Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Our Children Safe Online | Justice Nation: Crime Stops Here

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Justice Nation: Crime Stops Here is presented with limited commercial interruption thanks to Lifelock. Join now and save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LifeLock and use promo code NANCY or go to https://www.LifeLock.com/NANCY for 40% off. Terms apply. It’s a whole new world and it’s changing every day. Children increasingly have unsupervised access to the connected world, and with all the benefits new technology brings it also needs new dangers. How do you prepare yourself? Beginning with an in depth interview with survivor-turned-advocate Alicia Kozakiewicz, Nancy and her panel of experts teach parents practical tips for parents to combat the threat of online predators and how to deal with cyber bullies. Plus, learn how to talk with your kids about the everyday dangers of oversharing information on social media.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys, Nancy Grace here. Welcome to Justice Nation Crime Stops Here. This online education video course is designed to help you protect what you love the most, your children and your loved ones from crime. We're making it available for free for the first time with limited commercial interruptions thanks to our friends at LifeLock. During tax season, your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you cannot control, stopping off at payroll, your accountant or tax preparer, and countless other data centers on its way to the IRS. Any of them can expose you to identity theft because they have all the information on your W-2. Just the ticket for criminals to steal your identity. No wonder the IRS reported tax fraud due to identity theft went up 20% last year.

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Terms apply. Thank you, LifeLock, for making this possible and for being our partner. You know, I can put a lock on the door. I can get an alarm. I can watch my babysitter on the nanny cam, and I do. I can build a fence with a gate. I can have a dog that barks its head off and bites. But what if my own children, my twins, invite the predator into our family room, our den, while I'm sitting there with them, and I don't know a thing. I'm talking about the internet. It's right under my nose. It's there. When your child is under the covers at night in bed on a smartphone, the whole world has access to your child. The whole world. I don't want to be

that parent who doesn't let my child have an iPad or a smartphone, but what's the alternative? Online predators lurk in the friendliest places online. They know where to find your child. In a friendly chat room, an online game, a social media app, whether it's Minecraft or Fortnite, a guinea pig chat room, a kitty cat chat room, they are there. A friendly screen name means nothing as you are about to hear, but we can protect our children online. And this is how. It's not just a matter of going in your front yard and calling for your child to come home. This is the age of the internet. And now we must wrestle with and wage war against cyber threats. With me today, an all-star panel. First of all, with me, Alicia Kozakiewicz, an abduction survivor,

lured as a child online in the inspiration for Alicia's Law. Also with me, Adam Coffin, former police officer and the founder of Safe Kids, Inc. and Francie Hakes, who ran the government war on child exploitation and abduction. Let's speak to the experts. And I want to start with Alicia, who is a survivor and again, the inspiration for Alicia's Law. Alicia, to me, you being here at this table with us on this beautiful day is a miracle. Please tell us your story. When I was a child, I was a really typical average kid. I come from a good family, good neighborhood, the kind of family that maybe people would think that something like this couldn't happen to. And we certainly thought that it couldn't happen to us. This was never anything that you could ever be prepared for. And I can remember it was back in 2001 and 2002,

and the internet was really just entering the home. And my parents honestly didn't know too much about it. And that was because they didn't grow up with it. And there were no stories like mine. There were no internet safety seminars. There wasn't anything for them to go on. And so my mother sat down and she talked about stranger danger, but that doesn't work online because you feel like you know somebody very quickly. And I can remember it took me a while to actually get online. It seemed like all my friends no longer wanted to go outside. They didn't want to go to the park or the mall or the movies. They wanted to stay indoors and stay online. So in order to maintain my friendships, I got online.

And honestly, at the time, it was really incredible. I was a shy kid. And for me, it was a place that I could speak up. I could make my words pretty colors. I had a backspace. And I felt really safe, which I think was the most important thing is that this was in my home. My mom was there. My dad was there. My brother was there. My dog was there. This was my home and nothing and no one had ever hurt me there before and nothing and no one ever could. I spent a lot of time online talking to my friends from school and at the time it felt like it was a clubhouse. Three-way calling was still a thing and I remember explaining it to my mom and it was like three-way calling with as many people as you want and it was in the family room and it should have been safe, but I didn't have the tools to keep myself safe and neither did my family. And there I was in a chat room and somebody messaged me and I thought that

was a boy around my own age. What do you mean by chat room? So a chat room was where a bunch of people would come together and it was one common area, one common box, one common text box, and everybody would communicate together. And then you could private message somebody from out of that group. What chat room were you in? I don't remember the name of it, but it was, I believe, a Yahoo chat room. You were in a chat room in the family room with your family there, your brother or your mom and dad. Right. Okay, what happens?

