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How do we keep our kids safe online? How do we protect our children in an overexposed, sexualized culture?
Join Mandy Majors (award-winning author of "TALK" and "Keeping Kids Safe in a Digital World") for real conversations about the intersection of tech, culture and faith.
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Mom Saves Son from Online Predator
This mom recognized something was wrong, got curious and discovered her son was being groomed. It all started on a school-issued Chromebook. She takes us on her journey and shares how she contacted law enforcement, notified other families and walked through this with her son.
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Welcome to the Next Talk podcast. We are a nonprofit passionate about keeping kids safe online. We're learning together how to navigate tech, culture and faith with our kids. I am joined by a mom today and we're going to keep her name anonymous to protect her kid. But you guys, she DM'd me on Instagram a couple weeks ago and the DM said something like because of Walker's story, I recognized that my kid was being groomed online and I saved him from a predator, like I literally reported it. And we're in Kansas, the predator's in California. Of course I DM'd the mom back and I wanted all this information. I got on the phone with her and so now we're here.
Speaker 1:She's so brave and she's decided she wants to come on anonymously and just share what happened to them in hopes that it will help another family. First I want to welcome her to the show and then also, if you can, just introduce kind of your family makeup. I know we're trying to stay anonymous here, but just so the listeners out there can understand who you are and the ages of your kids. Sure, thank you so much for having me today. As you said, I am a mom in Kansas. We have five children. Our oldest is a young adult and we filter down to our youngest, who is 14 and finishing up middle school now, and so the thing that happened was with your youngest, correct? So he's 14 now. Yes, and how old was he when this happened? Yes, this happened to him two years ago, so he was 12. What that means for him is the end of sixth grade. So I first want to kind of dive into how you found Next Talk, because when you DMed me, you were like because of Walker's story, and I remember immediately saying to you can I share this with Brian Montgomery, walker's dad, just because I know it helps Brian to know a little that his story is helping other kids, you know, and you graciously said yes, and I was able to do that.
Speaker 1:But how did you find Next Talk? And what do you know about digital parenting? Like, were you educated? Like, let's talk about that first, because I think sometimes parents think well, she may have a degree in IT and that's why she saw the warning signs of grooming, and that's not true. Like neither of us are technical people, right, and that's not true. Like neither of us are technical people, right, yes, so no, I am not educated in anything technology, my background is actually so short. I am the mom that if I want to watch something on TV, I have to holler at one of my kids to come to come figure that out for me.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say stumbled upon Next Talk, but found Next Talk when my kids were younger and the term VSCO became a thing, and I did not have a clue what any of that meant. I was trying to understand their world and was also getting a whole lot of like, oh, mom, so I wanted to learn about it, and when I Googled that, next Talk popped up because you had done a show at one point describing that word and what that meant, and so in that time I started listening to your podcast, and then I listened to Walker's story. I have two boys that are Walker's age, so that just hit home for a lot of reasons for us. Walker's story really had an impact on me because it felt like gosh, this really can't happen to anyone. That's how I found your podcast. Also, in that same timeframe, at our youngest school, a law enforcement person came in, did a presentation about sexting and just some online stuff that I had never heard of, didn't understand, I think kind of in some ways live a sheltered life and wanted to keep my head in the sand. And just piecing those things together made me, I guess, realize or see the reality of, as much as I hate evil and the darkness in this world, that it is real. It's cool how God led these things in your life to kind of educate you a bit on stuff, to kind of have your guard up a little bit more. I want to go back to like how did you discover this was happening? Because you DM to me and said your kid had been groomed online. Tell me how you found that out and what led up to it and give us the details of that.
Speaker 1:This happened to our youngest child, and he is the one that loves people. His very best day is if he gets all of his siblings in the same room. They had done the presentation at school. They did one for parents, they did one for students, and then that was at the end of the school year. At that time he had an older sibling that had graduated from high school, and so I had taken the older child and some friends on a little senior trip. So, with mom being gone the beginning of summer, all of his siblings at that point were high school or older. That just kind of made the equation for what happened to our family.
