Why you MUST monitor your child’s gaming: Horrified father reveals how predator coerced his son, 12, into sending sexual photos online
- WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT
- A father has revealed how his son fell victim to a predator while playing Fortnite
- Predator coerced the boy, 12, into downloading WhatsApp and sending photos
- The father was so horrified that he attempted to take his own life months later
A horrified father has revealed how his 12-year-old son was coerced into sending sexual images to a gamer he met while playing Fortnite.
The father and son were kept anonymous as they spoke to documentary maker Todd Sampson for his new program Mirror Mirror.
The boy told Sampson that he would play the fantasy video game for 10 to 15 hours a day and use the game’s chat feature to talk with fellow gamers online.
His father revealed that one gamer asked the boy to download WhatsApp and save his number as ‘BFF’.
This so-called BFF would then ask the 12-year-old for sexual images in return for Xbox vouchers.
His father was so horrified after discovering six months of messages, he attempted to take his own life.
The boy told Sampson that he would play Fortnite for 10 to 15 hours a day and use the game’s chat feature to talk with fellow gamers online
‘At some point, it’s migrated from talking on Fortnite to being told to download Whatsapp on his phone,’ the father said. ‘So he downloaded WhatsApp and then saved his person’s number as BFF which is best friend forever.
‘And this person would text and text and call. I was like, “Who is this BFF? Oh just a friend from school”. I asked what’s the name and he couldn’t tell me.
‘I grabbed the phone and went into his messages and I was mortified at what I found. They asked for pictures in return for $300 worth of Xbox vouchers, which he didn’t even think twice. He just provided it to them.’
The father opened up on the guilt of discovering what his son had been through.
‘The guilt is what hurts the most. He was targeted because I didn’t provide that support that I should have. It was like a bomb went off in my world.
‘January or February is when I found out that it happened. And then on May 11, I had a suicide attempt from that.
‘I realised that the way that I need to heal through this is to help other people to educate children and parents. It’s one thing waiting till it happens and then educate the child. But if you can educate a child before it happens, then you stop it.
‘These games are designed to just pull in money and they’re not interested in protecting children. They’ve made it so much easier for children to be targeted.’
Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, said child sexual abuse imagery was a growing problem.
The father and son were kept anonymous as they spoke to documentary maker Todd Sampson for his new program Mirror Mirror
The father opened up on the guilt of discovering what his son had been through and how he tried to take his own life
‘I think one of the most devastating things that our investigators have seen for the past five years is what we call coerced self produced Child Sexual Abuse imagery.
‘And it’s literally young people, sometimes as young as six, but more often in the tween area is when they’re being coerced to perform sexual acts.
‘The vast majority of these are filmed in the bedrooms and the bathrooms of the family home. In some of the videos, we can even hear the parents in the background calling for dinner. So this can literally happen right under our noses.’
Former WA police officer and child cybersafety expert Paul Litherland added: ‘Predatory behaviour is just getting easier and easier. Policing still hasn’t caught up with the advancement of the internet.’
Sampson, a former advertising executive who gained fame as a regular panelist on ABC show The Gruen Transfer, said the two-part Mirror, Mirror documentary shows how the internet is ‘changing our kids, our attitudes and our minds’.
The theme of the first episode was ‘love’, while he second part, was based around ‘hate’.
New series: Todd Sampson (pictured) is back with a new project, titled love + hate. The upcoming documentary will delve into ‘how the internet has polarised society
Source: Read Full Article
