Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / LITTLE SISTERS LURED BY KIDNAPPER ON ROBLOX
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Breaking news.
- 0:01Speaker 2: Two little sisters lured by a kidnapper on roadblocks? Is
- 0:07Speaker 2: your child or your team on roadblocks? If so, listen up,
- 0:12Speaker 2: good evening. I mean to see grace.
- 0:13Speaker 1: This is crime stories. I want to thank you for
- 0:16Speaker 1: being with us.
- 0:24Speaker 3: Two young teen sisters in Florida playing video games together,
- 0:27Speaker 3: completely unaware that predators are watching from the shadows of
- 0:31Speaker 3: online gaming platforms.
- 0:35Speaker 2: Watching from the shadows. That's the one good way to
- 0:38Speaker 2: put it. Do you know that predators spend twenty four
- 0:41Speaker 2: to seven praying on our teens and our children, and
- 0:45Speaker 2: they do it so easily, you might as well just
- 0:47Speaker 2: hand them the key to the front door, because that's
- 0:49Speaker 2: what they've got online.
- 0:51Speaker 1: Straight out to special guests joining us.
- 0:53Speaker 2: Sheriff John Buddenseik he is the I'm like to Sheriff
- 0:57Speaker 2: of Martin County, Florida, share thank you for being with us.
- 1:02Speaker 2: Would you say that's an accurate description that we might
- 1:07Speaker 2: as well hand out of the keys to the front door,
- 1:09Speaker 2: because these predators have a key right into your child's
- 1:14Speaker 2: bedroom where they're playing roadblocks.
- 1:17Speaker 4: Well, Nancy, you're one hundred percent right. We just experienced
- 1:20Speaker 4: that nightmare story that we tell parents over and over
- 1:23Speaker 4: and over to try to avoid, but it happened right
- 1:26Speaker 4: here in our county, right under their parents nose, And
- 1:29Speaker 4: thankfully we're able to get these girls back safely.
- 1:32Speaker 5: An Indiantown family desperately searches for missing twelve and fifteen
- 1:36Speaker 5: year old sisters they believe leeward out of their home
- 1:39Speaker 5: by a stranger on roadblocks nearly six months ago. Family
- 1:42Speaker 5: members learned the girls communicating with the stranger via Snapchat
- 1:46Speaker 5: and believe they have the situation handled. They never expected
- 1:49Speaker 5: the stranger to travel across the country in the midst
- 1:52Speaker 5: of winter storm Gianna and take them.
- 1:55Speaker 2: Worst a nightmare, worst a nightmare, back to the sheriff. Sheriff,
- 1:59Speaker 2: how are the little girls?
- 2:03Speaker 4: So one was a fifteen year old and the other
- 2:04Speaker 4: one was a twelve year old, and they started on roadblocks,
- 2:07Speaker 4: just playing games, something benign and innocent, and then this
- 2:11Speaker 4: predator latched onto them and eventually moved them over to
- 2:14Speaker 4: Snapchat and started doing the grooming that we talk about, often,
- 2:18Speaker 4: complimenting them, telling him that he loved them, sending gifts,
- 2:22Speaker 4: and before long he's driving fifteen hundred miles all the
- 2:24Speaker 4: way across the country to pick them up here in
- 2:27Speaker 4: Martin County and take them back to Omaha, Nebraska.
- 2:31Speaker 2: Good Lord in Heaven, I am going to go to
- 2:36Speaker 2: our investigative reporter in just one moment, a lexis Treshchak
- 2:38Speaker 2: Sidney Summers standing by, but now to Titania Jordan joining us.
- 2:42Speaker 2: She is the chief parent Officer at Bark Parental Controls,
- 2:47Speaker 2: author of Parenting in a Tech World. To Tanya, explain
- 2:53Speaker 2: for everybody that doesn't know what is Roadblocks and.
- 2:56Speaker 1: My children, especially my son loves roadblocks a lot as
- 3:01Speaker 1: a little boy.
- 3:01Speaker 6: What isn't Yeah, my son loves Roadblocks as well. It
- 3:07Speaker 6: is a bunch of games, a bunch of games that
- 3:12Speaker 6: are user generated, meaning you, Nancy or I could create
- 3:16Speaker 6: a digital game and anyone in the world could join
- 3:19Speaker 6: that game. We create the design, we create the communications.
- 3:23Speaker 6: It's a free for all and there's a lot of
- 3:25Speaker 6: fun there, but there's also a lot of bad. In fact,
- 3:28Speaker 6: at Bark, we analyzed eleven point one billion data points
- 3:32Speaker 6: over twenty twenty five across children's text, email, social media, search,
- 3:36Speaker 6: et cetera. And what we found was that Roadblocks was
- 3:40Speaker 6: the number two highest ranked platform for confirmed risky contact,
- 3:46Speaker 6: and the only platform that beat that was Snapchat.
- 3:49Speaker 2: Okay, I need you to repeat that to Tanya Jordan
- 3:52Speaker 2: to Tania joining us, chief parenting officer at BARK, which
- 3:56Speaker 2: I have. I'm not an ambassador, I'm not a paid spokesperson.
- 4:00Speaker 2: I have it, and it's very very sensitive. I've given
- 4:04Speaker 2: a million examples before about how I would get an alarm,
- 4:09Speaker 2: typically to my son, and then when I would I
- 4:11Speaker 2: got one the other.
- 4:12Speaker 1: Day it said sex content. I'm like what. I went
- 4:16Speaker 1: and looked at it and it was the Nancy Grace.
- 4:18Speaker 2: Show on EPSTEIN And he's a subscriber. He didn't watch
- 4:24Speaker 2: the program, but the title came up and it flagged.
- 4:27Speaker 1: Bart flagged. That's what Bart is.
- 4:29Speaker 2: But Bart aside, that stat you just gave about roadblocks
- 4:34Speaker 2: is scary?
- 4:36Speaker 1: Explain yes.
- 4:38Speaker 6: So at BARK we send alerts over a variety of
- 4:41Speaker 6: different categories, one of which is risky contact. If there
- 4:45Speaker 6: is somebody contacting your child that you should know about,
- 4:49Speaker 6: we will send you an alert. And the top platforms
- 4:52Speaker 6: that we confirmed over eleven point one billion data points
- 4:56Speaker 6: number one Snapchat, number two, roadblocks, followed by Instagram, TikTok
- 5:01Speaker 6: and discord. This is happening at scale.
- 5:04Speaker 7: You know.
- 5:04Speaker 2: Back to you Sheriff John Budenseik joining US. He is
- 5:10Speaker 2: the elected sheriff Martin County in Florida. You know, suddenly
- 5:15Speaker 2: you seem you know, you look like a big husky guy.
- 5:18Speaker 2: Suddenly you and your people, your men and women, seem
- 5:21Speaker 2: mighty small. When there are eighty three million, eighty three
- 5:27Speaker 2: million confirmed users on roadblocks, how many.
- 5:32Speaker 1: Of them do you think?
- 5:34Speaker 2: All of them are children and teens playing no and
- 5:38Speaker 2: you got you and your sheriff's force to fight them.
- 5:42Speaker 2: When did you first learn about the two little girls missing?
