Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - SICK PERV SEX PREDATORS lure children on Snapchat, Tik Tok, Instagram. HEAR IT!

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Parents are fighting back against deviant predators with a new app that helps protect children. The Bark app was created with the help of law enforcement, child psychologists, digital media professionals, and youth advisors.Joining Nancy Grace to discuss how to keep our children safe: Titania Jordan: Bark CMO and CPO Dr. Free Hess: Pediatric ER Doctor, mom, and blogger Detective Rich Wistocki: Child crime expert, president of BeSure Consulting Brian Bason: Bark CEO Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. It's very, very complex, yet also, in many ways, very simple in protecting your children. It's not that your child is good or bad. Think of it like this. When your child is at the playground, do you leave them there and go to the mall and go shopping? No, because something horrible could happen to them. Online is a new playground and predators are there lurking. I remember telling juries, one jury after the next, well, what do you believe? You believe all the state's witnesses are lying and the only person telling the truth is the defendant?

Statistically, how does that figure out? One in a trillion? No. It's common sense. Everyone's not lying except the defendant. What I'm saying now is all of the stories we have brought to you today cross education lines. They're multicultural lines. They cross lines of wealth and privilege, race, gender. Children all across the world are being targeted online by predators. It doesn't matter if you're in a safe neighborhood.

It doesn't matter if you have your Ph.D. It doesn't matter. All that matters is if your child is online, and mine are. And so help me, God in heaven, I will do what I've got to do to keep them safe. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. It is every parent's nightmare. Your child attacked and tonight police say an underage girl was kidnapped and raped by a man she met on Snapchat. Good evening, I'm Cynthia Sagira. We hear so much about the dangers of social media,

and for one girl, an interaction online led to five days of horror. David Goins is live in Azle tonight. David, you talked to employees at a KFC who actually helped that young girl. Both of them told me, quote, we didn't do anything special, but Azle Police tonight say their quick actions and accurate suspect description helped get that girl back to safety. Shannon Cates and Lindsey Cedillo said someone walked into their Azle Police tonight say their quick actions and accurate suspect description helped get that girl back to safety. Shannon Cates and Lindsey Cedillo said someone walked into their Azle KFC store before they opened Monday. She was shaking and could barely talk.

She looked up and I seen all the blood and she said, help me, please help me. And she kept looking and she goes, please help me. He's going to get me. He's going to find me. Please help me. I ran from next door. He's next door. Azle Police say 24-year-old Diamond Marquise Williams met the teenager on Snapchat and then kidnapped her from her Fort Worth home, forcing the girl to tell her parents she was okay and staying with friends, and then held her for five days. So on Monday, when Williams went inside this pawn shop next door, the girl ran to Lindsay and Shannon.

They locked the door, called 911, and kept the girl close. Diamond Williams is charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault of a child. Tonight, the Azle police chief tells me their investigation into Williams is far from over and that more charges are possible. A parent's worst nightmare. A young girl meets a guy on Snapchat, is lured and held hostage for five days, being sex assaulted the entire time. And I'm looking at Diamond Marquis Williams. I'm telling you what, if I saw that in an alley, I would run the other way, much less let my children get lured in. But here's the kicker. You don't know what's happening. It's all happening online. I mean, see, Grace,

this is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. You were just hearing our friends at WFAA in Azle, Texas. That was Cynthia Segarra and David Goyne. She lived thanks to Kentucky Fried Chicken employees. They locked the doors and call 911. But how many children, how many girls, how many tweens never make it home? As a matter of fact, take a listen to this. Investigators say this is Marilio Hernandez Valle. Instead of being the teenager he said he was, he's 27 years old and charged with raping an 11-year-old girl he met on Snapchat. Police say Hernandez Valle went back and forth with the girl on Snapchat for a couple of months. THE GIRL ON SNAPCHAT FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS. THEN DETECTIVES SAY HE TOOK AN UBER FROM TACOMA TO HER HOUSE IN SEATTACK WHERE HE SEXUALLY

ASSAULTED HER. A DEVASTATING CRIME. HER MOM WAS WILLING TO TALK TO US, BUT ASKED US NOT TO REVEAL HER IDENTITY. I THINK HE KNOWS HOW TO MANIPULATE AND SAY THE RIGHT THINGS, TWIST THE STORIES AND

LIE REPEATEDLY. I THINK HE'S A VERY GOOD PERSON. I THINK HE'S A VERY GOOD PERSON. I THINK HE'S A VERY GOOD PERSON. I THINK HE'S A VERY GOOD