Speaker 1:I had gotten home from this trip and just noticed that he was off a little. He is our one who, if there's someone in the living room, he's going to be in the living room. He's not one to go in his room by himself. He's not one to want to be alone and I just noticed a little of that off with him, especially since I had been gone a few days. I thought he seemed tired and it didn't really make sense for him to be tired. It was the beginning of summer and I could just tell like mom guts, something was off.
Speaker 1:And something that my husband and I do is we pray, we ask God if something's off with our kids, please show us. And I'm a real life mom, so sometimes I'm like oh man, did you have to show me today? I'm tired. I don't want to deal with hard today, but that is something that we ask and I think what's cool when you ask that is God does show you. Part of that is being intentional and knowing our kids and knowing their hearts and just being able to recognize when something's off. I love this so much, and I think it's such a powerful point that one you knew your kid really well and you have five kids, so you're a busy mom, right, but you knew this particular child really well in his personality and you sent something was off. And I also love that prayer. I think we can all be motivated to pray that prayer Dear Lord, show me if something's off. And I also love that prayer. I think we can all be motivated to pray that prayer, dear Lord, show me if something's off with my kids. It's such a beautiful prayer and we have to be ready for when he does and he answers that prayer. You're right. So you felt something was off. So what was your next step? What did you do next?
Speaker 1:We do the whole phones on the kitchen counter at bedtime and all of the rules that we're told that we're supposed to implement, and so I did.
Speaker 1:I checked his phone very quickly, noticed a contact that I had never heard of before and started just reading through that and very quickly it was quite clear something terrible was going on, going on and from that point it all happened really fast. Like I confronted my son, I think it was traumatic for him, it was instant tears. It was a lot of me asking questions and him saying I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. So I guess I should also back up and say in our situation, I found it on his phone, but it originated from his school Chromebook. The kids do bring their Chromebooks home for the summer. I love the schools my kids are in. I know they're doing the best they can do. I know they filter things and I think I had a false sense of security in that, like, oh, it's a school Chromebook, so bad things are filtered, things fall through the cracks, right. And so I had saw it on his phone, pulled up his Chromebook.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to look at some things, but I don't know how it all works and because of the world we live in, one of my high school kids was like here. Let me see that. He pulled up the history and what it was for my son was a website Omegle. Omegle, my older one was able to show me quickly in the history and so I was seeing things late at night. I was seeing. You could just see quickly what it was. Along with that, I will say like, yes, we have these rules for our phones. We hadn't really thought through the Chromebook thing. It was the beginning of summer, it was brought home, but we just hadn't really even thought about that. So while my kid was following the rule with his phone, this other thing that we hadn't even considered was in his room. Okay, I want to talk for a minute about the website that he went to, because it's shut down now and you can go there and there's kind of like a statement from the founder of this website and they're being sued in a court of law because of a grooming situation. I believe that happened on this website and I don't want us to get caught up in. Oh, that website's not available anymore. So kids are safe, because I think what happened with you? I help families all the time. This kind of thing with strangers grooming kids, adults grooming kids it happens on Roblox, it happens on the Xbox, on the PlayStation, on school issue devices, and so I want to take the lessons learned from your story and apply them to any website or any device right now, as you are finding this out.
Speaker 1:There's a couple things I want to ask you. You said you confronted your son. What did that look like? Because you seem like a very logical and calm mom, but I also know any logical and calm mom. In this moment, you're freaked out because you're seeing these messages. So can you just tell us like what that conversation looked like with your son? On my end, it escalated quickly. I appreciate that you say that I seem like a calm mom. I mean, looking back, I was scared, I was angry. I wasn't angry at my son, I was angry at the person that did this to him. I was mad at myself. I felt like I dropped the ball. What could we have done different or more? But in that, trying to explain to him, this is real and this is serious, because at that point we didn't know where this person was Like. Are they in our town? Are they on my street. Something that I remember saying to my son is you could be in the trunk of his car. Looking back now that feels very traumatic, but I think I was so desperate to get the point across of this is so serious.