- 5:47Speaker 4: We learned that the two girls were gone, and within
- 5:49Speaker 4: an hour we knew we were in trouble. We had
- 5:52Speaker 4: everyone out. It was a full core press. We had
- 5:55Speaker 4: the FBI out with this. We had our analysts, our
- 5:57Speaker 4: dispatchers or detectives. We knew time was of the essence,
- 6:01Speaker 4: as it always is in these cases, and thankfully, through
- 6:05Speaker 4: some really smart quick thinking by our deputies, we're able
- 6:08Speaker 4: to start getting leads.
- 6:09Speaker 2: Straight out to Alexis Tereschuk joining US Crime Stories investigative reporter.
- 6:14Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning. What happened?
- 6:18Speaker 2: So?
- 6:18Speaker 8: These two sisters, twelve and fifteen, spent the summer playing
- 6:22Speaker 8: video games online. They played on roadblocks. They have a
- 6:25Speaker 8: great time, lots of different things. The thing is you
- 6:27Speaker 8: can talk to strangers if you have it set up
- 6:29Speaker 8: that way. So they start talking to a guy, he
- 6:32Speaker 8: is really nice to them. He's first they just talk
- 6:34Speaker 8: about the.
- 6:37Speaker 1: Alexis.
- 6:37Speaker 2: I'm sorry to stop you because I want to hear
- 6:39Speaker 2: every fact. But right there, I've got a question for
- 6:41Speaker 2: Titania Jordan. She Alexis just said you can play with
- 6:45Speaker 2: strangers if you have it set up like that. Now
- 6:49Speaker 2: because of you, Titanya, I had heard about dangers online
- 6:53Speaker 2: and whenever I would walk in, it's usually my son,
- 6:56Speaker 2: not my daughter as much, but often my son would
- 6:59Speaker 2: be playing.
- 7:00Speaker 1: I'm like, who are you playing with?
- 7:01Speaker 2: And he would go, you know this one and that
- 7:03Speaker 2: one from school and some other dude.
- 7:06Speaker 1: I'm like, what other dude?
- 7:08Speaker 2: It's probably like a sixty five year old guy in
- 7:10Speaker 2: his basement all alone in his underwear. Is that who
- 7:12Speaker 2: you want to be playing with Fortnite or whatever? And
- 7:15Speaker 2: you go ew And that is where we started playing
- 7:19Speaker 2: only with people you know in real life.
- 7:22Speaker 1: So Alexis Tereschuk is absolutely correct.
- 7:25Speaker 2: You can have it set up a certain way so
- 7:27Speaker 2: you don't play with strangers. You only play with people
- 7:30Speaker 2: you know in real life. But if you don't know that,
- 7:35Speaker 2: you know, very subtle but critical differentiation, you may be
- 7:40Speaker 2: playing with some PERV halfway around the world and not
- 7:42Speaker 2: even know it. How do you set it up so
- 7:44Speaker 2: you're not playing with strangers, Titanya.
- 7:48Speaker 6: Any parent who allows their child to play Roadblocks needs
- 7:51Speaker 6: to google three words roadblocks. Parental controls. Take the time
- 7:58Speaker 6: five to twenty minutes to set those up. Limit who
- 8:02Speaker 6: your child can communicate with. Make sure Roadblocks knows your
- 8:06Speaker 6: child's real age so it can at least do with
- 8:09Speaker 6: the very bare minimum of putting it into what they
- 8:12Speaker 6: think is an age appropriate experience.
- 8:15Speaker 2: Well, isn't it true to Tanya that the pervs can
- 8:18Speaker 2: put in I'm ten years old too.
- 8:21Speaker 6: Well, what's interesting, Nancy is because of the fire Roadblocks
- 8:24Speaker 6: has been under, they've rolled out facial recognition and identification,
- 8:29Speaker 6: and some of the time they get it right. But
- 8:31Speaker 6: there have been multiple reports of people, adults and children
- 8:35Speaker 6: letting roeblocks scan their face and Roadblocks says you're a
- 8:39Speaker 6: certain age and it's not the real age. In fact,
- 8:41Speaker 6: my son's girlfriend did it and it said she was
- 8:45Speaker 6: eighteen and she is fifteen, and so there are problems there.
- 8:49Speaker 1: Back to you, Alexis, Terreschik, I just wanted to clear
- 8:51Speaker 1: that up.
- 8:51Speaker 2: Alexis, you have a little boy too, right, so perk
- 8:54Speaker 2: up your ears so you can set it too. Not
- 8:58Speaker 2: playing with strangers Okay, now you said they were playing
- 9:01Speaker 2: over the summer, would you pick it up right there?
- 9:03Speaker 1: Please? Thank you.
- 9:05Speaker 8: They were, they're playing on the summer. They start up
- 9:06Speaker 8: there strictly on roadblocks. They're not on any other side.
- 9:09Speaker 8: They're playing games. They start talking with a guy. He
- 9:11Speaker 8: starts complimenting them. He says, Wow, you're really good at
- 9:14Speaker 8: playing this, and then he tells them to switch over
- 9:17Speaker 8: to Snapchat, which is another app that kids can have,
- 9:20Speaker 8: anybody can have on their phone, and that's where he
- 9:22Speaker 8: starts grooming them. He starts saying thing calling them like baby,
- 9:26Speaker 8: and then he starts getting really aggressive. He sends them
- 9:30Speaker 8: gifts to their home. He sends them food sort of
- 9:32Speaker 8: like you know, you'd get ice cream delivered or lunch
- 9:36Speaker 8: or snacks delivered, something that he's paying money for. So
- 9:39Speaker 8: he knows their home address and he is now sending
- 9:42Speaker 8: them gifts to their home. So they built up this
- 9:44Speaker 8: whole relationship all over the Internet, and they are actively
- 9:49Speaker 8: talking back and forth with him, and they have shared
- 9:52Speaker 8: this private information with him, so he knows exactly where
- 9:55Speaker 8: they live.
- 9:57Speaker 2: I was just about to say, Alexis, if he's sending
- 10:00Speaker 2: ice cream, sandwiches and cookies and so forth to their home.
- 10:03Speaker 1: He has their home address. Okay.
- 10:07Speaker 2: Doctor Janey Lacey is joining us a license psychotherapist, CEO
- 10:11Speaker 2: of Life Counseling Solutions, author of How to Heal from
- 10:15Speaker 2: a Toxic Relationship, host of The Resilient Professional, and you
- 10:20Speaker 2: can find her at Janey Lacy dot com. Doctor Janey,
- 10:26Speaker 2: you got to wade into the fray.
- 10:28Speaker 1: What do you have to say about this?
- 10:31Speaker 9: Nancy? My heart breaks for these families. You know, as
- 10:35Speaker 9: I just heard my cold panelistm want me. What we're
- 10:37Speaker 9: watching is the grooming behavior that's just in the digital world,
- 10:41Speaker 9: right these predators, and this predator, I should say, he
- 10:44Speaker 9: just didn't just randomly message these these girls. He strategically
- 10:48Speaker 9: build trust over time through this platform that from and
- 10:52Speaker 9: my son plays Roadblocks as well. That as parents sometimes
- 10:55Speaker 9: we just think is just the game. But that transition
- 10:58Speaker 9: that we know from road Blocks snapshot, it shows that
- 11:02Speaker 9: there was calculated escalation. You know, he was isolating them.
- 11:06Speaker 9: He built that foss sense of intimacy as we just
- 11:08Speaker 9: hurtzenthing them gifts, and then he exploited that. He exploited that.