PERSON. I THINK HE'S A VERY GOOD PERSON. I THINK HE'S A VERY GOOD PERSON. I THINK HE'SS HOW TO MANIPULATE AND SAY THE RIGHT THINGS, TWIST THE STORIES AND LIE REPEATEDLY. AND THERE'S MORE KIDS THAT WOULD FALL FOR IT AND I WOULDN'T WANT THAT ON ANYBODY. INVESTIGATORS SAY THE GIRL'S MOM CAME HOME FROM WORK ON AUGUST 28TH AND FOUND HERNANDEZ VALLE HIDING BEHIND SOME LUGGAGE IN A BEDROOM. SHE HELD THE DOOR CLOSED, CALLED 911 AND WAITED FOR OFFICERS TO ARREST HIM. hiding behind some luggage in a bedroom. She held the door closed, called 911, and waited for officers to arrest him. I didn't want this man that took advantage of my daughter to have an opportunity to do it again

or hurt her in some other way or make life harder than it is already. Can you even imagine coming home and there's a grown man hiding in your home who has lured your 11-year-old child on Snapchat, takes an Uber to the home, and sex assaults the little girl. That was our friend Allison Grande at KIR07. That was in SeaTac, Washington. We've gone from Texas now to Washington.

Your backyard may be the next spot. Again, I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with me. An all-star panel here to fill you in on what's happening right now in your home. Detective Rich Wostocki, child crime expert, president of Be Sure Consulting. And Detective Wostocki has just launched CyberParenting-101.com. Dr. Free Hess, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Child Safety Expert, founder of PettyMom.com. That is a child safety

website. Brian Basin, the CEO of Bark. Bark, you may not have heard of it, but I sure have. He is a tech expert. And joining me right now, a colleague and a friend, the CMO Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Parenting Officer, I like that name, I'm going to give that name to myself, Titania Jordan. Titania, you and I had a really long talk where I revealed to you my love for Bark bark as in woof woof it's it's let me just say it in regular people talk I'm not a tech expert like you and Brian Basin I'm not a doctor like Free Hess a detective like Rich Wostocki what bark is um, it's a program. I have it on my phone. My husband has it and it's connected to all my children's devices. And for instance, the other day I get an alert. I get

alerts all the time. I read them every time that there is trouble and troubling incident on John David's phone and I have to log in to see it. And what it was, John David had been playing soccer and had tried to get a ball and went through the soccer net with one arm. And kind of under his armpit, between his armpit and his elbow on the inside, he got a big black bruise. And, of course, I don't know why he did this. He took a picture of it and sent it to some of his friends on his soccer team. This is what happened today on the playground.

And Bark picked up that picture of a bruise. And it came back as, quote, self-harming or violence, I think it was. That is how sensitive the Bark program is. If they even get a song that has D-A-M-N in it or shizzle or it picks it up. I spend a lot of time reading everything Bark alerts me to. First of all, how did you get involved in Bark? What is it and what does it seek to prevent? Oh my gosh, Nancy. Well, I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to be here with you and share the message of Bark with everyone listening.

You asked how I got involved. I truly believe it's by the grace of God. Thankfully, I was in this space in tech. You know, I'm glad you said that, Titania. And I'll tell you why. In the media business, you say something like God or Christ. It's like you let a stink bomb out in the room. Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear anything about religion or faith.

But, you know, I'm proud. I'm certainly no expert at it, but I'm trying. Right. So you think it was divine intervention that you got connected to Bar? A hundred percent. Absolutely. And I can talk more about that later. But, you know, the fact that we are able to keep over 4.2 million children safer across the nation because they're spending upwards of eight hours a day online. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Eight hours a day online.

Wait a minute. Dr. Free has helped me out there. You are pediatric emergency medicine. Eight hours a day online. I don't think the Petty Mom podcast would like that very much. That is not only the truth, but you have to keep in mind that that's the average, meaning that there's a lot of kids who are actually spending even more time online. So that includes after school, even in school a lot of times.

And oftentimes these kids are spending a good portion of their night instead of sleeping online on their phones. So, yeah, it's a really, really scary number that really risks a lot of damage to the kids in lots of different ways. Even outside of what we're talking about today, there's a lot of repercussions to spending that much time in front of a screen. Eight hours a day. Okay, to Tanya Jordan, CMO at Bark. I'm sorry, I interrupted you with that stunning number, eight hours a day. That's how pervs and predators are getting them. They're on eight hours a day, that's how pervs and predators are getting them. They're on eight hours a day for Pete's sake. Go ahead.

