Has your child been groomed? Today's stranger danger!

Episode 22

Has your child been contacted and groomed online? Do you know what that is? I didn't and it is frightening to realize my kids at some point have been contacted by someone attempting to groom them. 

I think of it like a stranger trying to give a child candy or a gift of some kind to coerce them to trust them and go with them, except on a global and much more methodical and dangerous level.

It is even more frightening to think we are inviting these strangers into our homes and even into our kids' bedrooms!! Yikes!! 

Listen in to this episode for tips to help you navigate this new form of stranger danger, and then get signed up for BARK today!! 

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Help ensure the safety and normal childhood development of your child by grabbing the newest version of the GABB Wireless phone on or after 8/8/20 at THIS LINK or go to https://www.gabbwireless.com/promo/bethatmom and use code BETHATMOM for $10 off!! 

Already have a smart phone or ready to give them one? Protect your child (and your sanity) in the digital world with BARK! Use code BETHATMOM for 20% off for life! https://www.bark.us

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Other options if you are considering a first phone:

• Relay go device can be found HERE
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Want to be THAT Mom besties??? Text BETHATMom to 50597 and jump in to my free Be THAT Mom Movement Facebook Community HERE! 

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Email me at [email protected] or connect with me on IG @dollydenson or @bethatmommovementpodcast

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More info on the Be THAT Mom Movement https://www.dollydenson.com

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Simplify your fitness/nutrition routine! Join me in the Align Your Life Fit Club! More info can be found at https://www.dollydenson.com/fitclub

Listen here or click HERE to listen on your favorite podcast app! 

Full Transcription:

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey, Hey, so here we are for another episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for all of your support. I absolutely do this from a mother's heart because I wish that I had had this knowledge when I was going through the first years of giving my kid a phone and access to the digital world. So that is what I'm always coming from. And I hope that my episodes are helping you in a very tactical and practical way that you are able to implement these things, to keep your kids safe today, our topic is going to be a sensitive one. I think everything we're talking about kind of hits on the heartstrings of a mother, but today's topic is something that is so very real in the digital world. And it has had a serious uptick in the last six months, I guess, since all of the stuff with the COVID-19 pandemic started. And so it's absolutely something that every parent needs to be aware of as we give our kids devices and access to the digital world. So if you're not familiar with what grooming is, that is what we are going to talk about today. I'm going to give you some tactical tips going forward to help you to navigate this. Okay? So stay tuned.

Speaker 2: (01:08)
Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the be that mom movement with your host Dolly Denson.

Speaker 1: (01:32)
Alrighty, before we get started, I just want to give all of you a shout out that have opted into using my code for bark or for gab wireless. The response has been insane, and that just pulls at my emotions because that means each one of those times that you using my code, you are helping protect your kid. And this is so badly. What I wish I would have had a few years ago. So congrats to you for taking action with your children. If you need help navigating any of those things, as you get started, if you're trying to get bark installed and having trouble, please don't hesitate to reach out to their support team, but you can also reach out to [email protected], but their support team is absolutely very supportive and you can get help with that. And even if I hear that a lot from a lot of parents that, well, I have an iPhone, so barks not going to help me.

Speaker 1: (02:23)
Bark is another layer for you. I iPhones have the screen time feature. Your cell phone carrier may have some type of protection thing as well, but bark is an added fee added layer, and it will send you alerts of things that the other ones won't the other ones control kind of access. And the time that you're on the phone, but they will not send you alerts. And a beautiful thing about bark is that they will also send you what they call like sentiments. And it's basically like your child's activity over a period of time, how it was trending, what things they spent the most time on, and then conversations they monitor. If there was a theme running through them like anxiety, depression, things like that. It will send you an alert for that while still giving your kid privacy, but send you an alerts. You can know that that is something that they're talking about with their friends, or if a friend is contacting them with that type of information, it gives you the opportunity to have a step up on that type of situation before something catastrophic happens.