- 11:12Speaker 9: And this is exactly how predators operate, whether it's online
- 11:15Speaker 9: or in person.
- 11:16Speaker 2: Nancy, I'm looking at the screens. Our control room is
- 11:20Speaker 2: playing again. Remember Tatania said that you create your own game.
- 11:25Speaker 2: You can have football players, you could have a girls
- 11:28Speaker 2: soccer team. It could be in a dance class, it
- 11:31Speaker 2: could be on Broadway. You create the game you want
- 11:34Speaker 2: to play, and you're seeing a lot of those choices.
- 11:38Speaker 2: It's whatever you can imagine. You create that game. Oh,
- 11:43Speaker 2: there you go. There's a race car gonna be Formula one,
- 11:46Speaker 2: it gonna be Nascar, all sorts of things.
- 11:48Speaker 1: And doesn't it look fun? Sidney Sumner joining us crime stories?
- 11:53Speaker 1: Don't they look fun?
- 11:54Speaker 2: All these scenarios, the football zone, the merch this that
- 12:00Speaker 2: it's a Pretein, a Twain or.
- 12:02Speaker 1: A Tane's dream.
- 12:05Speaker 10: Absolutely, you can be anything you want. You can go
- 12:08Speaker 10: anywhere you want and use correctly, well correctly as a
- 12:12Speaker 10: vague term. But I see my nieces and nephews all
- 12:16Speaker 10: the time playing together they can meet up in this
- 12:19Speaker 10: video game world and go play these games together even
- 12:22Speaker 10: when they're not sitting together in the same home. So
- 12:26Speaker 10: it really is supposed to be this wonderful tool, this
- 12:31Speaker 10: online gaming experience, for young children to be able to
- 12:34Speaker 10: enjoy this together. But you have all of these predators,
- 12:39Speaker 10: all of these grown adults using this as a hunting ground.
- 12:44Speaker 11: Bright in Ely Saturday morning, two Indian town sisters head
- 12:47Speaker 11: to a park near their home. When their grandparents find
- 12:50Speaker 11: out they may be meeting an online friend at the park,
- 12:53Speaker 11: the girls are picked up and grounded, not allowed to
- 12:55Speaker 11: leave home or have access to their phones. But when
- 12:58Speaker 11: they're called out of their rooms for dinner around six pm,
- 13:01Speaker 11: the girls are nowhere to be found.
- 13:04Speaker 2: Just hearing that run puts a chill down my spine.
- 13:08Speaker 2: Joining me is an acclaimed lawyer, Ben Powers, criminal defense attorney,
- 13:15Speaker 2: and you can find him on Facebook at Legal Powers.
- 13:18Speaker 1: Ben. Thank you for being with us.
- 13:21Speaker 2: This reminds me so much of Abby and Libby, the
- 13:26Speaker 2: two beautiful little girls in Delphi who went out to
- 13:31Speaker 2: a public park and they never came home. Ben, they
- 13:36Speaker 2: never came home.
- 13:38Speaker 12: It is a concerning issue with roadblocks, because what roadblocks
- 13:43Speaker 12: really is at its core is the Internet with a
- 13:47Speaker 12: candy shop kind of been near to it. It's like
- 13:50Speaker 12: cartoony characters, a lot of child friendly type images as
- 13:54Speaker 12: far as the types of games you can make and
- 13:56Speaker 12: the character types and things like that. It's definitely geared
- 13:59Speaker 12: towards children. But what we're really talking about is the
- 14:03Speaker 12: Internet with messaging capabilities that anyone can access. And it's
- 14:07Speaker 12: just got a real flowery, nice kind of image to it.
- 14:11Speaker 12: But it really is the Internet in the most broadest form,
- 14:15Speaker 12: with adults and children alike on there.
- 14:18Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guarantee you be in powers.
- 14:19Speaker 2: If all the adults knew how many pervs, how many
- 14:26Speaker 2: it's typically men playing with the children, they wouldn't let
- 14:31Speaker 2: their child touch it with a ten foot pole. Back
- 14:33Speaker 2: to special Guests joining us. Sheriff John Budenzik. He is
- 14:37Speaker 2: the elected sheriff Martin County. So when you first got
- 14:41Speaker 2: the call, who called?
- 14:45Speaker 4: The grandparents called the Sheriff's office, at which point our
- 14:48Speaker 4: rope patrow, our first responders went out to the house
- 14:51Speaker 4: and they just started a conversation. Try. We thought initially
- 14:54Speaker 4: that the girls were just simply out for the night
- 14:56Speaker 4: around town. They started looking in the area they were
- 14:58Speaker 4: in as a small.
- 14:59Speaker 1: Town out for the night, around town. One of them
- 15:03Speaker 1: is twelve years old. What do you mean, man around town, out.
- 15:07Speaker 4: For the nine evening, out for the evening.
- 15:09Speaker 1: Twelve years old, the town.
- 15:12Speaker 4: Go back to that. It's six o'clock at night. It's
- 15:14Speaker 4: a small community, tight knit community. And they thought the
- 15:17Speaker 4: girls had walked to a convenience store right by their
- 15:19Speaker 4: house or they were close by.
- 15:21Speaker 1: Okay, So so, okay, that's a.
- 15:24Speaker 2: Lot more acceptable than two little girls out on the town. Yes,
- 15:30Speaker 2: got it. We did that many time, sheriff. In the
- 15:32Speaker 2: little community where I grew up, nothing but pine trees
- 15:35Speaker 2: and soybean fields as far as you could see. And
- 15:37Speaker 2: the big, the big thrill was to walk to the
- 15:40Speaker 2: convenience store.
- 15:42Speaker 1: That was a good two miles one way. Okay, back
- 15:45Speaker 1: to your story.
- 15:47Speaker 4: So that convenience store, by the way, is only about
- 15:49Speaker 4: two hundred yards from their house. They exhausted those resources
- 15:52Speaker 4: immediately figured out the girls were in fact gone. The
- 15:55Speaker 4: family was instrumental in this. They had been diligent, like
- 15:57Speaker 4: our co panelist said and noted that they were in
- 16:00Speaker 4: midsummer on chats on roadblocks and snapchat, and our detectives
- 16:06Speaker 4: at that point are starting to enter into this scene
- 16:09Speaker 4: and trying to figure out who any of these individuals
- 16:12Speaker 4: were on social media.
- 16:14Speaker 2: Sure, if I don't want to interrupt, but you said
- 16:15Speaker 2: something about the family had ferreted out that they did
- 16:19Speaker 2: not go to the convenience store. What had the family
- 16:22Speaker 2: done to find them before they called you?
- 16:25Speaker 4: The family and friends had done their own neighborhood search
- 16:28Speaker 4: around the close knit community and realized that the girls
- 16:31Speaker 4: were not there. They caught our deputies. Our deputies started
- 16:35Speaker 4: asking the questions. Of course, they realized that the girls
- 16:37Speaker 4: were not in the immediate area, and then they started
- 16:40Speaker 4: asking are there any other options here? Is there any
- 16:43Speaker 4: anything else that it could have taken place? And the
- 16:45Speaker 4: family said, well, back in the middle of the summer
- 16:48Speaker 4: months ago, we caught the girls on roadblocks and then
- 16:52Speaker 4: on Snapchat communicating with an individual. They didn't know who
- 16:55Speaker 4: the individual was, they didn't know where they were from,
- 16:57Speaker 4: but they knew they were communicating, and the family actually
- 17:00Speaker 4: shut that down. Unbeknownst to them, the girls reignited that
- 17:05Speaker 4: conversation on Snapchat and continued that conversation.