Yeah, no, and I'm so thankful for Dr. Freehess putting a pin in the fact that that's the average. There are children that are actually online more. And what's pretty staggering is the time that transpires for online predators to groom children now. That used to be when the internet didn't exist, the relationship between pedophiles and children, it would take months sometimes to evolve into one of danger. Now it's seconds, it's minutes. It goes from a hi from a man in a DM, that's a direct message,

to a nude photo or video in literally a matter of seconds. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. How many of you allow your children to charge their devices in their rooms at night? Also joining me is Detective Richard Wistocki. I want you to hear what he said in a TED Talk. The common denominator in all my sextortion child exploitation cases is that when the parent allows them to charge their devices in their rooms at night, you're sleeping. They shut the door so you can't hear them. It's not a matter of talking. It's typing, reading, and performing. With apps with apps like the Chromebook they get from school going in to get Google Hangouts,

Uvu, Omegle, Skype, Houseparty. These are video chat sites that our kids are using, and there are two to six people in that chat room while they're in their bedroom. Okay, Rich. Yes, ma'am. I've seen a lot, but you're hitting a nerve right now with my children, my, my twins. Go ahead. Tell me what you're talking about. So in my career, I've arrested over 300 predators in my career. So when a parent allows their child to charge their device in their rooms at night, the child feels safe, the inhibitions are lowered, and they feel like they can do and say anything and nobody's going to touch them.

Because when I teach my kids, they think that the things that I'm talking to them about happen somewhere else. Well, it doesn't. When we talk about Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, games that they play, the average Internet predator has 250 victims in their lifetime. They have a device in their rooms. They know that numerous kids are doing that, and they wait till late at night for the parents to go to sleep to talk to your child. Let me give you, let me set up the scenario for children. Now, I hardly teach in high schools anymore. I'm going to elementary schools now. Now, when I go to fourth and fifth grade how old are they they're like nine ten

eleven years old right most parents don't know that you have to be 13 in order to have a social network so when a child talks to their parent you you know, everybody's got it in school. Why can't you let me have it? You let my older brothers and sisters have it. And parents give in. Well, when they give in, this child says, oh, great, I can get a Snapchat. Well, they have to put their date of birth in. And let's face it, our kids are not the best mathematicians because of core math.

And what happens is they don't know what date of birth to put in. See, I was born in 2012. Do I go up? Do I go down? Oh, heck, I'll just round up to 2000. When they put a date of birth at 2000, I ask kids that I teach all over the country, how many of you put your date of birth in 2000? 75% of them will raise their hand.

How old are they today? 19. So now I have 9, 10, 11-year-olds posing as 19-year-olds. Who do you think is going to come talk to them? Adults. Wow. Okay. Okay.

You know, we are talking about Snapchat. We are talking about Roblox. We're talking about TikTok. They all seem innocent Roblox. We're talking about TikTok. They all seem innocent, but I want you to take a listen to people I spoke with. Their little girl abducted. Listen. I had recognized some behavior in my daughter that was troubling to me. I saw some behavior that I felt like was off, and I felt like she needed to talk to someone.

I could see signs. She was dressing up in pigtails and using bottles. And there were things that I could tell someone was leading her to different behavior that I wasn't encouraging. And so I started to control. I mean, we were already controlling her internet access to some degree.

And her phone was limited. Okay, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait. Do you believe that this guy, Michael Weisalowski was telling her what to do to dress differently, to act differently? Yes. We know, we know 100% he was absolutely. This little girl was actually using a school computer, just like Detective Rich Bistocki was advising. She went into a weight loss chat room, as I recall, on Yahoo. And that is where a stalker was waiting. He held her as a sex slave for months on end. This is after meeting online.

To Brian Basin joining us, CEO of Bark. Brian, why do you believe that, for instance, Snapchat and TikTok are serious dangers to children, especially tweens? We're talking 11, 12, 13 years old. Well, all technology has the potential for misuse. And, you know, we've certainly seen, you know, the Internet do amazing things and technology is a wonderful, wonderful thing. But as with most technology, there's unintended consequences. And, you know, certainly with the ability for predators in particular to contact children on social platforms and gaming platforms, there's a lot of risks that parents are generally unaware of. And so, you know, at BARC, we've escalated over 400 predators to the FBI.