Speaker 1:We started digging through his phone, his Chromebook, and then piecing together his story Once I calmed down. Then I was able to help him calm down, ask the questions, and a lot of his answers were I don't know. He wasn't hiding anything from us At that point. He wasn't lying, he understood, but it was confusing and it was overwhelming. What we came to know happened is toward the end of the school year.
Speaker 1:Someone at school who our son would have said my friend told him about this website and the way they could explained it to my son was it's just a place you can go and they match you up with friends and it's someone to talk to. Well, for ours, who loves talking and loves people, that sounded really fun. So he took that information. He was put in a situation at home where things were off, a little part of us were gone, he was lonely and he went to this website and, if I remember correctly, like you said, it's been shut down. Thank you, lord, for that. When I went to this website, I do remember there was like something that you had to click or something that said you were 18 or older, but there was no accountability, there was no nothing to prove, like click this box and you get to play right In piecing together what our son could tell us, again a 12-year-old.
Speaker 1:This person told my son that he was 19 years old. It turns out he is in his 60s. He did tell. I think the one truth is he told my son he was from California and that is true. He told him he loved Star Wars and Legos. But now, looking back, I think he had asked my son questions to get to know what mattered in my son's life, because the profile I guess that he gave to my son about himself very much resembled our oldest child, who is my son's hero. So I think there was a quick trust because it started to feel like this guy's, like my brother.
Speaker 1:So you think, as you're piecing this together, you think your son went to this website which, as you were saying that to me, that's like all online chat features of any app. Is that this social place where kids can gather and make friends, right, the appeal of that, especially to extroverted kids. But you think your kid went to this website, started chatting with this person and this person probably asked tell me about your family. Yes, and your little 12-year-old is just spouting off about all his brothers and sisters and what they like, and probably you guys, and then he posed himself as these are the things I like, which lined up with his older brother's interest. Yes, okay, I think this is an important point to note because, again, this lets your kids guard down. If he sees his brother in this groomer, it makes him feel like a safe person, and that's a tactic that we need to take note of right now that you're teaching us about your story, and I think that's really, really important. Okay, so go ahead.
Speaker 1:So now you're piecing this all together. What do you do next? Because now you know he's a predator and he's in his 60s in California, but at this time you didn't know any of this. You're piecing it together and you're like, oh my gosh, this person likes the same things my older kid likes. And who is this person? Like you said, is he down the street, street, whatever? So what was your next step as you were gathering all this information. What was the next step? Well, one thing that I think is important is this person started building a little bit of a relationship on this online platform but then asked my son for his cell phone number so if they got cut off, he could contact him that way. And some little boy okay, here's my phone number. He's just innocent and this isn't his new friend. So, parents listening, this could be a red flag. If anybody online ask for your direct number, red flag alert. Just tell me before you give that out. Let's vet that out together. I mean, at that point I was still like go lock the doors, shut the blinds. We just don't know what I did. At that point I was still like go lock the doors, shut the blinds, like we just don't know what I did.
Speaker 1:It was summer, things were closed down as far as the school goes, but one of our school secretaries was kind of a friend of mine. I had her phone number, so I did contact her and ask her if she could give me the contact information for the law enforcement person that had presented at our school a few weeks prior to, and so I contacted him. We talked through some things. He was like yes, this needs to be looked at From there. I contacted our school resource officer because I just didn't know what to do. We're kind of in a tricky situation because we live on the edge of a town, so we live in one town, our school is in another town. So our school resource officer directed me to call law enforcement according to my address, so the town I live in, so they gave me a phone number for that and so in talking to them they wanted to send some people out to visit with us to get information to see where to go from here. They told me the day they were going to be here, so I had shared with my kids there is going to be a police officer come today Ended up being three people came three police officers, which, to a 12-year-old boy and his mom, that's really overwhelming for that to come show up on your porch.