- 17:10Speaker 1: Well, go on just a.
- 17:11Speaker 2: Moment, Sheriff, I got another question for you. I got
- 17:13Speaker 2: a question for you. You got me drinking from the
- 17:15Speaker 2: fire hydrant. Here so many facts at once. First of all,
- 17:19Speaker 2: I know you've heard this too. People second guess the family,
- 17:23Speaker 2: such as why did it take so long to call.
- 17:25Speaker 1: Nine one one?
- 17:26Speaker 2: Well, when your child is not in their room, you
- 17:29Speaker 2: don't pick up your cell phone out of your pocket
- 17:31Speaker 2: and call nine one one. You go look in the kitchen,
- 17:34Speaker 2: you go, look in the basement, you look everywhere else.
- 17:36Speaker 2: You go in the front yard. You go in the backyard,
- 17:38Speaker 2: you try to call their cell phone. You might call
- 17:40Speaker 2: a friend, you might look around the neighborhood before you go, Okay,
- 17:44Speaker 2: this is bad.
- 17:45Speaker 1: I got to call nine one one. The family did that.
- 17:49Speaker 2: Then the family says that there had been a roadblocks
- 17:53Speaker 2: problem over the summer, and they shut it down. I
- 17:56Speaker 2: guarantee you, Sheriff, the first time they realized there's a
- 18:00Speaker 2: problem was probably when ice cream or some sort of
- 18:04Speaker 2: treat arrived at a door at the door from somebody
- 18:08Speaker 2: they've never heard of.
- 18:09Speaker 1: That's a real wake up. And the way you.
- 18:14Speaker 2: Said it was absolutely accurate. But it makes the girls
- 18:19Speaker 2: sound sneaky.
- 18:21Speaker 1: All children think they know more than all parents.
- 18:25Speaker 2: So the children think that they know this person, and
- 18:29Speaker 2: they're like, there's nothing wrong with him, so we're going
- 18:32Speaker 2: to do it in secret.
- 18:34Speaker 1: Mom and dad.
- 18:34Speaker 2: They just don't understand. So they're not horrible, sneaky and
- 18:40Speaker 2: ruly children. They just thought they knew better, but they didn't. Okay,
- 18:46Speaker 2: back to you were saying, the family told you about
- 18:50Speaker 2: the communications over the summer.
- 18:53Speaker 1: Then what happened.
- 18:55Speaker 4: Our detectives asked to see the devices. They look nothing
- 18:59Speaker 4: on the devices, gaming app, no Snapchat, nothing on there.
- 19:02Speaker 4: And then one of our detectives actually had the thought,
- 19:05Speaker 4: maybe I can re download Snapchat and just see what's
- 19:09Speaker 4: on there, and he did, and immediately after re downloading
- 19:13Speaker 4: that app, this long thread of communication popped up. In
- 19:17Speaker 4: that threat of communication was an individual's face who was
- 19:22Speaker 4: communicating with them and telling them be careful. I can
- 19:25Speaker 4: get in trouble for this communication. I'm coming to get you.
- 19:30Speaker 4: Don't stand me up. I love you, and just a
- 19:34Speaker 4: long thread and in that thankfully get taken.
- 19:38Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I just just got up off the floor.
- 19:41Speaker 1: I fell off my chair.
- 19:43Speaker 2: I cannot imagine sheriff looking at my daughter's or my
- 19:49Speaker 2: son's cell phone and finding out that she has been
- 19:55Speaker 2: back and forth with a grown man. And I see
- 19:58Speaker 2: his face looking right at me, I would fall over
- 20:04Speaker 2: and this Sydney Center, this was the grandparents.
- 20:06Speaker 10: Correct, Yes, the grandparents were taking care of these sisters
- 20:11Speaker 10: that day.
- 20:11Speaker 4: At approximate eight pm on Saturday night, our Roe Patrol
- 20:15Speaker 4: deputies in Indian Town responded to a call for service
- 20:19Speaker 4: and learned that there were two missing females, a twelve
- 20:22Speaker 4: year old and a fifteen year old. They had gone
- 20:25Speaker 4: missing a few hours earlier, they believed the same day,
- 20:28Speaker 4: at about nine in the morning, these same two girls
- 20:30Speaker 4: had gone to a local park there in Indiantown, had
- 20:33Speaker 4: been found by a family member, brought back to their home, punished,
- 20:38Speaker 4: and part of that punishment was having two of their
- 20:41Speaker 4: cellular devices removed from their person.
- 20:48Speaker 3: What starts as an innocent connection on roadblocks quickly deepens.
- 20:51Speaker 3: A new friend gains their trust through games and chats,
- 20:55Speaker 3: then pushes the relationship onto more private forms of communication.
- 21:00Speaker 4: There was a potential suspect already in this case, and
- 21:04Speaker 4: that suspect had been identified through a snapchat at back
- 21:08Speaker 4: in twenty twenty five. In the middle of twenty twenty five,
- 21:11Speaker 4: and the family members suggested to our deputies that an
- 21:15Speaker 4: individual on that app may be involved in these girls disappearing.
- 21:20Speaker 2: Holy moly, no, I want to see the bookend photo please,
- 21:24Speaker 2: because there he looks very Yeah, Alexis Tereschuk. What if
- 21:31Speaker 2: you go on and find out this is who your daughter?
- 21:35Speaker 2: I want to see him again, please, is chatting with
- 21:38Speaker 2: It's a grown man.
- 21:41Speaker 1: That's not a ten year old boy. That's not a
- 21:44Speaker 1: seventeen year old boy. That's a grown man.
- 21:49Speaker 8: It is not a classmate at all. It is somebody
- 21:51Speaker 8: that lived thousands of miles away. He is a full
- 21:54Speaker 8: adult and he is chatting with not one, but two
- 21:56Speaker 8: both of these sisters, telling them he loves them, love
- 21:59Speaker 8: them really, you know, with gifts and but sneaky, being
- 22:03Speaker 8: really sneaky and telling them to switch over to a
- 22:05Speaker 8: different app because Rollbucks. You know, the parents could stop
- 22:08Speaker 8: at Snapchat. It's a little bit harder, and in fact,
- 22:11Speaker 8: you know, the parent the grandparents took what they thought
- 22:14Speaker 8: was every step of protection. After they got the girls
- 22:16Speaker 8: out of the park and brought them home, said you're
- 22:18Speaker 8: in trouble. Your grounded standing room. They took away their phones,
- 22:21Speaker 8: but there was a tablet in the house, you know,
- 22:23Speaker 8: like an iPad or something and that way they were
- 22:25Speaker 8: able to then access it and they told him, they said, oh,
- 22:28Speaker 8: we can't come, we can't meet, and he insisted. He
- 22:31Speaker 8: continued to say, I miss you, I love you. You
- 22:33Speaker 8: have to come with me. He would not give up.
- 22:36Speaker 1: God, girls don't know how to respond to that.
- 22:39Speaker 2: Doctor, James Lacy, you tell a little twelve year old girl,
- 22:42Speaker 2: I love you, I love you.