Speaker 1: (03:21)
So congrats to all of you that have opted into that. It is absolutely the most robust thing that is out there. There are probably hundreds of other things similar to this, but bark, I think is the most comprehensive. And then of course, if you have not given your kid yet a smartphone or you need to backtrack, gab wireless is a great option for that. So for both of those, if you haven't opted in on them, go to bark.us, use the code, beat out mom or gab wireless.com. Use the code, be that mom, both of those will give you a discount and get you the opportunity to help keep your kids safe. Okay. So today's topic is about on online grooming. And this is a process where a predator will be friend our children over a period of time and slowly gain their trust, alienate them from the people that they know and kind of desensitize them to things that they may have previously been taught is not okay.

Speaker 1: (04:13)
And then they try to capitalize on that. Somehow extort them in some way and even go to the extent of kidnapping them and using them for child trafficking, for sex or work or some type of manipulation. So what these groomers will typically do is they will piece together clues about the kid, their interests, their parents names, where they live, what school they go to, and then anything that they post about this may be about them being sad or lonely. And then they will kind of get into those and extort those feelings and take them to manipulate them. So this is a really kind of scary topic, but when I stepped back and I think about it as a kid, I remember there being stranger danger. And don't talk to anybody that you don't know. And when you were at home, you were safe and your parents knew that you were safe, but like I've said, in other episodes, when you give them a smartphone or access to the digital world without guiding them, helping them with it.

Speaker 1: (05:12)
And I know that this is so, so hard to do because there are so many intricate things. So I hear ya. If you're like, Oh my God, this is all just so complicated, which is why a gab wireless phone is awesome to start out because you don't have all these headaches. But when the internet came about, when the smartphones came about, you can imagine that for someone who is a child predator, a pedophile of some kind, that this is like the perfect world for them, this is their playing ground. And then add on the social media sites that parents may not know how to work, or just may not be on. Don't have a clue that there's this thing even out there. And they are just going wild. The uptick of this happening has spiked this past year in the midst of more kids being online with the pandemic and us not being able to be out and doing our normal activities and all of those things.

Speaker 1: (06:03)
But even prior to that, the numbers were spiking in the years. Prior as there's more social media, there's more access. There's more, there's more things for them to use. So the statistics related to this is that girls are approached 80% and boys 20%, 42% of sextortion victims met their predator online and internet safety is now the fourth top ranked issue in the list of health concerns for kids. And they say that one in 10 kids under 18 is sexually abused online. So as you can see, this is a very, very big problem. As far as what these groomers will do with our children, 72% will take the pictures that they coerced the kids descend and use them for child pornography. 18% use them for child sex trafficking, as they manipulate them to meet them in person. And then they kidnap them. And the median age of the predator is usually 39 years old.

Speaker 1: (07:01)
And it is usually a male. So the warning signs of your child already being groomed by someone is they are secretive about their online activities. They're obsessive about being online. They receive phone calls or text from people you don't know or numbers. You don't recognize. They receive gifts in the mail from someone you don't know why they withdraw from family and friends. They change their screens or turn off computers when adult enters the room or hides their phone. I think that it's safe to say that some of this can have a gray area of just how teenagers are, but just have a very sensitive red flag regarding these behaviors. So how do we go about handling this or preventing this? The number one thing is communication with your child. Let them know that they can always come to you no matter what, let them know that it is not okay to share personal information with someone that they don't know in real life.

Speaker 1: (07:55)
And to be cautious of anyone, they meet online, that they are who they say they are, explain that they can put on their profile, any picture they want and say anything they want, but actually be something completely different. And so they need to have a cautious eye in regards to that, and then make sure that their accounts are private. The second thing is remove the location feature on the apps that they participate in. This may take a little bit of time, but it absolutely needs to be something you check with each app that they interact with. An example of this is right now, I use an app called Voxer and it's kind of like a walkie talkie app. It's kind of like Facebook messenger, but it's not connected to Facebook. And I have a couple of groups of friends that I talked to through Voxer.