So I thought that this was a boy around my own age. And maybe it was a little naive, but I was a really trusting child. And I was taught that the world is good. And I knew that there were bad people in it, but they were far away. They weren't in my world or they were in comic books or in Disney movies. It wasn't real and nothing could ever happen to me. So I trusted that this person was who they said they were. I was who I said I was. Why would somebody lie? That never came up in my mind. And he immediately began to groom me. And of course, I didn't know it at the time. There were no red

flags and none that I could be aware of. He began acting as though he was my friend. And it's very easy to groom a child. So as a friend would be always there for you when you need them, being supportive, being within reach, like I said, being there for just when you need them and talking about your life. And that's what a predator's goal is. It's really to gain the trust of a child and telling them what they want to hear versus what they need to hear so your mom will tell you to clean your room and that's not always what you want to hear i don't think it's anything you ever want to hear so to clean your room do your dishes your homework this and that and the other and then a predator will just say no and tell you what you want to hear and it's hard to be a kid today i think it's

harder to be a kid than it ever has been. Kids don't feel pretty enough, handsome enough, fit enough, wealthy enough, this enough, that enough. And a predator will make them feel like they are enough. And so many kids suffer with so many different sorts of insecurities. Like I said, it's really hard to be a kid, and kids want to connect. And it's so hard now to connect with people. So you're online and you start talking to a boy you think is your age, 12, 13 range. And what happens next? Over a period of eight or nine months of this grooming process. Good gravy.

Predators take a very long time. Months, okay. Right. One of the cases we'll discuss, it was 18 months of grooming. Predators will take their time and they will do whatever is necessary to groom the child. And while they're talking to you, they often have other children that they're targeting. And if you're not going to take the bait, they'll just move right on to that next child until they find the one. But predators know what they're doing. They do this. This is their, not their job,

but it's their life goal is to prey on children and to get that vulnerable one and get to them. So it's so hard for all of us loving parents to relate to someone whose single goal in life is to find a child. To be a monster, to harm somebody. To molest and harm so you know this kid for about eight or nine months and then what happens on new year's day 2002 i can remember it and when i think back i think it was the last few moments of grace in our family where if everything just continued that way life would have been lovely we sat around the dinner table we laughed it was the holiday had a family meal, which we would have every year. It was a good luck meal. And my mom and dad were there, my brother and his girlfriend and my grandmother. So it's a really beautiful evening. The snow was falling. And I asked my mother if I

could be excused from the table. And I've had people say to me, well, you lied to your mom. Really, you told a fib in order to get up and to go outside, and I did. And kids don't always tell the truth. They hide a lot of things from their parents, and that doesn't make them bad kids. That's just natural. When I talk to kids now, I say, if you have to lie to your parents, there's nothing you really have to lie to them about. Think through that decision. But I asked if I could be excused from the table, and instead of going upstairs to lie down, I slipped out of the front door, past the Christmas tree that was up, and into the coldest, darkest, iciest night of the year. And to tell you how effective grooming is, I was a child who was really quite scared of the dark, hated the cold with a passion, and never went outside alone after dark. Yet, completely out of my character, I walked out of that front door and didn't take my coat.

I left the door open just a little bit because I was planning on coming right back through it and out into my character. I walked out of that front door and didn't take my coat. I left the door open just a little bit because I was planning on coming right back through it and out into my neighborhood. And this is my neighborhood and it should be safe. And again, it was beautiful. The snow was untouched and there were Christmas lights in the windows. And it was a really beautiful, quiet, peaceful night, which soon became my hell. I walked up the street just about a block or so, and if I turned around, I could still see my house. So I thought, okay, well, there's my house. I must be safe. Again, neighborhood, this is my familiar area. And finally, this little voice spoke up in my head, my intuition, which I ask everybody to

listen to and to teach your children to listen to. Pay attention to it because it is there for a reason. I heard this little voice say, Alicia, this is dangerous. Go home now. And I turned around and next thing I knew I was in a car and this man was squeezing my hand so tightly that I thought he had broken it. And he was barking commands at me. Be good. Be quiet. The trunk's cleaned out for you. He showed me that he had handcuffs. People ask me, when did you know that you were in danger? When did you become afraid? And it was absolutely immediately I knew that I was no longer in control of my life. It's tax season. And by now, I know we're all a little tired of numbers. But here's an important number you need to hear.