And so it's actually not nearly as uncommon as I think most parents think. To Dr. Freehass, pediatric emergency medicine specialist, child safety expert, founder of The Petty Mom, P-E-D-I-M-O-M.com, a child safety website. Dr. Frehess, I'd like to hear your thoughts on particularly Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok. So these particular platforms put these children at huge risk for many reasons. Obviously, they have tons of predators on there where they're seeking children out knowing what, I mean, they're very, very good at their job. They know children very well. They know where their weaknesses are. And then on top of that, you have these children who are being exposed to things that they are not really prepared or capable of understanding or

dealing with. I mean, there's a lot of information showing us that kids, especially preteens, even into the teen years, they don't have a fully developed brain, specifically the lateral prefrontal cortex. It is not fully functioning at that point. And that is where decision-making and mature self-regulation happens. So what happens is if you have put somebody in certain, a child in certain situations where they don't have the ability to make appropriate decision-making skills and can't self-regulate, they end up relying more on the reward of the experience rather than being able to calculate the risk before deciding whether or not they want to accept or acknowledge that reward. So

that puts them in a unique position for these predators that are on these sites to get to them. I will add to that, I use these apps, all of them, as a child does. I actually sign up for all of these and I use them as a child with a fake profile. And I see all of this happening in real time, especially with the live streaming apps and all of that. And back to mention about letting your kids, not letting your kids charge their phones in their rooms. That's when I see the most activity between predators and children, some of which has prompted me to make phone calls to my local police department and to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children. I mean, this is happening so much because we have so many children on these platforms and so many pedophiles on these platforms, and they're able to target their kids, just

like Titania had said, quickly, super, super quickly. And then they end up knowing the weaknesses of these kids and start what they would call, quote unquote, a relationship, and they gain their trust, which then, because they're not able to make proper decisions based on lack of brain development at the time, they end up getting pulled into this to no fault of their own, but they get pulled into it. So even, and this is something that I want to remind parents all the time, you know, you've talked to them, you've warned them about the risks, but you know, my kid's a good kid. I'm going to let them on these platforms anyway, because my kid isn't the type of kid that would fall for something like that. They

absolutely are. I mean, it is it has nothing to do with the individual kid. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This Texas mother is on a desperate search to find her teenage daughter. And she believes her daughter left with a man she met on Snapchat. You may remember this and may have seen the photos here of 15-year-old Heaven Rae Cox on your Facebook feed. She was last seen on Saturday in Orange, Texas. The teen's mother has since found out that Heaven was talking to a man she met on Snapchat. She thinks the teen could be going to California with him.

It's total shock, total shock. We did not see it coming. Mainly, we don't have any answers at all. We have no name, no face. Well, the Orange County Sheriff is now investigating this as a runaway case and is trying to figure out who that man is. Dear Lord in heaven, you are listening to our friends at ABCc 13 anchors tom kotch and samika night so the little girl goes online next thing you know she's in a car on her way to california with a predator and it's not just snapchat it's not just Instagram. Have any of you parents heard the name Minecraft? The feds say the two met online when the girl was only 12, and prosecutors say this sheriff deputy would manipulate and threaten her all the way from Texas.

A Texas sheriff deputy accused of cyber-stalking a Worcester County teenager through the popular video game Minecraft. According to the 13-page indictment unsealed Wednesday, the 25-year-old deputy would refer to himself as Gino and Daddy and the minor as Baby Girl. Prosecutors say the two met online back in 2014 when the victim was 12. Over the years, authorities say the girl sent him hundreds of explicit photos of herself. She's now 17 and reported to police this past spring she believed the Texas deputy was tracking her movements via social media. And he was allegedly threatening to publish her explicit photos or rape her sister if she didn't continue to send him nude pictures. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

That's our friend at WHDH 7 News reporter Eric Kane. I want to go back to Titania Jordan, CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Parenting Officer at BARC. How do predators get in and meet your children on, for instance, Minecraft, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok? How does it work, Titania? Oh, Nancy, we would need hours, but I'll try to make it as concise as possible. I'll start with Snapchat. I don't know if parents know, but within the Snapchat app that lives on their children's phones, there's something called a Snap Map.

