All it takes is one click, one chat response to a stranger, for your child to unwittingly fall into a trap.
Millions of children log into their favorite online gaming platforms each day to battle it out with their friends, creating worlds where their imaginations can run wild. They are there to have fun. Not every ‘friend’ is real, however, and not every player is there to have fun. Sexual predators are often online with those children, and parents need to pay attention to what’s happening.
In late summer 2020, FBI New York Intelligence Analyst Chris Travis noticed several similarities in cases where sexual predators were using popular online gaming platforms to victimize children. He decided to take a deeper look at the investigations his colleague, Special Agent Pao Fisher, had recently opened. He discovered something that struck a nerve.
“As an analyst, one of my jobs is to take case information, match it to other cases to look for trends and commonalities, and to see if different suspects are using similar methods,” said Travis. “I remember when I noticed the patterns, and it hit home. My young son loves to play online games, and he was potentially being exposed to the behavior I was seeing in these cases.”