Speaker 1: (08:40)
And the other day, one of the people in a group of there's like five or six of us said, Hey, check y'alls location services because I just clicked on our group. And I could click on each one of you and tell exactly where you are in the world. And these are people that live all over the U S that I'm in touch with. But I wasn't aware that I had that setting set up. So I, and it took me a minute to figure out how to do it, to take off my location on Voxer. But that means that anyone I'm in touch with on Voxer Newt could look and see exactly where I was in that moment in time. And not that I don't have contacts on Voxer that I don't know in person, but, or have some type of relationship with where I know who they are, but our children are.

Speaker 1: (09:19)
Aren't going to know that and may be friend people without realizing this. And then the third thing is just to be very involved in what they are doing online, know what apps they are on, no, their account passwords. I know I've said this in other episodes, but have that and be very involved with that in what they're doing. And if you have ever tried to monitor those things, it's impossible to do on a regular basis because we're busy and we have lives and we have jobs and all of that stuff. So that is why something like bark is so, so helpful because it does the monitoring for you. And then we'll alert you of concerns and sentiments and their activity. It'll tell you what things they're spending their most time on. So when a child is groomed, what they often will do is they will be friend them.

Speaker 1: (10:04)
And then they, you know, think of it as kind of like insidious. It's a slow, methodical process that they will do where they were gain their trust. They may say, you know, if your, if your daughter is like a 14 year old girl, they may say they're a 17 year old boy. They flatter them. They, you know, talk to them and do things to make them happy, to feel good, to really increase that bond of trust. Then they try to alienate them somehow from their family, from their friends, by saying bad things about them. As they have gained that trust, they may do something like ask them to send a picture of them, lift your shirt up and send me a picture with your shirt up. Some type of provocative thing. There's even some pedophiles that have a propensity to want to see people's feet.

Speaker 1: (10:48)
And so it can be something as simple as send me a picture of your feet. And so what they'll do with those pictures is they may post them in pedophile groups. They distribute the pictures online to other groups like that. Then they also can do sextortion where they say, okay, at, you sent me this picture and that this is where they turn the table on them into an extort them for something I heard of one family that their daughter sent a picture of like her shirt up. And suddenly they had cops at their house saying that they got a report that the man in the house had a gun and was holding everybody hostage when this wasn't the case. But it was a part of this person, extorting the girl by having these pictures, threatening them in this way. And the only way they were able to do that is because she probably had locations on, on some of her apps.

Speaker 1: (11:38)
Then they also can say, I'm going to show this to your friends. I'm going to post this in these groups. I'm going to do this and that to humiliate you, to control you, unless you do this, this and this, then there is the most extreme one. And that is gaining their trust learning, where they live in eventually arranging to meet in person. And this is where they are either raped or they are kidnapped and then raped, sold into sex trafficking, child trafficking, those types of things. And only one to 2% of kids that get to this point are recovered. It is frightening. So it can be something I want, I don't want to say innocent, but it can be something as simple as selling their pictures. Then the next phase would be taking their pictures and extorting them for the pictures in the next phase is somehow meeting them in person either to just rape.

Speaker 1: (12:30)
I shouldn't say just, but either to rape them or to kidnap them and rape them or sell them to some type of sex trafficking ring. So I know this is all very frightening, but awareness is our greatest power when it comes to parenting our kids today in this digital world. So I hope this brings awareness to you. If you want to look further into it, go to Instagram and go to your kids' accounts. Look at who's commenting on their accounts. Look who their friends are, look who they're following. Look, who they're having conversations with in the DMS, Snapchat as a whole nother beast, because things disappear after it's been sent. So if you are worried about your kid and interaction on Snapchat, I would just get them off of that app. They do say that this happens the most on Instagram, Snapchat, and tick talk.

Speaker 1: (13:16)
And those are the hardest to monitor because of how the apps are set up and the restrictions that they have. Plus the messaging feature that is in there, but it is not just those apps. There are reports of them using the other apps like discord and Twitch, and even things like Fortnite and animal crossing and several of these games that we would never think of our kid being able to be contacted. But if they have a chat feature, if they have a message feature, then that is where they try to get to your kids too. So an added layer besides bark is like I mentioned, in my episode, that was highlighting everything about bark is they have a thing called Barco MADEC and you can go in and put in what type of device your kid has and what different apps and equipment and things that they use.

