Online predators

How to protect your children

When two teenage boys asked their church youth leader what they should do about being sexually extorted online, he advised them to keep sending explicit pictures to their blackmailer. Not for a second did the boys suspect that the man whose advice they sought might be the perpetrator. They trusted him.

But in September the 27-year-old was charged with possession of child pornography and for allegedly preying on more than 50 boys aged between 12 and 17 in Cape Town.

Children and teens are increasingly being hunted on social media. When the predators who groom them online and solicit nude images, or worse, are revealed to be adults they trust in the real world, the betrayal cuts deep.

Most at risk are children from eight to 16, say researchers.

Kevin Barbeau, co-director of Women and Men Against Child Abuse, says that online abuse has reached epidemic proportions in South Africa, and no child with a smartphone is exempt.

“During the last two years online sexual grooming and abuse has snowballed and is out of control,” he says. “We are seeing a huge increase in cases at our clinics in Johannesburg.”

Warren Lamont, a private investigator in Cape Town, says he has dealt with 15-20 cases involving online predators in the past six months.

“In nearly every instance I’ve dealt with, there’s a person of trust involved,” says Lamont. “It could be an old friend or an uncle who walked in at a sleepover.”

Lamont is one of those parents who do not allow their children to sleep out, and there are plenty of cases that support their fears. In 2014, Western Cape dentist Ian Venter was placed under house arrest after molesting a 15-year-old boy during a sleepover at his home. This year he was convicted of sexually assaulting another boy, who was 13 at the time of the attack.

Mara Glennie, head of the TEARS Foundation, a support network for survivors of rape and sexual abuse, says the online danger is often from someone known to the child.

“The predator may have met the child through their family or social activities and may then initiate contact through a social media platform,” says Glennie.

Lamont says paedophiles have been known to hunt in settings such as martial arts classes, dance lessons, sports matches or the beach.

During his investigations, Lamont says, he found that predators invariably had a drawcard with which to lure children: “He was good with a soccer ball, he was a magician, or he had a little dog.”

‘Take five pictures …’

Advocate Lizelle Africa, head of the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA’s) sexual offences and community affairs unit in the Western Cape, says online predators typically masquerade as attractive young girls or boys, a practice known as “catfishing”, to get close to children.

She says they bond over common subjects and then move on to more risky behaviour. “Send me a picture of yourself and I’ll send you one of me,” is often how it starts.

Catfishing allows predators to collect pornographic images for sale or blackmail purposes. Or worse: after many conversations, a face-to-face meeting might be set up.

“Children don’t know the danger they are putting themselves in,” says Africa.

Digital media lawyer Emma Sadleir deals with the fallout when things go badly wrong.

A recent case involved a 14-year-old boy approached online by a pretty teenage girl. One thing led to another and they exchanged compromising photos, at which point the boy discovered that the object of his digital affections was neither pretty nor a teenager, nor even a girl, but a blackmailer who threatened to embarrass him by posting his nude photos on school groups.

His parents, though shocked, were supportive and the family talked about how to respond.

“Please don’t share the photos. My parents will go to the police. Leave me alone,” the boy told the blackmailer.

The sextortionist’s response was: “Go to your room. Take five pictures, hot and horny, one at a time. If they are not good enough, do it again.”

The next morning, the boy’s mother contacted

Sadleir for help, but tracking down online predators who have masked their identities is a long and frustrating job.

Three months later, however, the boy’s predator made contact again, enabling investigators to set a trap.

The boy’s mother said: “We never thought this would happen to us. You hear about it, but it only happens to other people.”

This denial is commonplace among parents and school authorities, says Dr Antoinette Basson, head of Unisa’s Youth Research Unit.

Predators who are tracked down and prosecuted are seldom first offenders, says Lamont.

“Once a sexual offender is arrested, the other 20 victims from the past come out. There is always more than one victim.”

Detective Sgt Delene Grobler-Koonin of the serial electronic crime investigation unit in Gauteng works day and night tracking down paedophiles and exposing child porn networks in collaboration with international investigators.

Offender William Beale of Plettenberg Bay was the first South African arrested under an international police operation to crack down on child porn. In November he was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted of being in possession of 18,644 images and videos.

Joanne Barrett, advocacy manager of Women and Men Against Child Abuse, said this was the most severe sentence yet given for possession of child pornography.

‘Can I be your friend?‘

But children often keep quiet about this type of abuse because they feel scared, guilty and ashamed. Predators exploit “our secret” to get more compromising images or videos.

In the most extreme and traumatic cases, online sexual grooming of children can escalate to assault, rape, trafficking and even death.

Nizaam Ajam from Cape Town raped three of his victims and extorted thousands of images from them before he was caught.

“Can I be your friend?” he would ask girls and boys between 12 and 16 on apps like WhatsApp, Mxit and Blackberry Messenger, using a fake profile.

The victims would chat with him, thinking he was their peer, and share information. By the time he requested naked pictures, they trusted him enough to send them.

“He would threaten to expose the naked pictures if they refused to send him more,” says Eric Ntabazalila, a spokesperson for the NPA. “In three instances, he lured minor victims and raped them.”

Ajam was convicted of 148 sex crimes against children in 2016 and died in prison last year.

“SA suffers from the reputation of being the dumping ground for the worst kinds of pornography,” says Barrett. “Possessing, sharing and distributing these images makes you just as guilty of horrendous crime.”

What makes teens particularly vulnerable is the need to be popular online, fuelling reckless behaviour.

Sadleir says: “It is more important for teenagers to be popular than private, and self-esteem is driven by how many likes you get. It matters more to be liked than if that person you’re talking to is a dodgy dude.

“Instagram is a hotbed because it is all about images and it is where the teenagers are. Instagram lets you see what someone looks like and send a direct message to them.”

Kids can outwit parental controls and even the strictest parents may have no idea what abuse could be going on under their noses.

Unsupervised play

Sadleir says her firm gets cases every week of children being groomed and extorted online.

“The advent of social media is the biggest gift wrapped up in a red bow for online predators,” she says. “It has made it so easy to access children. That is why it is so problematic to allow children onto social media platforms. They don’t know the dangers.”

Virtually any social media site or online game can be risky, but some immediately raise red flags, like the app Qooh.me, which has no age restriction and no privacy settings and enables users to remain anonymous when contacting people they know.

Childline’s Gauteng director Lynn Cawood says: “Parents would not let their children play in the park unsupervised. They cannot let them play games online or be on social media unsupervised.”

On the children’s game Roblox, predators perpetrated a gang-rape scenario on a seven-year-old player’s avatar last month.

On the popular game Minecraft, British player Adam Isaac sexually groomed two children. He persuaded them to carry out sexual acts and exposed himself online before being caught and jailed for 32 months.

The abuse to which children are exposed online alters them and can wreck their lives. Glennie says they can become socially inhibited, anxious and depressed. Never being able to remove their explicit images from the internet triggers despair in some victims. Behaviours like self-cutting are a way to relieve their emotional pain — and a warning that they need help.

What’s important, says Africa, is for parents to support their children and not to delete threatening sexual texts or explicit images, but to go to the police and report these.

In March, the youth leader accused of sexual grooming was arrested again for a similar offence. He was not released on bail this time, making the children who were in his world safer.

During the last two years online sexual grooming and abuse has snowballed and is out of control Kevin Barbeau Co-director of Women and Men Against Child Abuse