter out, as he puts it, "the most horrific things".

Yousurf, using state-of-the-art software from Israel and said to offer 99 per cent protection, was born.

It allows youngsters to freely roam the Internet for education and recreational reasons but stops them going to unsuitable sites, either intentionally or by accident.

With more than 2.5 billion documents logged in cyberspace, the chances of children accessing vile images are pretty high.

Kevin says the application can also be used for companies and organisations, a fact that won't be lost on the government.

Just two months ago nearly 230 civil servants were disciplined for downloading pornographic images at work at the Department of Work and Pensions.

Some two million pages of porn had been accessed, including images of child abuse.

PureSight has earned universal praise from computer security experts. Kevin said: "This multilingual filtering system actually reads and examines the content in real time, in a billionth of a second.

"So whether the site had been in existence for five minutes or five years it is able to block any undesirable material from reaching computers. It cannot be fooled.

"Ours is basically a family ISP, providing clean money income. Unlike other ISP, there are no streams of revenue from adult content."

While Kevin was happy with Yousurf, said to be the only internet service provider (ISP) that offers PureSight during registration, he wanted to go one stage further by helping a Southampton-based charity close to his heart. Leukaemia Busters, which has TV sports presenter Gary Lineker and wife Michelle as patrons, is researching ways of developing antibody-based "magic bullets" that would treat children and adults with currently incurable forms of leukaemia.

Having lost his wife to this disease, Kevin knew that a slice of the profits from sign-up and monthly renewal fees could go some way in preventing similar tragedies.

He said: "I know that Valerie would be quite pleased, and I know Christine is as well."

Kevin is no stranger to the charity, headed by Southampton research couple Dr David and Bea Flavell.

He read about its work in the early days in this newspaper, and ensured that, as a member of Hamble Valley Round Table, money was raised to fund laboratory assistants.

Indeed, such were the close links, Kevin attended the funeral of the Flavells' ten-year-old son, Simon, in 1990.

He had died from relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

Yet, thanks to his parents, Simon's death was not in vain, for it led to the development of a new drug for future sufferers.

Yousurf business partner and director Anthony Adams, 62, said: "It's brilliant that Kevin is trying to do something about all those evils we read about.

"We are fighting to protect minds, while Leukaemia Busters fights to protect bodies."

Kevin is working flat out to promote Yoursurf.

But, as if things haven't been hard enough, he faces his own personal battle.

Already blind in the left eye, multiple sclerosis, a disease that attacks the central nervous system, has claimed Kevin as one of its own.

He says, with typical understatement, that this will cause "additional difficulties".

Meanwhile Symon, now 28, and Katy, 24, are flourishing in their respective positions as a bench joiner and Royal Navy communications technician.

Their poster of hope, from all those years ago, has long gone, but the memory of Valerie lives on as brightly as the orange colour "Mummy" was written in.

Yousurf, which already has more than 2,000 subscribers, costs from £15.99 a month for unlimited usage, while broadband costs £23.99. £1 wil be donated for every subscription, and 25p for every monthly renewal.