$16.5 billion. That's how much money in refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Here's another number, 20%. That's the overall increase in identity theft related tax fraud in 2024 alone. But it's not all bad news. Here's a good number, 100 million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every single second. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it. Backed by another good number, the Million Dollar Protection Package. In fact, restoration is guaranteed or your money back. Don't face identity theft and financial losses

alone. There's strength in numbers with LifeLock Identity Theft Protection for tax season and beyond. Join now and save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code NANCY or go to lifelock.com slash NANCY for 40% off. Terms apply. Thank you, LifeLock, for being our partner. You slip out of the house. You're still in sight of your house. You get a feeling you should turn around and go back. You're still on the street alone. And then suddenly you're in a car. How did you get in a car? There's a memory gap there for me. I have a memory gap around the time my fiance was murdered and it makes no sense to me. And sometimes I don't even know I've forgotten something until someone brings up an event and I have no recollection of it at all. Exactly. So I get the memory gap. So the next thing you remember,

you're in a car with a guy who's hurting your hand? Can you still see your home or have you already sped past it? He drove pretty quickly down the street and I didn't quite need to remember street signs at first because I recognized them. And then I started not to recognize them. And I knew that he had no good intentions for me and that my goal throughout this entire ordeal was to stay alive as long as possible. This wasn't a movie. This wasn't a scripted play. This was real life. And people like to think what they would do in that situation. And they think about what would happen in a movie. And it would be something like I would grab the steering wheel and it would crash into a tree and it would roll down a hill and there'd be rising water and the car would be on fire and it'd be very dramatic and I'd somehow get out of the car and he would be unconscious

and I'd run to the street and somebody would rescue me. That's not real life at all. In real life, you do what you need to survive and taking those chances may mean certain death. So for me, goal, stay alive. Did you realize that this was who you had been speaking with in a chat room? Yes. How did you know that? I actually don't know. He must have said something to you that connected back to your conversations in the chat. I'm certain.

And you realized. I learned that throughout the drive. Okay. What were his threats to you? He had said that he was going to put me in the trunk. And in any film I'd ever seen, that is not a good place to end up. That is typically where a body ends up. Throughout this entire ordeal, he would threaten me in ways that were darker than an outright threat. I would never cut you up in pieces.

You're way too special to me. Weird, awful, in some ways I feel scarier things because they were said gently and terrifyingly. And he just continued to drive and there were toll booth after toll booth. And I can remember the sound of the car stopping at this house. And the car stopped, and he rushed out of the car, came to the other side, and dragged me out into this house down a flight of stairs, which felt like they went on forever and ever and ever, and that they were a descent into hell.

And that's exactly what they were. He got to the bottom of the stairs and there was a door with a padlock on it. He unlocked the door, pushed me inside, picked me up like I weighed absolutely nothing, propped me up on this table, forced me to look at him and said, this is going to be really hard for you. It's okay to cry. And then he turned on the lights. And this room was blanketed. These walls were blanketed with these devices that I certainly couldn't understand. But that they were there to torture somebody. And that somebody was me.

And this has been called by the media a dungeon. And again, that's what it was. After that, he removed my clothing and placed a locking dog collar around my neck with another padlock. And then that was the first night. How long were you kept a prisoner? It was four days, and he was going to kill me on that last day. And it's interesting, because for a long time people would ask me that. And I would get a response that was

like oh it's not so bad and it became a point of almost embarrassment not that I wished I'd been held captive longer by any means but that when people asked it it was sort of like that my story wasn't as bad and what I've come to realize is that if you fall from 500 feet or 5,000 feet, you're going to hit the ground just as hard. Four days, naked, wearing a choke collar and a chain, and being over and over and over in a dungeon. I don't know how anyone could ever make light of that. Did you get away? And why are you convinced that was going to be your last day on Earth? He was going to kill you.

So up until the last day, which I didn't know was the last day, I did whatever I had to do to survive. No matter how humiliating or brutal or disgusting. And it's hard to say it like this, but I knew that the minute I was of no use to him, he had to get rid of me. He was going to kill me. This wasn't a situation where he could send me home and say, Don't tell anybody else in the home.

No, there was not. Did you ever hear anything else? No. Did he threaten to kill you? In the ways that I would never cut you up into pieces, you're way too special for me. Did he ever to kill you? In the ways that I would never cut you up into pieces, you're way too special for me. Did he ever unchain you? There were very brief times where he would take me from the bedroom,

where he had kept me chained a lot of the time, or in the basement. So between those two areas. To move you from one place to the next. Was he raping you every day yes it was hell and people say that and they say i can't imagine what you've been through and you can't there's days where i say it i'm sitting here now and i'm thinking wow that was my life and and i can't but it, and again, it's not a movie. It's real life. Again, why were you convinced that was the day he was going to kill you? That morning, he had said to me, I'm beginning to like you too much. Tonight, we're going to go for a ride.

