This is an article in which Sarah Cooper shares her story about meeting a sexual predator online to the Boston Globe Magazine written by Linda Matchan.
Sara Cooper was abused sexually when she was eighteen years old. Sarah had multiple Facebook accounts and when she was sixteen years old she reached one thousand Facebook friends. As she states “ It was like a status thing” for her. At the age of fifteen, she received a request from a male stranger. She never found out his actual name and his profile pictures were cars, dogs, and cartoon characters. They began texting which continued for a period of two years. As she states she shared everything with him about her life and she explained that she enjoyed how he adored her. They were chatting on Facebook-Messenger where he as well asked her to send him sexually explicit photos and she did not resist. When she turned eighteen he asked her to see her in person and instead of an eighteen year old male a man closer to forty appeared (whom she called J). This man was a sexual predator who was manipulating her and gaining her trust for two consecutive years. J drove her to a house in the Boston neighborhood where he and his friends forced her to ingest alcohol and a few lines of cocaine. Later on, she was forced to have sexual intercourse with J and another woman while someone was recording it. Next day J took Sara to a hotel in New York and kept her locked with other girls who were forced to sexually service customers. Sarah was able to get out of this situation and never shared it with anyone until now (Matchan, 2020).
This story is an extreme example of how dangerous online predators can be. It highlights their usual tactics and how they act. It is important to hear or read about these devastating stories because they make you realize how any random or unknown stranger on your social media account can be dangerous.
Link to a detailed Sarah's story and which the information was retrieved from :
Matchan, L. (2020, August 19). As an underage teen, she was exploited by a sexual predator online. Then he came after her in the real world - The Boston Globe. Retrieved November 26, 2020, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/19/magazine/an-underage-teen-she-was-exploited-by-sexual-predator-online-then-he-came-after-her-real-world/
Photo retrieved from: https://parentscorner.org.za/2016/05/24/online-grooming/
I am so frustrated by such stories. I could never imagine what she've been through and how she must have felt when she met him and he wasn't who she thought he'd be. I truly wish there would be some solutions to this. Being safe online is hard nowadays, but possible. Thank you for sharing this story, as it reminds us to never meet with a stranger, who we've never seen or heard from before. It is SO important to talk about this and to share awareness!