Today, we meet Rio, a mom of an 11 year old daughter. Rio walks us through how an online predator found her daughter Sophia, befriended her, and manipulated her. Sofia thought she was in a relationship with a girl her own age, not an adult man. Fortunately, Rio and her husband found out what was happening before the predator could find a way to meet Sophia in person.
CARE House, the local child advocacy center, provided specialized counseling for both Sophia and her parents, as they worked through the trauma of what happened. This episode is a few minutes longer than the others in this series, but contains important information for parents whose kids are online.
The "It Shouldn't Hurt To Be a Child" Podcast is narrated by Karen Newman, and is made possible thanks to the generous support of Sheryl Hauk.
Resources:
CARE House of Oakland County Website: https://www.carehouse.org/
CARE House Phone Number: 248.332.7173
Find a Child Advocacy Center (CAC) Near You: https://nationalcac.org/
Rio: I wanted to climb through this device. And I good thing I can't, because I'd be in jail. That's all I have to say because it was... beyond. I just couldn't even wrap my head around. It was so many levels. And so I knew right then and there that I had report this immediately to anyone and everyone that I could,
Karen: It shouldn't hurt to be a child. Welcome to the podcast named for that simple fact. I'm Karen Newman. When you think of child abuse, you may worry about the stranger lurking around the corner. But in this episode, you'll hear the real story of the danger hiding online. It can affect the most vulnerable kids, even under the watchful eyes of their parents.
According to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, one in five US teenagers who regularly log onto the internet say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the web. That includes requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give personal sexual information. But only about a quarter of children who encountered a sexual approach or solicitation online told a parent or adult.
This story is longer than most we're sharing, but it's important to hear. If you want to understand how online predators operate. A mom from Michigan named Rio shares with us what happened to her daughter Sophia. She's 11 and is on the autism spectrum. For a couple of years, Sophia had used an app to create and share art, something her parents thought was good for her. It was, until she met someone who she thought was a friend on that app. They built what felt like a relationship. This so-called friend moved the conversation to a platform called Discord, and that's when Rio realized her daughter ran into some serious trouble.
Rio: One day I went to get her for dinner, and I found her crying, nearly hysterical, shaking, trembling, sweating, pale. I thought she was sick. I didn't know what was going on, asking her. And she was completely unable to verbalize what was going on, which is another characteristic of autism, sensory overload. And it took some time, but we realized, you know, finally got her to talk, and she was telling us about how she was worried about her friend online. And that she was worried that something bad had happened to them. And of course, tell us what happened, who is this friend? We're thinking it's somebody from school, the way she was talking about this person, this person's name was Amy.
"What's her last name?"
"I don't know."
Still not uncommon for people on the spectrum. Why do you think she's in trouble? Because her parents are abusing her? Of course, my mama bear just rushes right to the surface. I'm like, what is her email address? How are you talking to this person? On the app? Because I knew that the art app did not have a private chat.
And so I thought maybe this person was posting this online for all to see. And that's when she told me, well, we're talking on Discord. And we were pretty taken aback. Oh, okay. Well, who is it? Where do they live? I don't know. It took a lot of coaxing to get it out of her because she was so, so traumatized.
So over... It was so what we would consider over the top in her reaction that we knew that something deeper was going on here. And she told us that this person says that Sophia, my daughter, was the only person that they felt they can talk to. If Sophia told anyone that Amy would hurt herself. So there was this guilt component, this emotional hostage kind of situation going on, which is very common with these types of situations.
Sophia was afraid to tell us. Sophia was afraid to come to dinner because the person would say, if you get offline, I'm going to kill myself. And then as we discovered more and more in that moment where, you know, so he is telling us little bits and pieces. We took Sophia out of the room. My husband went with her and tended to her and, you know, was just hugging her and holding her, as much as she would let us at that moment.
And I started going through the device. In fact, Discord was open. I started scrolling. And when I tell you, I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I, I am truly serious. The things that I saw in that communication that scrolled on and on. This had been actually going on for a good month.
We had no idea. The level of emotional blackmail, the degree of depravity in what was being sent to my daughter and my daughter being brainwashed, essentially saying, if you mention anything about this. Something that's going to happen to me. Something could happen to you.