And I remember reading something or watching something, I don't know quite where it came from, but that if something ever happens to you, to personalize yourself and to be a human to this person so that they can't hurt you. And I think that's what I was doing. And he was becoming, for lack of a better term, attached. And then he fed me for the first time. What did he feed you? It was fried chicken from a fast food restaurant. It's funny you remember that, right? I remember odd details like that. And he was going to work? Yes. So it was right after the holiday. So there was that vacation time and then he returned to

work. And it's amazing the questions that people ask you as a survivor going through something again they think this is what i would do in that situation and people have said why didn't you yell why didn't you scream why didn't try to jump out of a window all these things and they think that you were supposed to be macgyver and my goal again was stay alive as long as possible and he would play mind games where i figured that if i screamed, he would come in and kill me. So my point again, to stay alive as long as possible. So I didn't know if he actually left. He may have been standing right outside of the door and a little bit of time. Which was padlocked.

Yes. And a little bit of time had passed. And I thought about my family and I thought about my parents and how much they loved me. And I knew that they were going to find me because to me, my parents were superheroes. And if they needed to go get the president out of bed, get Air Force One, find a wicked witch in the woods who could create a spell, that's what they were going to do because they are going to find me. They love me that much. But would they find me in time? And I thought, okay, well, I'm going to fight. And then I realized that I fought before. I ended up with a broken nose and that that's not going to work.

And at that moment, I lost all hope and had ended up in probably the darkest place that I had been in during that time and I thought about my family in a different way when was the last time I told my mom or dad love you like and really meant it not just like love you too night but like I really love you did they know that I was okay did they know that I didn't leave them and did they know that I was okay? Did they know that I didn't leave them? And did they know how much I loved them? And would I ever get to tell them that again? Would I ever get to hug them? And I started to realize, probably not.

And I cried and I prayed. I sat quietly as if I could. And time passed, hours passed, and I drifted off into a stupor. It certainly wasn't sleep, but I was grateful for whatever it was, the point of disassociation that was happening. It took me away from what was going on. And I was brought back to awareness by, at this point, I'd been chained to the floor in the bedroom I was brought back to awareness by these voices screaming something about having guns and they sounded quite angry and I heard a door crash in and all these feet in the house and in my desperate terrified mind that had lost all hope I thought that he had sent people to kill me. And terrified,

I rolled underneath the bed to try to hide from them. And I tried to stay as quiet as possible. And I saw these boots. In my mind, they were just gigantic boots. In my mind's eye, but these big boots. And I must have made some sort of noise. And this man said, movement over there. And he came to the other side of the bed. So I watched these boots walk over and he demanded that I crawl out and put my hands up. And I can remember crawling out from underneath this bed, dragging that cold, heavy chain behind me, trying to cover myself because I didn't have any clothing on and staring into the barrel of a gun and thinking, okay, this is the moment I'm going to die. But then he turned around and I saw that it was law enforcement by what was written on the

back of his jacket. And all these officers rushed in, cut the chain from around my neck, and literally they gave me a second chance at life. It was such a moment of despair and the end of the line, which turned into a whole new existence. It was giving me my life back. Do you remember when you saw your parents again? I do. And there's no words for most of the situation. And there are definitely no words for that. You can't say joy, happiness, but what I do remember the most, and my mom and dad were both there, but my dad came up to me first. And what it was, was he hugged me. And in that moment, it was truly over. I had been surrounded by law enforcement officers with guns who would protect me, but they wouldn't protect me like my father would. And I knew that once I was in his arms, nothing and no one could ever hurt me in that the situation

this was over. And then my mom got a hug too, but I really remember that dad moment because I was, I was safe. With me, along with Alicia Kozakiewicz, is Adam Coffrin and Francie Hakes. You know, Adam Coffrin, you have seen so many cases of child abduction, child mistreatment, child abuse. I know you recall the case of Nicole Lovell. Like you, a little girl, about 13 years old, very sheltered, very naive, who thinks she finds online a boyfriend who turns out to be a much older man, older than her, who is a star, a track star, an engineering major at Virginia Tech, who is luring her online. She had no idea. Her family has no idea. She was lured out of her home one evening, much like Alicia, except she was murdered.