Speaker 1:What I really appreciated is they were clear with our son. You didn't do anything wrong and this is very dangerous and this is real. So they asked him questions, they talked through any details he could remember and then they took his Chromebook and his phone to scrub and to try and get any information they could. At that point our 12 year old was like yes, please take it. I never want to see any of this again. I do have a couple of questions. I'm so glad you reported it. Did your son want you to report it? Was there any like please don't call them mom. Or was like, how did that go?
Speaker 1:Because sometimes that becomes a topic of conversation in a home, where a kid doesn't want it to go to that level and a parent is kind of pushing and saying, no, we have to do this. Can you walk us through what that looked like, kind of pushing and saying, no, we have to do this. Can you walk us through what that looked like? That was not a conversation because truly at that point, his opinion didn't matter. It was real and it was dangerous. And there was no conversation about contacting or not contacting. That just wasn't even part of it. I did also contact. By looking through his phone, I could see who of his friends were either knowledgeable. This was happening or a part of this happening.
Speaker 1:And in our story, part of it too was this person had offered to my son to add his friends to their conversation. Okay, I want to stop there because that again could be another grooming tactic. A lot of times we tell kids if an adult or anybody online tries to get you by yourself, it's a red flag. But this predator did it a little different. He got your son's phone number so he could privately chat with your son. But he also said to your son hey, invite your friends also, we can have a group chat as well. So again it makes the kid feel like, well, this is all of our friends, we're all friends, we're all friends. Yes, I just had no idea.
Speaker 1:And then it was brought to light. So I wanted to contact my son's friends' parents, and so what that looked like is I made him sit beside me while I called each of these parents. I wanted him to hear and hopefully be able to recognize this is real. Mom is real upset. This isn't okay. And so he sat with me while I contacted these other parents. Interesting enough, the one parent I did not contact is when he told us he had learned of this website from a friend at school. When he said that friend's name, I had never heard it in my life. This was not a kid that came around our house. This wasn't anyone I knew. I wanted that kid's parents to know, because if he had told my son about the website. He knew about the website. So what I did with that was, again with the school resource officer. Say, here's the names involved, here's the people in the text. I have contacted this one, this one and this one Can you look into this one? And then I don't know what he did with that or where it went from there, but that was my way of trying to reach out to a family involved.
Speaker 1:I love that you're sharing this level of detail, because I think sometimes parents do see other kids involved in something and they're scared to contact the other family because they don't know them, or maybe they do and they're scared of the reaction. So I think you, using the student resource officer as hey, can you help me warn these other parents, I think is brilliant and I think is a good point for parents. You may not be the one to get on the phone with these parents and tell them what happened with their kid. How did you get so smart? You're doing all the right things in this situation, god's grace, and tripping over my own feet a lot, I would say Amen. He gives you wisdom. I mean he really does. It sounds cliche sometimes, but he gives you wisdom on steps to take and keeps you calm through the process. Yeah, I do love also that the officers gave you the time of day, even though it was a little scary when they came. But you knew and you could prep your kids and we're going to have this. So what happens next? They take the phone, they take the Chromebook. They're doing all the scrubbing. Your kid's fine with it. He wants nothing at all. I think we all just want something to tell us what to do.
Speaker 1:I think, even in the amount of time that my husband and I have been parents, what technology looked like when our oldest was 12 and what technology looked like when our youngest was 12 was two different worlds, and both of those are way different than growing up in the 80s and 90s. So we really, as his parents growing up in the 80s and 90s, so we really, as his parents, didn't know like what. Now we knew law enforcement had taken this, they were working on that, and we knew it had all been shut down, like as far as communication between our son and this person. Because of my background in social work and just life, you know, I instantly thought like does he need therapy, do we need to get counselors involved, and we were by no means opposed to that. In talking through it with him, we never felt like that was necessary, but we kept our guard up in considering that with our son and this was something that was really confusing to my high school kids that was watching this happen. Something I considered with him is he is social, like we got here because he loves people, and so I knew for him to take away all you know. I wanted to like run over all the phones and laptops and everything with my car. I wanted to shut it down and lock my kids in my basement forever, but we just knew that's not reality.