Karen: Rio says the degree of grooming and manipulation on the other side of these online chats is beyond what she could have ever possibly expected.
Rio: The first thing that they did was create an atmosphere of, we have a relationship. I'm the only one that understands you. You are the only one that understands me, it's us against the world. Okay. That was the first thing that I know. And getting my daughter invested in this blind allegiance of that. And along the way, my daughter, she admitted that she was autism spectrum.
And this person took that and said, you are sick just like me. And no one will understand you the way I do. And so when you start to build that and capitalize on someone's... you know, Sophia's insecurities about not making friends easily and that sort of thing. It's very easy for that alliance to become rock solid to the point where Sophia is telling me, I love her. This is my girlfriend. She loves me unconditionally.
Well, it was not, in fact unconditionally, obviously. Sophia would ask her, what do you look like? Can you send a picture? No, I'm real insecure about the way I look. So I can't send a picture of myself. And I'm really insecure about my voice. So I really can't call you and talk to you in person. Sophia's buying all of this, but this person started asking Sophia for pictures. Not just pictures, nude pictures, and it is still even to this day, mind blowing to me that Sophia complied.
There was instances where this person was saying, well, then you don't love me. If you don't send these pictures to me. I know you're uncomfortable because Sophia would say, I'm not comfortable with this. I know that I'm not supposed to be doing this. She actually verbalized that because she does know and I'm scrolling and I am just devastated, but I, I had to keep my cool. This was all in one sitting, you know, all in one fell swoop.
And then I saw it morphing again. The communication into that person, sending her the most graphic, just depraved type of pornographic materials. To be honest with you in all of my years, I never encountered anything like it. I didn't even know what half of this stuff was. Um, I got an education as well, let me tell you.
Karen: It became clear to Rio that whoever was abusing her daughter online was no 11 year old girl. It was an adult man. It was also clear to her that her family could be in real danger. The predator learned where the family lived and was trying to meet Sophia. That's why Rio called her friend who works at care house of Oakland County, the child advocacy center near where they live, that led to a connection to the FBI.
Rio: And I said, this is what we're looking at. I've got everything here. My first instinct, I wanted to delete it, but I quickly knew, there was no way it was going to, because we knew that we needed that as evidence. Didn't touch a thing. So they set us up right away with an appointment with Brad, our agent at the FBI.
And we brought them her devices, her phone, the iPad. And I think the laptop as well. Just in case. She mainly did it on one device, but we took it in now, Sophia, meanwhile, that night, the next day... we couldn't meet with the FBI for a couple of days, but they called me and they said, don't delete anything.
Don't disconnect that connection between them. Don't let her necessarily talk to this person, but don't delete anything, which was really hard to do. And it was so heartbreaking because my daughter was, when we're telling her, look, this is not someone, this is not your peer. This is not who you think it is.
"Yes, it is." She's defending this person to the nth degree. Well, we told her that the FBI has her device. They're going to look through it and investigate. We already knew, obviously that it wasn't a child, but with her, there's a way in which to communicate information that is less prone to her overloading and shutting down due to autism.
So we take it in stages. So what the plan was ,was that Sean, my husband, took the devices in, he was on his way back. And I broke the news to her that, okay, the FBI, this is who the FBI is. This is what they're doing. They're investigating all of , those communications, because they do not feel that this is a peer.
"Well, you're all wrong. You're all wrong."
Her father came home. This was all planned out and told her, the FBI says that this is a grown man. This is not someone named Amy. My daughter... went white. I thought she was going to pass out. We had to sit her down. She started trembling, shaking, sweating, full panic attack, and the betrayal that filled her eyes...
it was a mixture of fear and betrayal, and she just kept rocking back and forth and rocking back and forth and she's crying. And she said, I think I'm going to be sick. She was saying, "I'm traumatized. I'm traumatized." Over and over and over. And we just sat with her on the couch. I said, you're safe. You're okay.
Karen: After the devices were turned over to the FBI 11 year old, Sophia went through a sort of withdrawal. She missed who she thought was someone she loved. It was a process of grief and trauma.
Rio: The more real it became over those first three to four days, the more we saw her just reacting and acting out .Her physical person, sweating profusely, shaking..