I want you to address exactly what happened with Alicia and what has just happened recently with Nicole Lovell, who lost her life. It all started with online luring while she's in the home with her parents. You know, Alicia's story, you look at, and you couldn't have said it better, trust. You know, a lot of predators will try to go after girls, boys, that have trust or friends issue. You know, these are kids that may be smaller in

stature. They may have, as we see, maybe some physical deformities or scars or there's something that these students and these kids are not connecting to people. Or painfully shy. Painfully shy. And I was one of those kids that was painfully shy. I wouldn't talk to any stranger, you know, regardless if they were friends, my parents were not. And, you know, in person, you can see the shyness. But online and like Alicia said, she felt empowered. She felt like she's safe, that she could talk to other people. She could you have the backspace button.

You have a second or third chance to reread that conversation. And I think it's it's building the trust that this is a friend now. I'm your friend. You have fake pictures. I mean, the grooming here went on for nine months. That's a long time to develop a relationship online, to pretend you're a 12-year-old boy and talk about middle school and soccer and what's on TV. That's a long time to lead a double life as a child and lure the victim. So what are we learning from this? We're learning that, number one, they're patient. During those eight or nine months, there are areas where they're going to test. They're going to ask for a photo. They're going to ask you to do something, maybe receive something in the mail

or send them something. There's going to be points to see how far they can push to see how much that other person trusts them. How does it go from chatting online and pretending you're 12 or 13 to actually being able to lure a child out of the home? How does that happen? They're really good at it. And they make sure they understand what kids do, what video games they play, what kind of, you know, what do they follow the Kardashians? Who is it they're interested in? What do they like? They find out all this information from these children from initial chatting, and then they become friends. And then they develop what the child thinks is a trust relationship so that they want to meet them.

They think this is not only a friend. This is my best friend. This is someone who loves me more than anyone. This is someone who never says anything bad to me or about me. They don't insult me. They don't judge me. They say I'm perfect. They say I'm special.

And they always take the child's side. Like Alicia was saying earlier, your mom says, okay, you got to go to bed. You got to clean your room. You got to do the dishes. That person, that fake online will go, your mom's making you do the dishes again? You got to go? That's crazy. Why is she so mean to you?

That's right. And they know where to go. And they've known where to go for decades now. The minute the internet had things like chat rooms and bulletin boards, the predators learned where to go. They learned where the kids were. They learned how to talk the way the kids talk. And they established that relationship. And I just want to be clear for parents. While Alicia talks about nine months, we know of cases where grooming has gone on a lot longer than that. I've also seen cases where grooming happened right then,

that day, boom, the child is out of the house meeting the predator. The more they're online, the more they're a target. And how much do they share to learn the home dynamic? Kids are online pretty constantly now. When this happened to me, there was a big desktop with dial-up. Now kids have mobile devices and predators have access to them all the time. So when you talk about prevalence of being online, kids are online every second of every day, maybe not actively, but they're getting notifications. And now explain that to parents that don't know what you're saying. They may not be talking on the phone. They might be tapping like that or staring at it, but they're getting notifications. When you hear a phone or an iPad go ding or some

crazy sound, that's a notification. What is it? Exactly. So they're getting a notification. Often it's a like, it's a comment. And what is so important to kids now, what they develop their entire self-worth on is how many followers they have, how many likes they get and how many comments they get. And if they don't get the appropriate amount of comments on a photo or likes that they feel like they are less of a person. And I've talked to people and it's something that kids will actually do to know each other. Oh, slow down, slow down. I'm drinking from a fire hydrant here. It's too much at once, Alicia. So when you get the ding, or it could be silent, a notification, that is someone trying to contact them, whether it's a thumbs up sign or a like or a check or so-and-so has started. I just got a couple of myself while we're sitting here.

So-and-so has started a live video on Instagram. And if it's one of your friends, you don't want to miss it. So you immediately pick up. That's what's so appealing. Well, I have to say to adults, too, but especially to kids, it's instant gratification. It's instant knowledge that you have a community of people who are going to pick up the second you do something. So-and-so took three seconds to like my photo that I just took where I had dinner. I'm special because they're following me that close. And it feels good. And it leads me to something else.

Photo location. Oh, yes. You put a photo up. It's not that they can see in the background you're at Six Flags or at Disney. They can actually tell the city, sometimes even the street. Explain that, Adam, from the locator. Correct. So you can opt in to check in on Facebook or Instagram.

So it shares your GPS location. You know, Nancy and Adam are at Disneyland together. And then there's our photo. Even sans that, within the photo is data that shows where the photo was taken. So on your phone, it will categorize by location where photos were taken as meant as a search tool for your technology or your phone or your computer. But the same token, you can reverse engineer it to see where the photo was taken. So if you upload a photo, let's say in the house here together, and we post it online, even though I don't check in,

I don't share my location. If someone saves a photo and then uses software, they can see the latitude and longitude of where we are and very quickly be able to be here. Exactly. Traders can use that to say, oh, you know, you have the old version of the phone. You should have a 6 or you should have an 8 or an X. Don't you have one? I'll get you one of those. And that's another way that they groom children is by giving them gifts that their parents won't otherwise give.