And if your child has the setting enabled, which sometimes can be default public, you zoom in and you see exactly where your child is in the moment. So much so that as you zoom in, you can see satellite imagery of what color the house is. Does the house have a pool in the background? What familiar landmarks are nearby? It is that detailed on gaming platforms. And, you know, this hits home because my son, who is not even a teenager yet, has been contacted by a predator on PS4 while he was playing Fortnite.

So it is very... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. Did you just, did I just hear PS4? PS4. Did I hear that? You sure did. Yep. Okay, what happened when your son was contacted by a predator? I want to know.

Well, thank God I had had multiple ongoing candid conversations with him about what you do and don't share online. And cut to the chase, you don't share much. We like to call it PII, personally identifiable information. You don't share your name, where you live, where you go to school, even what your interests are. And so thankfully, he knew better. And he told me, he said, mom, someone came to me and asked me for my name and where I lived and where I went to school. And I just told them my name was Butthead and I lived on Mars. And I was just like, oh, thank you. Thank God that I had talked to him. But so many children are lonely or don't know better or their parents have not been comfortable enough

with having those conversations with them to let them know that these people who you might think are your friends, who you might think are your same age online are actually adults with bad intentions. You know, when my son, Lucy's not as interested in games online as my son is. His rule is he can only play with people he knows. I go in at the start of every game and I hear, I say, oh, who are you playing with? And they're

actually talking to each other. I can hear them and I speak to them. When he has played with people he doesn't know, he's not allowed to speak. He can't talk out loud. They can just play games. And they know not to give out identifying information. But still, they're children. Yep. They don't know. I hear Rich Wastocki jumping in

jump in detective so when I teach my students I empower them not to be victims and the first thing that I tell them when I give them all of these tools how not to be victimized is that when someone tries to take you off your gaming platform to private chat

they are not who they say they are because they will take them to kick they will take them to whatsapp they will take them to skype and what take them to WhatsApp. They will take them to Skype. And what happens is when I give them that red flag, because if they have something to say, why not just say it on the game? Well, here's the reason why predators take them every single social network in the U.S. has a program that's running in the background monitoring chat and images going back and forth to minor accounts. When something is inappropriate and it's flagged by this program, the security agent at the social network or gaming platform will report it to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, where they will do a background investigation on it.

And us and law enforcement will get that from the National Center, and we will give them something called a cyber tip. Now, they give us all the information. They give us the IPs, the emails, the telephone numbers of the suspect or whoever made that account. And it's our job to investigate on why this person is grooming or sexually exploiting children on the game predators know this so if they can take the child off of the off of the gaming platform to private chat kick was in canada these other chat platforms that are

out of the country where that program is not running they know they're not going to get caught and when you have parents saying things to themselves, like, I would never buy my 10 year old, the cell phone, she's too young. She only has an iPad. It's the same thing, parents. So predators know that these programs running in the background, predators know that they can get the kid on an iPad or a PS4. Nobody's watching that.

So that's how they get to our children. In addition to that, a lot of the platforms that they're trying to get the kids onto feature end-to-end encryption. And so therefore, on Kik, the Kik servers actually don't persist the messages. And so therefore, it's relatively safe for a predator to have those kinds of communications with the child because there's nothing in the middle that can intercept that. We at Bark do monitor kick on the device. And so therefore, we can pick it up after, you know, from the child's device. But the kinds of things that Detective Wistocki was talking about don't exist on kind of end-to-end encrypted platforms, which is why predators really favor those. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Guys, we are talking to Titania Jordan, Brian Basin, Dr. Free Hess, and Detective Rich Wistocki. Your children are being targeted on TikTok, musical, Instagram, Snapchat, Fortnite, Minecraft. How does it happen? Explain to me. Titania Jordan, when my children are making TikToks and what that is for those of you that don't know they make a 20 a 30 second little video and they're singing or they're doing a rap they're lip syncing it's the big rage right now how does a predator reach your child to Tonya through TikTok oh my goodness it really is all the rage right now. It's a very entertaining app. And because of that, if predators know your children are there, that's where they're going. And so to answer your question, they'll engage with your child's

account. They will follow your child's account. They will comment on your child's video, praising them, grooming them, giving them confidence and validation. And then they'll ask to move that conversation to apps like the ones Brian mentioned, Kik and WhatsApp and others where they can take the conversation somewhere else. Creditors go so far as to reward children. They will offer them to Venmo them or use Bitcoin even in exchange for performances. It's really, really sick and it's pervasive. Take a listen to our friends at WSOC TV, Alison Latos. Warrants reveal the level of abuse a charlatan endured while being held

