ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — A St. Johns County mom said a stranger tried to get naked pictures of her 14-year-old daughter through an app. She talked to Action News Jax to warn other parents.
“It’s terrifying as a parent,” said Carissa, a St. Johns County parent who did not want to use her last name for safety reasons.
She said it’s terrifying because many people don’t know who their kids are talking to on social media.
“In my opinion, it has all the markings of some type of predator. Somebody that is much older than he was. Somebody that had very bad intentions,” Carissa said.
Carissa said her 14-year-old daughter got a friend request on Snapchat from someone she didn’t know.
“He immediately asked what she looked like. He started asking for pictures of her, of her feet, of her toes, of her outfit,” she said.
Carissa said the stranger claimed to be an eighth-grader at another school and knew her through friends. She said her daughter continued talking with him and sent him some pictures.
“He ended up sending her a picture of himself and she said, ‘You don’t look 14.’ He said, ‘Chill out. I’m in high school,’” Carissa said.
She said he then asked for nude pictures and said, “You’ll do what I say.”
“And further along in the conversation, he said he would pay her for the pictures,” Carissa said.
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The 14-year-old then blocked him and told Carissa, who then called the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
Carissa said this shows her just how vulnerable kids can be.
“Now that we’ve seen how quickly it can go really bad, it’s scary because we know this person, whoever this (is), has entered our world, and it’s threatening,” she said.
Carissa said whoever sent her daughter these messages sent friend requests to several of her daughter’s friends, too. Deputies are aware of what happened, and they said this happens all too often.
They said in this particular case, it will be difficult to find this person because there’s no evidence. And, there’s no phone number under the account.
Here are some ways you can try to keep your child safe:
Make sure child’s location is turned off. You can do that by into Snapchat’s settings and making sure the “ghost mode” is enabled.
Another option is to place parental control on you child’s cell phone.
For an iPhone:
- Go to settings and select screen time.
- Next, select “turn on screen time.”
- Then, press “this is my child’s phone.”
- From there it takes you to the content and privacy page.
- This page allows you to limit what your child can access.
- At this point you will have to create a password.
- Once a password is created, select “Content and privacy restrictions.”
- You can turn on the restrictions slider and select content restrictions. From here there are a number of things you can limit.
Click here for an Adroid phone.
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