What about tagging? Yeah, I'm against it. So what people don't, what I think a lot of parents don't understand is there are all these privacy settings for all these apps that you use and the companies are constantly changing the privacy settings. So if you don't go in on, I recommend a monthly basis and check your privacy settings, they may very well be different than what you yourself set them at. So for example, on Facebook, I have it set to privacy so that if someone tries to tag me in a photo, that is we take a group photo here and you go and post it on Facebook and my face, Facebook recognizes because of their facial recognition software, which is as sophisticated

as any law enforcement in this world, then I can be tagged and people can look to see where else I appear in what other photos that might be my own personal photos. So you have to set that up. I have it set up so that if someone tries to tag me, I get an email notification. So-and-so is tagging you. Is that okay? And of course I always say no, because I don't want people tracing my social footprint online. And the takeaway from that is don't allow your or your children's likeness photos to be tagged. The result of tagging could be what, Adam? Well, I can stalk you now virtually.

So instead of being in person, I have to follow you from house to your favorite uh park to go play where you play baseball and then from there to your favorite you know convenience store to get a drink afterwards i can sit back in my home and watch all the places you end up in across your town or across your city i know you like to go here you play here because you've been tagged by your friends and maybe even other parents at a softball game. And so I know, hey, every Sunday you're playing softball here. I know. So now I know where to come find you. I know where to wait. And what else you can do is through that, that person can then friend the mutual friends. And I know a lot of kids and other people, adults too, who will say, oh, while they know this person, then I'm going to add them. And kids do that very much so. So it's a very easy way to get kids, get to know the kids through their friends

and more of a social network. I mean, how many times have you heard, oh, we're just friends on Facebook? They may have never even met in real life, but there's a vast network out there who knows where you are. And a lot of people think, oh, well, so I'm at Disney and I'm taking this picture. Well, I don't want the world to know I'm here right now. I'll post it tomorrow. Same thing, because that predator has already tagged the child. They know the vicinity where you are at that moment or where you were the day before. Just let's just say Disney is going to go for one day when you travel out of town. That's right. You're going to be there for several days. That child is at Disney. No. And I mean, it's so important for parents to understand. I talked to so many parents that say,

when I asked them, how often do you take your child's phone and look at it and look at the search history or their iPad? So many, the majority of parents say, never, I wouldn't even know what to look for. So that's a massive dereliction of parental duty, in my opinion, for them not to know exactly what is happening with their kids on their phone. But to children, that is their lifeblood now. That is their social network. That is everything. How many people they have, what their friends are doing. I'll be watching kids, nieces, nephews, people that are related to me. They'll be scrolling their phone. What are you doing? Oh, I'm just looking to see what everybody's doing on Instagram. You know, we're at Thanksgiving dinner and they're looking to see what everybody's doing on Instagram because

instant gratification, instant social relation is a way of life now. Another issue about posting those photos at a later day, like the next day. Same thing though, because the predator sees the soccer field or sees the yogurt shop or sees the school playground or the name of the school. It takes no time at all to figure out what school that is, what insignia that, what that stands for, and then be right there when they get out of school. It's just that easy. In your case, in Nicole Lovell's case, you're in your home. You're not out taking photos of yourself and posting them online. She's in her home. So what is the takeaway? How can I fight that? A big thing in Nicole Lovell's case and in so many cases of what a predator is looking for is vulnerability.

And every single person has a vulnerability. Nicole had a lot of vulnerability. She did. She's a prime target. She was very ill as a child. She had continuing health issues that she was fighting. She had a large scar on her neck, which she had been bullied for. She had been through. She had been bullied for that scar neck, which she had been bullied for. She had been through.

She had been bullied for that scar, which saves your life, by the way, but still. And then this older, he's an adult, but he's 18, he's an older boy, comes along who's in college and says, you're beautiful, you're perfect, and feeds those insecurities. Yeah, she told her they were going to get married

and have a family, according to her. That's what she told a little friend before she was murdered. And she was so young. When she slipped out, she took her water bottle and her minion blanket, which I think paints such a picture of how vulnerable and how innocent and sweet this little girl was and how desperate she was. Your family can love you and do everything right, but sometimes that isn't enough for kids.