Speaker 1: (14:03)
And then it'll give you steps to safely set each one of those up. And it'll give you a heads up on what things you need to watch for and monitor. So absolutely put bark on the devices that your kids have and then do the Barco MADEC survey. And you will get a personalized list in your email that gives you steps for each one of these things. The thought of all of it I know is just so overwhelming, but if you can take steps with these different things, it can help you to get this set up. But the most important thing is communication with your child and then having boundaries around what they use and when they're allowed to use it and keep it out of bedrooms and private spaces and at night. So for more support in this area, if you come across any accounts that are questionable, that have contacted your kids that are commenting on their posts, first off, get there, get those accounts private, but they can get around on the private setting, but also report those accounts, report them as inappropriate in the app that you were looking at them, other resources that you can go to are missing kids.org, the cyber tip line.org, the child rescue coalition, operation, underground railroad, and the national center for missing and exploited children.

Speaker 1: (15:12)
This is a very high daily focused on topic, but the biggest issue is that these predators are savvy and insidious in being able to use these different apps and go undetected. So it's very important that you as the parent have these different safeguards in place, but also look into these resources. If your child has benefited by these things, another thing go to barks, blog barked at us and go to their blog dog. They did do an investigation where they had a mom that was in her forties. I believe as an 11 year old girl on Instagram, put up a picture of a young girl and then posed as an 11 year old girl. And she was immediately contacted by predators and pursued some of the grooming prompts by these people and is quite frightening to listen to her tapes of what happened as she went along with all of this stuff, to see where it would take them.

Speaker 1: (16:05)
So it is a very, very real problem. And if you just Google it, you can find multiple stories of kids that have been through this and were taken to the extreme of being kidnapped, involved in sex trafficking. So it's a very, very real issue. And I hope that you will be proactive. I live in taking steps for this. Please reach out to me if you have any questions. And I just want you to know that you have me and my community to help support you. So I don't want you to sit in a place of fear and panic. I am trying to give you information to help you, um, tactically and practically so that you can go forward with this, but know that this is not a one stop shop. You're going to do this today and it's going to be all good. It is an ongoing thing that you have to be aware of as your kids grow up and interact with the digital world.

Speaker 1: (16:51)
So, yeah, join my freebie that mom community on Facebook and connect with me, email [email protected]. Go to my [email protected] and check out the digital resources page that I have with more information. And I will say that peer pressure is huge in this space because our kids have friends who their parents are not aware of what is going on with this type of stuff or aware of the dangers or willing to take the time to look at it or do anything about it. So we have to support each other in this space, encouraged the, that mom freeze to be a positive one on and refer them to my group, refer them to my podcast so we can help support each other and just know so that as moms we need to band together, we need to link arms and make this a long term commitment. Each other, that we're going to protect our kids.

Speaker 1: (17:38)
And we are going to fight back on these predators and all these influences that the digital world is bringing to our children. Okay. So I hope that I haven't totally freaked you out, but take action on this today. Join my free community. If you're not already in there and connect with me on social, I would love to hear more from you wherever you can connect with me and please check out my free downloads as well as get on bark or gab wireless and use my code. Be that mom for some money off. Okay. Thanks so much. Chat with you next time.

Speaker 2: (18:10)
Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join. Dolly's free community till next time.

Speaker 1: (18:23)
Hey there, before you go, I want to just give you a heads up on something. When things have been hardest in my role as a mom, the thing that was so very helpful for me was having a routine to take care of myself each day. I know that this whole thing around raising kids in a digital world is so very overwhelming. But if you have a place where you are taking care of yourself every single day with a simple routine that works despite where you are or what your schedule is, you will be able to be more present for your family and handle all of the ups and downs of this most amazing role that we could ever play in this world. So connect with me and let's get you connected to fitness and nutrition tools made by experts that will help you simplify this and then connect you with my fit club community that will support you, guide you and give you momentum and motivation to show up everyday, take care of yourself first so that you could be better present for our digital native kids.