- 22:43Speaker 1: You know I could get in trouble for meeting you.
- 22:46Speaker 2: Very Romeo Juliet type scenario. The family can't find out.
- 22:52Speaker 2: That is extremely sneaky, and it is a ploy used
- 22:55Speaker 2: by sex predators online.
- 22:59Speaker 9: All the time. Nancy, You know what happens is those
- 23:02Speaker 9: predators they lurk in these spaces where children congregate, and
- 23:07Speaker 9: these platforms are so sophisticated. You know, we think about
- 23:10Speaker 9: what we're talking about, roadblocks and the chat platform, social media.
- 23:14Speaker 9: They look for those vulnerabilities, kids who seem lonely, that
- 23:18Speaker 9: are seeking attention or going through some type of family structure,
- 23:22Speaker 9: and then they'll present themselves as either a peer, a friend,
- 23:25Speaker 9: someone who gets them, and they'll shower them with that attention,
- 23:28Speaker 9: those compliments, that validation, and in this case, he likely
- 23:32Speaker 9: positioned himself as someone cool, understanding and maybe even a
- 23:36Speaker 9: romantic interest. And then what we'll see is then they
- 23:39Speaker 9: move those conversations exactly what happened off the original platform,
- 23:43Speaker 9: to more private spaces where there's less monitoring, and the
- 23:46Speaker 9: messages in this case disappear, and this creates that secrecy,
- 23:50Speaker 9: and then we'll see they'll gradually introduce curious content.
- 23:54Speaker 2: Mm hm, Alexis Terresta. You stated that he began love
- 23:59Speaker 2: bombing them. What do you mean by that?
- 24:02Speaker 8: It is like an obsessive, relentless telling you I love you,
- 24:06Speaker 8: telling you how great you are, And you called them baby,
- 24:07Speaker 8: called them sweet, sending gifts to the house. That is
- 24:10Speaker 8: really just crossing the line again because these girls are
- 24:13Speaker 8: twelve and fifteen. These are little children. They cannot drive yet,
- 24:17Speaker 8: as you see in the pictures where they're not showing
- 24:19Speaker 8: their face, they're wearing like Christmas light necklaces. They're very young,
- 24:23Speaker 8: little children. But love bombing is just a consistent of
- 24:27Speaker 8: just relentlessly telling you how much they love you. And
- 24:29Speaker 8: it's not even a sincere love thing, it's just an
- 24:32Speaker 8: obsessive statement.
- 24:34Speaker 2: Sendey Sumner, what type of things did he send to
- 24:39Speaker 2: the home?
- 24:40Speaker 10: Understanding? It was mostly food items like sweet treats or snacks,
- 24:45Speaker 10: things of that nature.
- 24:47Speaker 1: Wow, just what a teen girl would like.
- 24:49Speaker 2: So, Sheriff, when you began, how did you manage to
- 24:53Speaker 2: go back in time on the device to find this
- 24:57Speaker 2: man's picture?
- 25:00Speaker 4: Is the thinking of one of our deputies that just
- 25:02Speaker 4: they understand apps, they realize there's a potential if we
- 25:06Speaker 4: re download the app that the thread may still be there.
- 25:10Speaker 4: And that's exactly what happened. The deputies got a hold
- 25:13Speaker 4: of the digital device that these girls were using to
- 25:16Speaker 4: communicate with that individual, saw that the Snapcha Snapchat app
- 25:22Speaker 4: was deleted holistically from the device, had the thought process
- 25:26Speaker 4: to reload the device, and when they did, they could
- 25:29Speaker 4: see a constant threat of communication between this individual and
- 25:31Speaker 4: these two young girls, to include the suspect who you
- 25:36Speaker 4: see behind me driving to Indiantown, Florida to pick these
- 25:40Speaker 4: girls up and leave.
- 25:42Speaker 2: Sheriff, what went through your mind when you saw this
- 25:46Speaker 2: face appear in the history.
- 25:50Speaker 4: That we're dealing with nothing but trouble here. Nothing good
- 25:53Speaker 4: is going to come out of this incident.
- 25:58Speaker 3: The conversations quickly moved to Snapchat, daily messages, growing emotional bonds,
- 26:03Speaker 3: and even food deliveries sent to the girls home, blurring
- 26:07Speaker 3: the lines between online friend and predator.
- 26:10Speaker 4: So this individual lived in Omaha, Nebraska and was potentially
- 26:14Speaker 4: just giving them little things that they that they needed
- 26:17Speaker 4: and just making them feel good about themselves. He complimented
- 26:20Speaker 4: them through the app, called the older girl baby, referred
- 26:24Speaker 4: to her romantically, and then sent her things. So that's
- 26:27Speaker 4: all addicative of what we see in some of.
- 26:29Speaker 2: These Sheriff, you stated that this guy lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
- 26:36Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be what a fifteen and to twenty hour drive.
- 26:41Speaker 4: It's one five hundred miles away. It's a twenty three
- 26:45Speaker 4: hour drive.
- 26:46Speaker 2: Good gravy too, Ben Powers, joining US veteran criminal defense attorney.
- 26:53Speaker 1: Ben, if you're.
- 26:54Speaker 2: The defense attorney here, you got a lot of explaining
- 26:57Speaker 2: to do. He had twenty three hours to plot and
- 27:01Speaker 2: plan the kidnap of two little girls, one twelve years old.
- 27:05Speaker 12: Well, so it's an interesting legal argument or situation with
- 27:11Speaker 12: this story, because one, I would want to know more
- 27:14Speaker 12: specifically what the communications were. If they're just saying positive
- 27:18Speaker 12: things and suggesting or even sending that I'll buy you
- 27:21Speaker 12: food or sending ice cream sandwiches. As unnerving as that is,
- 27:27Speaker 12: there's technically not anything illegal in something like that, but
- 27:30Speaker 12: if the communication is more sexual, then there are criminal
- 27:35Speaker 12: code violations for that. But then also with a kidnapping,
- 27:39Speaker 12: I mean if they go volunteerily voluntarily, you know, kidnapping
- 27:44Speaker 12: is against someone's will, not with their will. And so
- 27:47Speaker 12: if he's been love bombing on to where they go voluntarily,
- 27:52Speaker 12: it's all going to come back to the communications, because
- 27:54Speaker 12: communications are where his criminal exposure is the actual riding
- 27:58Speaker 12: at car with them, short of something more. Since it
- 28:02Speaker 12: does seem that they went voluntarily with them, I'm not
- 28:06Speaker 12: sure there's a criminal offense that's been a luge been Powers.
- 28:11Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question. Do you think I
- 28:14Speaker 2: just fell off the turnip truck? No, ma'am okay, you
- 28:21Speaker 2: do know that I practiced criminal law as a prosecutor
- 28:25Speaker 2: for over ten years as a FED and a state
- 28:27Speaker 2: violent crimes prosecutor.
- 28:29Speaker 1: Yes, yes, ma'am okay, mister Powers.
- 28:35Speaker 2: Isn't it true that someone under the age of consent
- 28:39Speaker 2: cannot give consent?
- 28:40Speaker 1: That's why they call it the age.
- 28:42Speaker 2: Of consent, right, So, if you're twelve years old or
- 28:46Speaker 2: even fifteen years old in most jurisdictions, you cannot consent.