They want that other attention. I think the only protection takeaway that I can discern right now is parental control. Now, in your case, the Internet, this was all just a new and fascinating thing, but now we have a better idea of how to combat this. You have to invade your child's privacy. And people go, what? That's really uncomfortable. I don't really have a problem with that.

Thank you. Because I tell parents, monitor the activity. Don't do it and say, wow, you did this. Let's talk about it. It's not about that. Kids are supposed to make mistakes. They're supposed to live their lives. But if something does go wrong, if they're being bullied, if they're being sexually

exploited, if they're being lured, you can be on top of that. You just said something very important, being bullied online. I want to talk about that. I'm glad you brought that up, Alicia. Alicia, not just a survivor, an abduction survivor, but now an advocate and the inspiration for Alicia's Law. I want to talk about Megan Meyer, beautiful little girl, bullied in a horrific scenario. I couldn't have even made that up, who ultimately died, who committed suicide because of cyberbullying. Are you familiar with that case? Yeah, unfortunately, it's all too common now.

We see this a lot. We see children being cyberbullied at as young as eight years old, taking their lives. And the problem with it is what we've already talked about. These children are being cyber bullied. It's not like when we were growing up. Yeah. I mean, you have the online bullying and then you have deception behind it. And so this is a story of a 13, 14 year old teenager who has got some self-esteem issues. She recently lost weight. She was worried about her weight. A 13 year old girl, Megan, was worried about her weight, and she had a falling out,

an argument with a little friend at school. The friend's mother decided to intervene and posed as a 16-year-old attractive young boy, Josh becomes her friend online, and then it turns. What happened, Adam? So you have another grown adult mother who creates this artificial profile, by all accounts, for a revenge of this falling out with her daughter and her friend. And over weeks becomes this online relationship, this trusted person, this friend. Josh. Josh.

And then we see, to quote, the world would be a better place without you, out of the blue. It wasn't, they got in some sort of argument. By all accounts, it looks like everything was fine and now the world would be a better place without you. Josh did something else. He took their flirty messages where she

would talk back to him and open up to him and shared them with a lot of other people online. And then they all started bullying her. Now, remember, Josh is not real, Francie. Josh is this other little girl's mother. She's a grown woman. And that's why this kind of cyberbullying is so insidious today in a different way than bullying was in the past. Because Megan would have believed her whole world hates her. People are liking it. People are sharing it. What that means is nobody likes her. Everybody hates her. She doesn't want to live anymore. She cannot get away from it because kids can't get away from their phones. It is her whole world. It's her whole world. When her world is, it really is her entire world. It's everybody she knows is suddenly attacking her, making fun of her,

belittling her, mocking her. What a horrible person she is. Her family has no idea all this is going on. They see their little girl getting more and more and more depressed until she kills herself. After this grown woman posing as a little boy says, you know what? We'd all just be better off if you were dead. Go kill yourself. And Nancy, I guarantee you, you've had people tell you that online. I have. People don't like what you say or how you say it. They don't like what you say or how you say it. They don't like how you look or what you're doing with your hair today. We get that online, but we're grownups and we can deal with it. Teenage girls and boys, it's their whole life.

They don't see a way out. And that's why it's so important for parents to know what is happening in their child's online world. They have to know. is happening in their child's online world. They have to know. Alicia, what is Alicia's Law? Alicia's Law is a great tool to help fight this issue in a way that really works. Alicia's Law is my namesake, and it has passed in 11 states. We're working on passing it on 50 50, but it definitely takes time. At some point between

my rescue and the trial, law enforcement came to my house and they said, we need you to identify yourself in something. Didn't know what that meant. Didn't really ask. And they said my parents had to leave because if they saw it, they could arrest them, essentially. They sat down, they opened up a computer, and on this computer, there I was, with my hands bound above my head, crying, bleeding, begging, completely broken and being tortured. And I had been told that I was rescued

because he was live streaming what he was doing, and somebody was able to recognize my missing poster and tie it to the little girl in this horrendous video. But I never really put together what that meant. And so I know what it's like to be sexually exploited online. And that's what Alicia's Law really fights. It helps to fund the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces, who are so overwhelmed and underfunded. Some states don't even have one full-time officer investigating Internet crimes against children, not one full-time. And so it provides training, resources, boots on the ground by creating a dedicated revenue stream that goes directly to them.