captive in Georgia for more than a year. The documents say that Michael Weisselofsky LEVEL OF ABUSE. A CHARLOTTEEN ENDURED WHILE BEING HELD CAPTIVE IN GEORGIA FOR MORE THAN A YEAR. THE DOCUMENTS SAY THAT MICHAEL WYSOLOFSKY CONFINED HALEY BURNS IN AN UPSTAIRS BEDROOM OF HIS DULUTH HOME, TELLING HER THAT SHE WOULD BE ARRESTED IF SHE LEFT. WYSOLOFSKY REPORTEDLY CONTROLLED EVERY ASPECT OF HIS 17-YEAR-OLD CAPTIVE'S LIFE, KEEPING A FOOD JOURNAL DETAILING HOW MANY CALORIES SHE'D EATEN EACH DAY AND WITHHOLDING FOOD FROM HALEY IF HE THOUGHT SHE'D EATEN TOO MANY CALORIES THE DAY

BEFORE. DOCTORS AT THE ALANDA HOSPITAL WHO EXAMINED HALEY AFTER SHE WAS RESCUED DETERMINED SHE WAS SUFFERING FROM MALNUTRITION,

ACCORDING TO WARREN. HER PARENTS TOLD CHANNEL 9 SHE LOST 15 TO 20 POUNDS. HALEY BURNS DISAPPEARED FROM HER BALENTINE HOME IN MAY OF 2016.

THIS PAST WEEKEND, SHE WAS IN THE HOSPITAL, BUT SHE WASN'T IN THE HOSPITAL ANYMORE. Parents told Channel 9 she lost 15 to 20 pounds. Haley Burns disappeared from her Ballantyne home in May of 2016. This past weekend, the FBI responded to a tip and tracked her to a home in Georgia. Michael Weisselofsky is in jail under no bond on a number of state charges. After speaking to her parents, I learned that Haley was on one extreme diet after the next. This little girl was manipulated by this predator in a weight loss or anorexia chat room. He then kidnapped her. This little girl holding her a sex slave for months and months. She was saved. She was extricated alive. But listen to this. An 11 year old driver on a three hour trip pulls over randomly into a restaurant parking lot early Monday morning. A police cruiser is there and he needed help. And Officer Braun was in the right place at the

right time. And that's possibly what saved this young man's life, says Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds. To find out why he was in Charleston, where he was from, where he was supposed to be. An officer on night duty. The 11-year-old pulls in. Within a minute, the officer gets out to investigate. The boy shakes hands with the officer. Within 23 minutes from the initial meeting, the child gets into the cruiser. The boy told police he was from Simpsonville. He said he took his brother's car and drove 200 miles to meet a man from Snapchat. He said he was going to live with him. Drove 200 miles in his family's car. 200 miles. An 11-year-old little boy, through the grace of God, just randomly pulls into a restaurant parking lot where a night shift cop happened to have just pulled over and sees nobody behind the wheel of a driving car and specs and finds an 11-year-old little boy there on his way to the home of a grown man he meets on Snapchat, his life would have either been lost or forever,

forever ruined if he had made it to that home. It's stunning to me, to Rich Wistocki. Here's my message. You think it'll never happen to you, right? But the reason I'm playing all these stories everyone's a different story these are families our parents just like us whose children are taken and Lord it is happening all around us absolutely for the past two months I've been teaching in three different states I've messed up at 12 to 15 schools six of the schools that I taught in, when I empower these kids on not to be victims, I've had six kids come forward as victims, and it's all due to sextortion.

When these kids get sextorted, they think they're talking to somebody that they know and trust because they played on their games, and then they take them over to a private platform, and then they send pictures to them. And the common denominator in every single sextortion case, you will see that the predator types the kid you owe me one pick when after them, if they got it from someone else, but once the child falls into that, you owe me one pick. So I tell kids, if anybody types to you,

you owe me one pick, you're about to be a victim of sextortion. So we give them these rules and tools because when we see a kid running out of my presentation crying because of what I just explained is now happening to them, it doesn't happen somewhere else. And parents infuriate me that when something happens in school and the school has us come and do the presentations, out of a thousand kids going to that school, 10 parents will show up because my kid would never do that. So it's so important to make parents get this education.

But it's, you know, really, Detective Wistocki, it's not about my kid wouldn't do that. It's about the predator. The predator doesn't know if your child is an angel or a little devil. They have no idea who they're talking to. They just glean information online. Yeah, but the parent is responsible for that kid's technology all the way up until they're 18.