Speaker 1:And so we live in a really great community with really great families and we just considered and I ended up contacting I think it was six or seven moms telling them what we were going through. Many of them were a part of this, so they were people that I had initially contacted when this happened, and so that summer we were just super intentional of getting our son and his little group of friends together to do something. So it wasn't an online friendship, it was a real life. We're going swimming, we're going to have s'mores in the backyard, we're going to go play pickleball, which I think was harder for my older kids. Like he messed up and now he gets to have friends over every week. That didn't really make sense in their brain. But just knowing this kid, the worst thing we could have done is take all communication from him. That just wouldn't work for him.
Speaker 1:Walking through that lots of conversations, lots of things in place, guards in place we got a phone call from the initial law enforcement person that had spoke at his school, contacted me I think it was like a month or so later and let me know this person was not 19. He was in his 60s. So the two things that he actually didn't lie about is he was in California and his name was Winston. Those things were true and those were things that he did tell our son. His age was not true and probably lots of other things. So what they shared with us by their investigating was this was caught early for our son.
Speaker 1:Again, going back to Walker's story and how so much happened so quickly. This feels like a long time, but I think our situation was two to three days. They believed this was caught during the grooming phase. So trying to build relationship, build trust before next steps. Now, in talking to our son, I asked like, did he ask you for pictures? Did he talk about yucky things? And he did not. So it really was just getting started and building some kind of foundation there.
Speaker 1:What we were told and I'm not a law enforcement professional, but what we were told is there was not enough evidence to press charges against this person. But our local law enforcement person that I was communicating with actually did make contact with him, had a conversation with him, told him we know what you're doing, we know what you've done, what you've said, we are watching you and you are on a watch list. Now I can't tell you what that means, but as a mom I just appreciate someone took it serious, hunted this person down and confronted like this is disgusting. And I see you, I have such mixed emotions about it because I'm so glad they made contact with him and told him. But at the same time it's like, oh, it's just in phases one of two of grooming, so we can't do anything. That frustrates me to no end and I get it. I mean I get it. It's just so frustrating that we can see this happening and not be able to do anything about it until something terrible happens.
Speaker 1:And I will say, as a mom and for my husband as a dad, at that point we were really thankful that there's several states between Kansas and California, because, as a parent, when someone's messing with one of your greatest joys, that's just a feeling that I wish parents didn't have to know. There's so much evil in the world and your story really, truly does remind us that. You know it's on us right now we don't have a lot of laws and legislator backing us Like it's on us to see these signs and I just commend you having the courage to ask your kid when you knew something was wrong, because how many times, I mean I, I've been there where you feel like something's off but you're busy and so it's like Surely you talk yourself out of it, like surely everything's fine, he's just tired or he's had a stressful week or whatever, and you didn't do that. You were like something is off and it was a gut feeling that would not leave you, and I think that's important to encourage parents to follow that too. To follow that too. I call it mom gut, right, sometimes you just know, and I think sometimes our kids don't even know and it's still mom being like you good what's going on? Actually, you're not good what's happening, and sometimes they don't even know. In his situation, I don't even know if he knew what he was doing was wrong at the point that it all came to light. I am so thankful that it came to light when it did and that he is okay.
Speaker 1:I think for us, for my husband and I, a big thing is again. The world we're raising our kids in is so different than the world we grew up in when all of this came to light. I do still do feel like one of my biggest weaknesses or downfalls as a parent is technology and social media and how to navigate that. And I really appreciate when the police officers came to our house. Something they said to me was you can have all of the filters, everything in place beyond, like as soon as you have it all figured out. Evil is two steps ahead of that. And it was just good for me to hear, because as a mom, I felt a weight of what did I miss if I knew better, if I understood more, if I had different filters. You know, like that was my instant when it happened like tell us what filters? Is there something we can pay for Is there something, just something to protect our kid?