Now, if you go to my website or you look online, there's a map of the United States. And this map is blanketed in these little red dots. And what these red dots signify are clusters of computers that are uploading, downloading, and creating graphic sadistic child pornography, which is a term. I don't think that's a fitting term. Pornography has an error of consent. That's not what this is. This is crime scene images. On this map, 55% of these dots, over half, are hands-on offenders with a local child victim. That means that they're not people who are only watching it. They're creating the content. Law enforcement doesn't have enough resources to go and save

these children. And that's what Alicia's Law provides. I work on Alicia's Law with a group called Protect. This group is amazing. What they do is they don't just talk about issues. They actually go out and affect change. And that's what we're doing together. The live streaming is really what got them caught. Absolutely. And in cases like that, there's these collections where predators will collect the most popular case, whether it's the most videos or the most graphic, whatever it may be. And when I was, I think it was about 16, they came to the house and they had me sign a paper to say that if this ever showed up in a court case, they would alert me. And then I had to sign it again when I was 18.

And thankfully, I never got one of those notices. But there's people who get them nearly every day that their image has been shared and people are still looking at it in other cases. And many of these people are now adults. And to be taken back to that horrible place and to know that people are watching this torture because they enjoy it. To be abused is one thing, but to see it through the eyes of your abuser and to know that there's people out there who are enjoying it is disgusting. And this is happening. When people think of this, they often tie it to my case and they think, okay, well, these are just kidnapped kids. And no, that's not really the case at all. Some of them, yes,

absolutely. But over 90% of these cases are done by those who are the family members and the neighbors. That's who this is. These are the people who go to school with your children or in your neighborhood running around. These are real people in the houses and the neighborhoods that you live in. And we have to stop them. This is not something we can push under the rug. Yes, it's hard to talk about. Yes, it's nasty. Yes, it's uncomfortable. It doesn't matter. It won't go away just because we don't talk about it. That was a lot of information to take in. Let's boil it down, okay? Tips to cyber safety.

Talk to your children about dangers that come with oversharing on social media, even seemingly harmless information like your interests, like your guinea pigs, your kitty cats, Fortnite or Minecraft. Grooming by these predators takes place over months. So be careful about who your child is talking to online. Any child or teen can become the victim of a predator online. They do not discriminate based on gender, ethnicity, education, socioeconomic status, income, religion. Teach your child or teen to never share private info or identifying info like a name, an address, their school, their soccer field, with a person online that is not known or is not trusted in real life. A predator uses this information to groom and locate your child or teen.

Be careful what information they share about their interests, their home life, and more, which can be used against them by a predator. And remind your child or your teen to choose an online handle or a username, a screen name carefully. So much can be inferred from how your child or teen represents themselves online. And that very handle can prompt a predator's initial contact. Predators learn from the chats and the information your children share. Remember, children can be exploited or even blackmailed, often sexually, by a predator who gets access to embarrassing information or secrets that your child or teen could just hand over. Handing over even one photo gives that predator leverage. Don't give a predator that opening. Don't let their toe in the door.

Only friend people you actually know. Don't friend people that are friends of friends of friends. Very important. Disable geotagging on all your mobile devices. It has the ability to automatically pinpoint and disclose your child's exact location. Now that option is found under settings on most devices. You can also contact your service provider or device manufacturer. You can find that online. Discuss the dangers of checking in various applications that allow your child or teen to share their location on social media sites. Strengthen the privacy settings on all social networking sites. Ensure these settings remain unchanged after you do those automatic updates.

Social networking sites often publish posts as public based on your default settings. Monitor your child's activity on the computer and all mobile devices. Desktops, laptops, tablets, cell phones, handheld video game devices with online connectivity. There are numerous parental monitoring options available online or through your service provider. Don't feel like you're spying on your child or teen. You're the parent. This is your responsibility. Know the passwords on all the devices used by your child or teen and check them. If you suspect your child or teen is being cyber bullied, be supportive to your child. Don't make them feel worse than they already do. Gently get the facts and if necessary, contact the school or law enforcement.

Teach your child or teen that there are negative consequences for cyberbullies. Cyberbullying tips for kids. Always think about what you post. You never know what someone can forward on and on and on. Being kind to others online will help keep you safe. Don't share anything that could hurt or embarrass anybody. Keep your password a secret, even from other kids. Even kids that seem like your friends could unwittingly give that password away or use it in ways you don't want. Always have your

children's passwords. That's got to be a condition on them having an iPad or a cell phone. Think about who sees what you post online. Strangers? Friends? Friends of friends? Privacy settings are for that very reason. They control who sees what. Parents must be in the loop. You, as a parent, must know what your children are doing online and who they're doing it with. You must friend or follow your child. You lay down the law about what is and is

not okay to do online. Reinforce, remind them you love them and you want them safe. They must feel free and open to talk to you about messages they get or things they see online that gets them worried, sad, or scared. You must report cyberbullying, but you'll only find out about it if they tell you.