The parent owns the phone. What I'm saying is not that. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying parents think, oh, my child would never. Well, it's not the child really doing it. It's the predator that goes after the child. Regardless of who's not the child really doing it it's the predator that goes after the child regardless of who or what the child is and it's not just predators online that are targeting your children listen it says if someone took a baseball bat and shattered their world that's how Mallory's mother

describes their grief in the last seven weeks since their daughter's death. She faced bullying here at Copeland Middle School from fellow classmates, but online, on social media, her parents say it turned vile, and now they're suing the school district. Cheerful and charitable, that's how Seth and Diane Grossman remember their daughter Mallory. We're not at good days and bad days yet. We're still at good moments and bad moments. It's rough. AND GROSSMAN REMEMBER THEIR DAUGHTER, MALLORY. WE'RE NOT AT GOOD DAYS AND BAD DAYS YET. WE'RE STILL AT GOOD MOMENTS AND BAD MOMENTS.

IT'S ROUGH. MALLORY TOOK HER OWN LIFE ON JUNE 14th. FOR MONTHS, SHE WAS TOLD SHE'S A LOSER, SHE HAD NO FRIENDS, AND FINALLY, SHE WAS EVEN TOLD, WHY DON'T YOU KILL YOURSELF? HER PARENTS KNEW THEIR

BRIGHT 12-YEAR-OLD WAS BOTHERED BY BULLYING. THEY SAY SCHOOL OFFICIALS DID, TOO. IT NEEDS TO BE ACCOUNTABILITY SO THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN. AND RIGHT NOW, IT SEEMS TO BE A LACK OF THAT. EVERYBODY WANTS TO SWEEP IT 12-year-old was bothered by bullying. They say school officials did too. It needs to be accountability so this doesn't happen again and right now it seems to be a lack of that. Everybody wants to sweep it under the rug. They were told, they stuck their head in the sand and they ignored month after month of complaints. You are hearing NBC4 New York reporter John Candler and to Tanya Jordan at Bark.

The bullying. This is one of many, many child suicides I've covered and reported on because they were bullied online. Nancy, I want to share some hard-hitting data with every parent listening because they need to know that it absolutely can and potentially will happen to their child. I want to talk about cyberbullying, mental health, sexual content, and violence. So cyberbullying. Per our data at BARC, we've analyzed billions of messages across children's social media, text messages, and email on both their personal

devices account and school-issued devices account. So this is our data that we have, firsthand data. 62.2% of tweens and 70.5% of teens experienced cyberbullying, either as a bully, victim, or witness. That was in 2018. We're about to release our 2019 numbers, and I think it's going to be even more staggering. From a sexual content and sexting standpoint, this really is eye-opening to parents. 55.9% of tweens, that's children under the age of 13, and 72.1% of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature. Parents, if you don't know this, you should. Sexting is the new first base. It just is. From a self-harm and suicide standpoint, 23.1% of tweens and 35.9% of teens were involved with a self-harm or suicidal situation.

At BARC, we have alerted parents and schools and law enforcement to over 21,000 incidents of severe self-harm. And this is in children. So please, parents, if you do not think that this is happening to your children, you need to think again and you need to have those incredibly difficult but important conversations with them. To Dr. Freehass, weigh in. Oh my gosh. Titania is spot on on all of those numbers because even with respect to cyberbullying, the Pew Research Center is saying that it's approximately 59% of teens that are cyberbullied. So that number is definitely spot on. And with respect to self-harm and suicide, the numbers are mind-bogglingly horrific. So we now know that one in four teen girls and one in 10 teen boys are participating

in some form of self-harm, whether that be cutting, burning, disordered eating, that kind of thing. A lot of this they're seeing online. I'll back up just a little bit to say that you put on the post about Diane Grossman and her daughter, Mallory. I personally know Diane Grossman and I speak to her actually quite often because we do a lot of things within the same circles. So I have a lot of insight on the cyberbullying from her part. And then I also speak to Molly Russell's father. Molly Russell was a girl who died by suicide at the age of 12 back in 2017. And that was due to seeing all self-harm and suicide content on the internet so i am getting personal stories from people who have experienced it and i'm also seeing

