THE family of missing Dublin teenager Amy Fitzpatrick have been targeted by internet hoaxers who gave them the address of a Tallaght youth and told them the 16-year-old girl was living there with him.

A message on a Bebo website dedicated to finding Coolock girl Amy, who went missing in Spain on New Year's Day, claimed that Amy was safe in a house in Jobstown in Tallaght.

A phone number and address to contact her were included, and Amy's family followed-up the lead in the hope that it might result in the girl's discovery.

But when the family explored the lead, they found it was a cruel hoax.

The teenager involved said he had no idea where Amy was and that his internet username and password had been abused by someone else to play the sick prank.

Amy's family say they have passed the information on to gardai to investigate who could have perpetrated the hoax.

"When we first saw the message we couldn't believe it," Amy's aunt, Christine Kenny, said. "We have always felt that we should follow up every lead, so we got in touch with the number and tracked the Tallaght guy down."

"The message said Amy was with him and she was okay but didn't want to see anyone. You can imagine our excitement.

"When we phoned the number, this guy said he didn't know anything, and that somebody who knew his passwords must have used them to create the prank.

"He apologised and said he was disgusted that someone would do something like that.

"We were absolutely gutted. It's a very sad thing to do, building people's hopes up like that when we have been suffering so much," she added.

Christine said the Tallaght hoax was not the first in the campaign to find Amy, and that she had received a number of obscene phone calls since her number was published in national newspapers.

One such call came while Christine was meeting with detectives working on the case. As a result, all the incidents of harassment are now being logged.

"Some of the things that people have said on the phone are very shocking and there is no way I could repeat them," said Christine.

Meanwhile, in the efforts to follow up another lead, Christine has appealed for a woman she met in the Omni Shopping Centre, and who claimed to have heard a girl screaming around the time Amy went missing, to come forward again.

"She told me she had to dash off to collect a prescription and when I came back to see her she was gone," said Christine.

"I would really like to talk to her again. She said she was on holiday in Spain at the same time.

"She woke up sick and couldn't get out of the bed, but heard a sound like a teenager screaming," she added.

A website has been set up for anyone who wants to help in finding Amy and in efforts to raise funds to hire a private investigator to work on the case. Details are available on www.searchforamy.com

- Conor Feehan