- 28:50Speaker 1: To You can't. Let's see, you can't enter into.
- 28:52Speaker 2: A contract, you can't go buy a car, you can't
- 28:56Speaker 2: buy a house, even if you have a million dollars.
- 28:58Speaker 1: You can't even buy a pack of cigarette. Isn't that true?
- 29:00Speaker 12: Being powers, it is an age of consent would be
- 29:03Speaker 12: for like some type of sexual contact, but just getting
- 29:07Speaker 12: in a vehicle is something that they can consent to doing.
- 29:11Speaker 12: And especially when we're talking about falseham prisoning or kidnapping,
- 29:15Speaker 12: inherently requires without their consent. I think that's going to
- 29:19Speaker 12: be a problem for the prosecutor with that type of
- 29:21Speaker 12: charge under these facts. But I'm sure those communications will well.
- 29:25Speaker 2: If he didn't, if he thought there wasn't something wrong
- 29:28Speaker 2: with it. When they had to come home from their
- 29:31Speaker 2: first aborted meeting with him that morning and he was saying,
- 29:35Speaker 2: don't let your family find out, that would suggest to
- 29:38Speaker 2: me that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
- 29:41Speaker 2: So I think I've got someone that's going to disagree
- 29:44Speaker 2: with you. Being powers, Sheriff, is it okay to lure
- 29:50Speaker 2: little girls into your car and drive away.
- 29:54Speaker 4: It absolutely is not, And of course this case will
- 29:56Speaker 4: be litigated. But no twelve or fifteen years old, there
- 30:00Speaker 4: is a reason why we have an age of consent
- 30:02Speaker 4: for other things, and you hit the nail on the head.
- 30:04Speaker 4: These girls were not mature enough and old enough to
- 30:06Speaker 4: make that decision. The girls initially appeared to have intended
- 30:10Speaker 4: to hook up with him in the morning at the park.
- 30:12Speaker 4: That did not happen. They were disciplined broad home, their
- 30:15Speaker 4: devices were taken away, and our suspect was then milling
- 30:19Speaker 4: around any in town for a period of time.
- 30:22Speaker 1: Isn't it true?
- 30:22Speaker 2: Sheriff John biddenseiek that he the purp. Excuse me, The
- 30:28Speaker 2: alleged purp was saying comments like I drove all this way,
- 30:33Speaker 2: Please don't leave me hanging.
- 30:35Speaker 1: Come on, I've driven twenty x hours to see you.
- 30:38Speaker 1: You gotta come back.
- 30:40Speaker 2: I mean, he was really pressuring a twelve and fifteen
- 30:43Speaker 2: year old little girl.
- 30:46Speaker 4: Not only that, nance, he also reminded them of the
- 30:49Speaker 4: severity of what he was getting them into. He knew
- 30:52Speaker 4: he could get in trouble for this, so he pressured
- 30:55Speaker 4: them and reminded them that what he was doing was
- 30:57Speaker 4: illegal and he could get in trouble, saying Sheriff, he
- 31:01Speaker 4: was just saying, if anybody finds out, I could get arrested.
- 31:04Speaker 4: If anybody finds out, I could get in trouble. So
- 31:06Speaker 4: he was warning them. He was trying to recruit them
- 31:09Speaker 4: to be secretive so they could carry out their plot
- 31:11Speaker 4: of him picking them up and leaving our area.
- 31:14Speaker 2: And isn't it true, Sheriff, he actually took a picture
- 31:18Speaker 2: of himself at the Indian Town Circle K and send
- 31:23Speaker 2: it to the girls.
- 31:25Speaker 4: He did, and that was an important piece of our puzzle.
- 31:28Speaker 4: Thankfully he did, because it put him at our gas station.
- 31:31Speaker 4: We're able to get a tag number from being at
- 31:34Speaker 4: that gas station, so it was a critical piece of
- 31:36Speaker 4: evidence for us. And then what happened, So again we
- 31:39Speaker 4: called everybody out. We knew, as in any of these
- 31:42Speaker 4: missing persons cases, time is of the essence, and we
- 31:45Speaker 4: called our analyst out. We were able to do some
- 31:48Speaker 4: orders to the to snapchat specifically and get some IP
- 31:52Speaker 4: addresses and really start tracking back devices. Keep in mind,
- 31:55Speaker 4: the girls didn't have devices, so the only one that
- 31:58Speaker 4: had devices was this mysterious that we had a picture of,
- 32:01Speaker 4: but we had no idea what it was. So we
- 32:03Speaker 4: were able to start getting some device information and then
- 32:06Speaker 4: start nearing in on our suspect through the tag number
- 32:10Speaker 4: and that device he was possessing.
- 32:12Speaker 2: Now, isn't it true he was communicating with your detectives
- 32:16Speaker 2: but didn't realize it, or did he realize it.
- 32:19Speaker 4: The family, unbeknownst to us at that time, reached out
- 32:22Speaker 4: to him on Snapchat and was asking him about the girls.
- 32:27Speaker 4: So he did what you see a lot of these
- 32:29Speaker 4: criminals doing. He started feigning his concern. Oh, please, I'm
- 32:35Speaker 4: worried about them. Please let me know that they're okay.
- 32:37Speaker 4: So he starts this conversation. All the while he's driving
- 32:41Speaker 4: northbound on I seventy five with these girls in his custody,
- 32:44Speaker 4: and he's feigning that he cares about their safety. He's
- 32:48Speaker 4: acting that he's worried that something bad is going to
- 32:51Speaker 4: happen to him and he's the problem. He's driving him
- 32:53Speaker 4: down the road.
- 32:54Speaker 2: So wait, let me understand this year Sheriff John Budenseig, he's.
- 32:59Speaker 1: Writing, where are the girls? Where are they? What happened
- 33:01Speaker 1: to them? I'm worrying. I want to help you find them.
- 33:04Speaker 2: And all the time they're in the car and they've
- 33:06Speaker 2: got the pedal to the middle up seventy five, which
- 33:09Speaker 2: goes all the way from Florida, all the way to
- 33:10Speaker 2: New York City, right.
- 33:12Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
- 33:14Speaker 1: Yes, what happened then, Sheriff.
- 33:18Speaker 4: Well, we knew we had to reach out to other jurisdictions.
- 33:21Speaker 4: We started in the state of Florida. Florida Higher Patrol
- 33:23Speaker 4: was contacted, they could not quite catch him before he
- 33:27Speaker 4: exited the state. He exits our state in the Georgia,
- 33:30Speaker 4: and thankfully the Georgia Higher Patrol was contacted by us,
- 33:34Speaker 4: and we're able to make a traffic stop on that
- 33:37Speaker 4: vehicle and take our suspect in the custody and most importantly,
- 33:43Speaker 4: recover those girls for us safely. Six forty five, he's
- 33:46Speaker 4: leaving any in town and right around one am in
- 33:49Speaker 4: the morning on Sunday morning, the Georgia State Patrol was
- 33:52Speaker 4: able to stop that vehicle just inside of the state
- 33:55Speaker 4: of Georgia. So I'm trying to do the math that
- 33:58Speaker 4: fast five or six hours.
- 34:00Speaker 1: Sheareff.
- 34:00Speaker 2: You acted, you acted quickly, you acted decisively, and you
- 34:04Speaker 2: saved the girls' lives. What happened when you finally saw
- 34:09Speaker 2: the girls and saw the alleged purp.