Speaker 1:And I think one thing we really learned in that but also it can overlay lots of places in parenting is I can't control technology. I can't know it all. That's not how my brain works and my brain doesn't have space to hold all of that. But what I have a say in is my kid's heart, and I feel like that's something we learned in this is you can have all the rules in place. You can do all of the right things. Your kids can know the difference between right and wrong and evil is still real. There is still people out there after our kids' hearts, after their minds, after their souls, after their bodies, and we can't control it. But what we can go after is their hearts and I think when our kids can be something you talk about often, if our kids can just know. I got to go to mom and dad Not I need to hide this, I don't want to get in trouble, but this is scary. I got to go to mom and dad.
Speaker 1:So well said, so well said. How is your boy now? And how are you guys? How's your family? What have you learned from this? I mean, this was two years ago. Yeah, it's something. It's something in the beginning, with any trauma in the beginning. It's all day, every day. This is what you're thinking about. Who is that guy in target looking at? You know all of that. Our son's still with that. He's just as social as ever and he has not asked one time for social media. He does have a phone set up in a way that contacts can't be added about mom and dad. You know all the things. And also still, even today, it's about his heart. I can't control all of the phone, all of the things.
Speaker 1:When this opportunity came, when you asked about sharing our story, it was important to me to have his permission, because it's his story and he's just now in eighth grade, so he has a whole lot of hard ahead of him. But what he saw in this was an opportunity to help other people. He knows now how serious it is and how scary it was and how real it is. He'll be safer online now because of this experience. And that's hard to accept because you wish he didn't have to walk through it. But isn't that life? When we walk through hard things, we learn so much through them. That's interesting.
Speaker 1:You say that because that's something that we talk about a lot in our family is that we can do hard things, and I think it's true. What happened was pure evil. That person was not innocently wanting to be friends with my son Although anyone that meets my son wants to be his friend but it was intended for evil and I do appreciate that we have the opportunity to use it for good. You know right now he's at an age that things are easily embarrassing, and so I do want to protect who he is and follow what he has asked. But I also think the day will come that he'll be ready to share his story, and right now he says he wants to be a teacher, so I can also see him one day being the guy at school. That's that's protecting the young kids. I hope one day I get to meet your son and interview him and he comes on our podcast. That would be amazing.
Speaker 1:He has terrible dad jokes. It's the jokes are awful, but he sure appreciates his own humor. What a brave kid. He has, really brave parents. We all want to be you if this happens in our home. You've handled this so well and I'm just so thankful that you reached out and you were willing to share, because I truly do think that it's going to help other families. I just think it's important to consider it really can happen to anyone.
Speaker 1:We by no means have it figured out, by no means do it all right. We are far from perfect. I think at the end of the day, my husband and I are just two parents who love Jesus and love our kids. I think we try really hard to not be scared to do hard things. Truly, going back to what I said at the beginning, a lot of times I would really rather have my head in the sand, but when we ask God to show us he does, and then, once he shows us, we're kind of responsible to do something.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it was important to note that this was your youngest. I mean you had four other children that were well-rounded. You've got a couple that are flown and grown and doing amazing things in the world right. And so you do have some things figured out as parents, you do have a good connection and a good relationship with your kids, and so that home life was a foundation there and it still happened in your home. And it reminds me so much of Walker and his family because they were such a good family and they talked and had great relationships with their kids. And so we can just never say never and let our guard down Absolutely. 15 years ago or our oldest is 21. So let's say 22 years ago there would have been a lot of things that I would have said never in my house. And here we are, and sometimes now our oldest gets frustrated with like and sometimes now our oldest gets frustrated with like oh, you would have never let me. And he's right. You know, mom and dad are a little older, a little wiser, maybe a little more tired, and we've just learned along the way from the many, many, many, many mistakes.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for being here. Is there anything else you want to share with other parents? If your guts are telling you something's up with your kid, something's up with your kid, you've got to trust that. I say guts. The older I get, I realize like oh, that's the Holy Spirit. Well, and pray that prayer Lord, show me. Lord, show me what's wrong, open, let's bring this into the light. I love that prayer that you mentioned. Well, thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your story. You're welcome. Thank you for the opportunity. I hope. I hope someone can get something good from it. I know God's going to take this curse and use it for a blessing. I love that Bible verse. Only God can do that. That is right.
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