Um, she looked haunted. That was the only description that's adequate is she looked haunted by this person. And she was replaying in her head, all the threats that this person made against themselves. She was still thinking about this other person.
So we had to go into the FBI and we had our interview. Sophia had her interview and she was so traumatized that they really couldn't get what they needed enough out of her at that point.
Karen: So that's when the family turned to CARE house and it's services for kids and families.
Rio: CARE house. Our experience with them has been life-changing. They came right in, they were with us every step of the way from the very beginning, their sense of urgency. They got Sophia right in for counseling immediately for trauma.
And I believe with my heart and soul, that, that early intervention, personalized one-on-one, changed the course of her recovery and continues to do so today. Having a therapist that has been down a similar road, who understands from the inside out what those feelings are that she was experiencing, made all the difference in the world.
They can speak the same language. The care and the attention to detail that CARE house and our therapist have given Sophia as we've traversed this journey thus far, really gave Sophia a sense of safety. Someone who can recognize and understand where Sophia is coming from, especially at first when Sophia couldn't even speak about it, she would just shake, you know.
From that point till now, which has been just a couple months, the change in Sophia has been incredible. She is now able to speak of it without going into a full panic attack. She is now finding more power in that as well, in being able to speak about it. But her father and I are in no way qualified to help with that. If it weren't for CARE house, I honestly don't know where we would be today..
They're there for the whole family. It's not just for the child in our case, our daughter, but they opened their doors and opened their services to her father and I as well, which is so incredibly important. That component is critical. Not only because they offer insight and education to us, as far as what we can expect as our daughter moves through her trauma and interim stages of recovery, which is critical because again, we weren't qualified in any of that. So they've offered us tremendous, tremendous value in knowing what to expect, what my daughter might feel, how to approach certain things and not approach certain things they've given us that that is invaluable.
But what they also gave us is a safe space for us to process our feelings about it, which run the gamut. And it's going to be different for every caregiver or every parent. But in our case, of course, of course, feelings of guilt. Tremendous guilt of how, how did this happen? This happened on our watch. You are here to protect your child. All of those things, where it is so easy to become stuck.
At that point, it's easy to get stuck in the trauma. It's easy to get stuck in the guilt and where you can't even find your way out of it. And if that happens, you're not able to be there for your daughter, you know? But it is important to process that and to learn that while you're telling your child, the first thing we were telling her right off the bat is this is not your fault.
You've done nothing wrong. That was the big thing that we knew that we had to impart. But by the same token, we've learned how important it is to also apply that to ourselves, apply that same grace to ourselves. I think parents and caregivers absolutely need that reinforcement from an outside source, such as CARE House.
This is what they do. They specialize in it. It's not just a friend who's telling you this, they're backing it up with their education, their expertise. They're backing it up with their own experience that has made a huge difference in our lives because I, for one was absolutely paralyzed with guilt, paralyzed with it.
Um, my husband as well, I mean, it just broke his heart. CARE house really services the entire family. It is so critical and it's helping us all be able to move forward individually as well as a family.
Karen: Rio says that Sophia's therapy has been so effective that in just a few months, she's back to doing art again, Rio and her husband have seen Sophia laughing and joking with friends at school.
They are hopeful. At the same time, Rio has advice that she'd like other parents to remember.
Rio: As much as this might sound like a broken record to so many people, even if you think, you know what your child is doing online, make sure you know what they're doing online, even if they've always been online and in you think it's as safe as can be, unfortunately, and today's world, there is no such thing as a full proof safety mechanism.
Make sure your child. knows a plan. If X, Y, and Z happens online, this is what happens. Also. I really recommend a service such as bark or something similar, which will monitor their devices and monitor the communication that they're having and what kind of links and what kind of websites and where they are on.
It doesn't replace you as a parent. It's not meant to nor should it, but it's just one more tool, kind of serving as your eyes in the back of your head.
Karen: "It shouldn't hurt to be a child," made possible by the generous support of Sheryl Hawk. For more information on CARE house of Oakland county and his programs, visit CAREHouse.org. To find a child advocacy center near you, visit nationalCAC.org. I'm Karen Newman. Thanks for listening.