- 34:14Speaker 4: We had a collective sigh of relief amongst us. The
- 34:17Speaker 4: family came out, they were crying, They realized what could
- 34:20Speaker 4: have happened. They were thanking us profusely, and we just
- 34:23Speaker 4: felt that elated feeling of doing our job, doing it effectively,
- 34:27Speaker 4: and we knew what we'd accomplished.
- 34:30Speaker 2: You know, Sheriff, if you never do another good thing,
- 34:38Speaker 2: which I doubt, you have done this, and you have
- 34:43Speaker 2: saved two girls from we don't know from what, got
- 34:46Speaker 2: a pretty good idea, and you definitely got your angel's wings.
- 34:54Speaker 2: Finally I get to report a story with a happy ending.
- 34:59Speaker 1: But it it's not always that way, is it.
- 35:01Speaker 4: Sheriff, They really are. We're still reeling from a missing
- 35:06Speaker 4: girl in nineteen ninety three from our area. That's thirty
- 35:08Speaker 4: plus years ago. We're still feeling the effects of that.
- 35:12Speaker 4: There is no application online that's safe, No application online
- 35:18Speaker 4: that's safe, be it a gaming ad, be it Snapchat,
- 35:21Speaker 4: being it something as user friendly as Instagram or any
- 35:27Speaker 4: social media application. If you can communicate with somebody away
- 35:32Speaker 4: from your house, in the quiet of your own room,
- 35:34Speaker 4: it can be a problem.
- 35:38Speaker 2: Straight out to Titanya Jordan joining US chief parent Officer
- 35:43Speaker 2: bart Parental Controls. She is the author of Parenting in
- 35:47Speaker 2: a Tech World. To Tanya again, thank you for being
- 35:51Speaker 2: with us to Tanya. We have to explain how to
- 35:56Speaker 2: help students' children Twains. But before you start, I want
- 36:01Speaker 2: you to hear this story. And it's not just a story.
- 36:05Speaker 2: This is real. Parents believe their little boy met someone
- 36:12Speaker 2: on roadblocks, left to go meet with them. The next
- 36:18Speaker 2: thing we know, he's dead. He committed suicide. He jumped
- 36:24Speaker 2: from a bridge. Now Roadblocks are saying we're not involved.
- 36:30Speaker 2: There are claims Roadblocks not involved. The parents say yes
- 36:34Speaker 2: they are. We don't know the truth yet, Dave Matt.
- 36:36Speaker 1: What happened, Nancy.
- 36:38Speaker 11: What we have is we've got a little boy who
- 36:42Speaker 11: is using, is on roadblocks, and he meets somebody, you know,
- 36:47Speaker 11: by using on roadblocks and is communicating with this individual
- 36:52Speaker 11: and gets lured away. He's last seen leaving. Are actually
- 37:00Speaker 11: last seen at a train station with his backpack on
- 37:04Speaker 11: and carrying something. That's the last thing that we know,
- 37:09Speaker 11: and roadblocks's there he is.
- 37:13Speaker 1: That's Thomas Medline.
- 37:14Speaker 11: He's fifteen years old. And it's one of those shocking things, Nancy,
- 37:20Speaker 11: that we've been talking about for years about young people
- 37:23Speaker 11: being lured away from the safety of their homes and
- 37:27Speaker 11: with parents who are actively involved, and still predators have
- 37:32Speaker 11: a way of getting to our young kids, and that's
- 37:35Speaker 11: what apparently happened here with Thomas Medline. He's fifteen when
- 37:39Speaker 11: he leaves school, you know, he left like at three
- 37:41Speaker 11: thirty in the afternoon, right for school, gets off and
- 37:44Speaker 11: he's last seen crossing the bridge, the pedestrian walk on
- 37:48Speaker 11: the bridge, and that's it. That's the last photos we
- 37:52Speaker 11: have of him, and then he's gone, which leads.
- 37:55Speaker 2: Me to my friend Alisha Koleskevich, who actually survived a
- 38:01Speaker 2: horrific kidnap and a brutal torture.
- 38:05Speaker 7: I spent a lot of time online talking to my
- 38:06Speaker 7: friends from school, and at the time, it felt like
- 38:09Speaker 7: it was a clubhouse. Three woitd calling was still a thing,
- 38:11Speaker 7: and I remember explaining it to my mom and it
- 38:13Speaker 7: was like three way calling with as many people as
- 38:15Speaker 7: you want, and it was in the family room, and
- 38:18Speaker 7: it it should have been safe, but I didn't have
- 38:21Speaker 7: the tools to keep myself safe, and neither did my family.
- 38:24Speaker 7: And there I was in a chat room and somebody
- 38:28Speaker 7: messaged me, and I thought that it was a boy
- 38:29Speaker 7: around my own age, so I trusted that this person
- 38:32Speaker 7: was who they said they were. I was who I
- 38:34Speaker 7: said I was. Why would somebody lie That never came
- 38:38Speaker 7: up in my mind, and he immediately began to groom me,
- 38:42Speaker 7: And of course I didn't know it at the time.
- 38:43Speaker 7: There were no red flags, and none that I could
- 38:45Speaker 7: be aware of. He began acting as though he was
- 38:48Speaker 7: my friend. We sat around the dinner table, We laughed.
- 38:51Speaker 7: It was the holiday. We had a family meal, which
- 38:54Speaker 7: we would.
- 38:55Speaker 1: Have every year.
- 38:55Speaker 7: It was a good buck meal, and my mom and
- 38:58Speaker 7: dad were there, my brother and his girlfriend, and my grandma.
- 39:00Speaker 7: So it's a really beautiful evening. The snow was falling,
- 39:04Speaker 7: and I asked my mother if I could be excused
- 39:06Speaker 7: from the table, and instead of going upstairs to lie down,
- 39:09Speaker 7: I slipped out of the front door, past the Christmas
- 39:11Speaker 7: tree that was up, and into the coldest, darkest, iciest
- 39:14Speaker 7: night of the year. And to tell you how effective
- 39:15Speaker 7: grooming is, I was a child who was really quite
- 39:18Speaker 7: scared of the dark, hated the cold with a passion,
- 39:21Speaker 7: and never went outside alone after dark. Yet completely out
- 39:24Speaker 7: of my character, I walked out of that front door
- 39:27Speaker 7: and didn't take my coat. I left the door open
- 39:29Speaker 7: just a little bit because I was planning on coming
- 39:31Speaker 7: right back through it and out into my neighborhood, and
- 39:34Speaker 7: this is my neighborhood and it should be safe. And
- 39:38Speaker 7: again it was beautiful. The snow was untouched, and there
- 39:41Speaker 7: were Christmas lights in the windows, and it was a
- 39:44Speaker 7: really beautiful, quiet, peaceful night, which soon became my hell.
- 39:49Speaker 7: I walked up the street just about a block or so,
- 39:51Speaker 7: and if I turned around, I could still.
- 39:52Speaker 8: See my house.