increased numbers of self-harm and suicidal ideation in my pediatric emergency department as are many of my colleagues across the country. Just to give some staggering numbers on this, there's a recent study that was done by JAMA Pediatrics, which is a fantastic journal, and it showed that children presenting to emergency departments with a diagnosis of suicidal ideation or suicide attempt has increased from 580,000 in 2017 to 1.12 million in 2015. And it's expected that has increased since 2015. We just don't have the numbers yet to twofold increase in 10 years of kids that are thinking about suicide or trying to kill themselves. And to even keep that, the numbers going and the importance of knowing this, that these numbers are between 10 and 18 years old. So we're looking at kids between 10 and 18 years old where they have the

second leading cause of death. But in this survey, they actually looked down to five years old and 43% of that 1.12 million children who presented to the ER for suicidal ideation or suicide attempts were under 11 and as young as five. 43% of 1.12 million children. And that's a twofold increase in the last 10 years. To Detective Rich Wistocki, child crime expert, the president of Be Sure Consulting. Rich, what are your thoughts? So the issue is, again, that I just handled a case where two 10-year-olds, one thought it was funny to talk to the other girl into committing suicide over Snapchat, 10 years old. So let's take this a step further. How are we going to combat this? Yes, we are all experts in this field.

How are we going to combat? How are we going to help this situation well you need to train faculty right when a kid discloses you heard it in your clip that schools are being blamed for this okay because they went to them but if they don't have the tools on what to do what to collect so when i when i talk to my schools they have to take screen captures of everything get the user id write out a statement, put everything in a flash drive, get a screen capture, the profile, all grant this evidence. But the secondary problem, not only the schools don't know what to do, when we try to find out who the perpetrator is, a lot of law enforcement agencies are not trained in social media investigations. So they will actually

victimize the victim twice. And then they will say, sextortion, lady, that's not even a crime. Hey, if you want me to take this report, I'm going to have to arrest your daughter too. You still want the report? And these are the things that law enforcement comes up with. So they don't have to make a report. So we try in the ICAC and what I do is that we try to train law enforcement that if you're not taking these reports, you're adding to the predator's success. And more kids are going to be victimized. What can parents at home do? Detective Rich was talking to help her children.

So first off, it starts with technology talk. Telling them that there's no such thing as privacy for children. Telling them that this is my phone that you're using. Having the technology talk with them and showing them, look look this is my phone that I'm allowing you to use and if your grades are going from A's to B's I'm going to check and using systems like Bark is absolutely fabulous but the parent must tell child that they're monitoring because if you don't tell a child you're going to you're going to break the trust between child and parent and Bark does a fantastic job into introducing this. I created a platform called cyberparenting-101.com where parents can take an online class on how to be a cyber safe parent.

And it's so important for parents to know how predators can get to their kids through gaming platforms. We show them how to use BARC. We show them what the technology conversation should be the golden ticket conversation should be that if most parents this is how they parent in technology if you get out there pictures if you do this if you do that you're going to be grounded you're going to be thrown ticket when you're not going to be with your friends is the child going to come to the parent when they're threatened into compliance? Absolutely not. So when the parents have to have this technology talk, that if something, somebody wants, makes you feel bad about yourself or does

make you do something you don't want to do, you need to come to us. If you come to us, we're going to give you that golden ticket and there's not going to be any consequences because we have to find out who's doing this to you. And if they're doing it to you, they're doing it to 10, 20, 30 other kids all over the world. So you have situations like Amanda Todd, where she committed suicide after she was sextorted. And thank God for Emily Vasher at Facebook, who took that bull by the horns and we found out who the predator was. He was doing it to 10, 20 other kids all the same time he was doing it to Amanda Todd. So again, parents need to be vigilant. They need to have the technology talk with their kids. They have to use bark and they have to be able to see that picture of, yes, my kid is a good kid, but it's not that my kid would do something. There's so many other predators out there that

would make my kid feel bad about themselves. And we need to find out who it is. Exactly. Exactly. To Tonya Jordan, CMO, BARC, Brian Basin, CEO of BARC, a tech expert. And even when I asked you, how does BARC work? I still don't know what you said, but I do know this. It works. To Dr. Free Hess, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Specialist, Child Safety Expert, founder of PettyMom.com and the Petty Mom Podcast. Detective Rich Wistocki, Child Crime Expert, President, Be Sure Consulting. Thank you for being with us. And if we reach even one parent, our time is well spent. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories. Signing off, and as I go, I want to stop crime. I want to save children.

I don't want to just report on crimes that have already occurred. There's nothing we can do about it. Help us. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.