- 39:54Speaker 7: So I thought, okay, well there's my house. I must
- 39:57Speaker 7: be safe again. Neighborhood, this is my familiar. Finally, this
- 40:01Speaker 7: little voice spoke up in my head, my intuition, which
- 40:04Speaker 7: I ask everybody to listen to and to teach your
- 40:07Speaker 7: children to listen, to pay attention to it, because it
- 40:10Speaker 7: is there for a reason. I heard this little boy say, Alicia,
- 40:13Speaker 7: this is dangerous. Go home now. And I turned around
- 40:16Speaker 7: and next thing I know is in a car, and
- 40:19Speaker 7: this man was squeezing my hand so tightly that I
- 40:21Speaker 7: thought he had broken it, and he was barking commands
- 40:23Speaker 7: at me, be good, be quiet. The trunks cleaned out
- 40:26Speaker 7: for you. He showed me that he had handcuffs. And
- 40:29Speaker 7: people ask me, when did you know that you were
- 40:31Speaker 7: in danger? When did you become afraid? And it was
- 40:34Speaker 7: absolutely immediately I knew that I was no longer in
- 40:38Speaker 7: control of my life.
- 40:39Speaker 1: And then the story, believe it or not, gets worse.
- 40:43Speaker 7: He just continued to drive, and there were told booth
- 40:44Speaker 7: after told booth, and I can remember the sound of
- 40:47Speaker 7: the car stopping at this house, and the car stopped,
- 40:53Speaker 7: and he rushed out of the car, came to the
- 40:55Speaker 7: other side and dragged me out into this house down
- 40:59Speaker 7: a flight of stairs which felt like they went on
- 41:01Speaker 7: forever and ever and ever, and that they were descent
- 41:03Speaker 7: into hell, and that's exactly what they were. He got
- 41:07Speaker 7: to the bottom of the stairs and there was a
- 41:08Speaker 7: door with a padlock on it. He unlocked the door,
- 41:11Speaker 7: pushed me inside, picked me up like I weighed absolutely nothing,
- 41:16Speaker 7: propped me up on this table, forced me to look
- 41:20Speaker 7: at him, and said this is going to be really
- 41:22Speaker 7: hard for you. It's okay to cry. And then he
- 41:25Speaker 7: turned on the lights and this room was blanketed. These
- 41:29Speaker 7: walls were blanketed with these devices that I certainly couldn't understand,
- 41:34Speaker 7: but that they were there to torture somebody, and that
- 41:38Speaker 7: somebody was me. And this has been called by the
- 41:40Speaker 7: media a dungeon, and again that's what it was. After that,
- 41:44Speaker 7: he removed my clothing and placed a locking dog collar
- 41:47Speaker 7: around my neck with another padlock. And then that was
- 41:51Speaker 7: the first night that he roused me. After he read me,
- 41:56Speaker 7: he reached down, grabbed a chain attached to the collar,
- 42:00Speaker 7: and then fell asleep.
- 42:03Speaker 2: Back to Titanya Jordan joining US Chief Parent Officer Bart
- 42:08Speaker 2: Parental Controls, I've got so many more true life narratives
- 42:15Speaker 2: about children being lured online. Please help us, Titania. What
- 42:20Speaker 2: can we as parents do?
- 42:22Speaker 6: The first thing you can do, the best free tip
- 42:25Speaker 6: I have for anybody, is to keep connected tech out
- 42:28Speaker 6: of your children's bedrooms, out from behind closed doors. The
- 42:31Speaker 6: second thing I would say is, please do not assume
- 42:34Speaker 6: not my child. It could happen to any child, the
- 42:36Speaker 6: smartest children, the most loved children. It can happen to
- 42:39Speaker 6: any child. So your child needs to know they can
- 42:41Speaker 6: come to you with anything dangerous or confusing online and
- 42:45Speaker 6: you're not going to freak out, but you will help
- 42:47Speaker 6: them navigate the landscape. That is the axis you have
- 42:50Speaker 6: given them, which is the entire world. Now you don't
- 42:53Speaker 6: have to give them access to the entire world. There
- 42:55Speaker 6: are safer pieces of tech out there. There are parental
- 42:59Speaker 6: controls like bark. You don't have to give your child
- 43:02Speaker 6: an open iPhone. For example, you can go with a
- 43:04Speaker 6: safer smartphone for a child that lets you set parental
- 43:07Speaker 6: controls and time limits. And please, please please do not
- 43:11Speaker 6: just hand over tech to your child and think they'll
- 43:13Speaker 6: be okay. You have to do the work. You have
- 43:15Speaker 6: to be the parent when.
- 43:17Speaker 2: You're talking about parental controls. Believe it or not, a
- 43:20Speaker 2: lot of people don't know how to find them.
- 43:23Speaker 1: They're not tech savvy, nor should they be. Why should
- 43:26Speaker 1: they be.
- 43:27Speaker 2: You know, Titanya, Moms and dads all over the country,
- 43:31Speaker 2: all over the world are working all day. They're coming home,
- 43:35Speaker 2: they're trying to put a meal on the table or yeah,
- 43:38Speaker 2: and just holding it together. If you say find the
- 43:41Speaker 2: parental controls, are like, what what is she saying?
- 43:45Speaker 1: Explain it?
- 43:46Speaker 6: Yes, okay. So, thankfully, because of AI, the ability to
- 43:52Speaker 6: turn on parental controls is much easier. So go to Google,
- 43:57Speaker 6: go to chat, GPT, go to Claude and say, hey,
- 44:00Speaker 6: my child has this type of phone, uses this app,
- 44:05Speaker 6: or wants to has this gaming console. We have this
- 44:09Speaker 6: home in our net service provider. Help me give me
- 44:12Speaker 6: a step by step guide for how to turn on
- 44:14Speaker 6: the parental controls from my household, and it should give
- 44:18Speaker 6: you step by step by step by step. Now it
- 44:20Speaker 6: won't always be one hundred percent accurate, but the bottom
- 44:23Speaker 6: line is ask your preferred search engine how to turn
- 44:27Speaker 6: on the perntal controls for the things your child actually uses,
- 44:31Speaker 6: and before that, don't be afraid to delay. Delay is
- 44:35Speaker 6: the way. They don't have to have Snapchat in sixth grade.
- 44:38Speaker 6: They don't have to have a smartphone in eighth grade.
- 44:41Speaker 6: You are the parent. You are in control and if
- 44:44Speaker 6: and when it's time for your child to access certain things,
- 44:48Speaker 6: look up what is the safest way for my child
- 44:51Speaker 6: to use xyz? The safest way for my child to text?
- 44:54Speaker 6: The best way to track their location? Use search to
- 44:57Speaker 6: your advantage and be empowered that you are not alone
- 45:00Speaker 6: and making safer choices.
- 45:02Speaker 1: Titania Jordan, You're amazing. Thank you for any and all advice. Guys.
- 45:10Speaker 2: Also, we are releasing a one on one with Titania
- 45:13Speaker 2: for she gives us a tutorial going through all the
- 45:17Speaker 2: ways you can keep your children safe online. And now
- 45:23Speaker 2: we remember an American hero, Deputy Sheriff Adam Davis Bell
- 45:27Speaker 2: County Sheriffs, Texas. He passed away in the line of
- 45:31Speaker 2: duty and leaves behind grieving parents Carlos and Guadalupe, and
- 45:37Speaker 2: son Lance, American hero Sheriff Adam Davis. Thank you to
- 45:43Speaker 2: our guests, but especially to you for being with us tonight.
- 45:45Speaker 2: Nancy Gray signing off, but I'll see you tomorrow night,
- 45:48Speaker 2: and until then, good night friend,