‘Watch me naked?’: Parents warned over sex creeps in ‘safe’ kids chatrooms

The Sunday Herald Sun posed as an 11-year-old girl on what has been marketed as a “safe” free virtual chatroom for kids. This is what happened.

Online chatrooms being touted as a “safe place” for teenagers to meet new friends have become a gateway for sexual predators, authorities have warned, with a Sunday Herald Sun investigation uncovering the sinister motives of some website users.

The investigation uncovered the disturbing requests and questions children are being asked by predators lurking behind fake profiles on free virtual messaging platforms Teen Chat and Kids Chat, which promote themselves as moderated platforms where users can “make new friends, meet cool people and share great memories”.

These sites can be accessed through search engines including Google and allow children to join as a guest or set up their own account.

While the websites state you must be aged between 13 and 19 to use these sites, the Sunday Herald Sun investigation found they were a hunting ground for online predators openly communicating as adults.

The Sunday Herald Sun were sent disturbing messages from people claiming to be older men. Picture: Herald Sun.

It didn’t take long for the messages to turn vile. Picture: Herald Sun.

Within minutes of the Sunday Herald Sun signing up to Teen Chat as a young girl, men aged as old as 40 were requesting meetups, video calls and nude images.

The site also had a number of chatrooms dedicated to finding a boyfriend or girlfriend, including the “flirt room”, the “role playing room” and the “find ur (sic) true love” room.

One user who went by “Jed” started a conversation by asking “are you young and are you a virgin”, before revealing he was 28-years-old.

Another man who went by “Andy” said he was 34 and wanted to show his “eight-inch d**k”, while a third user claiming to be a 32-year-old man asked “do you want to watch me naked on camera with your mother”, before sending a link to a webcam website.

Several other users claiming to be older teens and men in their early twenties also shared their sexual desires, with some wanting to meet in person.

It has prompted the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the eSafety Commissioner to remind parents about the dangers of unregulated online messaging websites as the government vows to crackdown on larger social media giants.

All conversations began with the asking of our age. Picture: Herald Sun.

Some conversations turned explicit very quickly. Picture: Herald Sun

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday Labor would raise the minimum age for teenagers to use social media to 16 following mounting pressure from parents, experts and advocates, including those in support of News Corp’s Let Them Be Kids campaign.

However it’s not clear whether online chat websites not owned by large social media giants will also be included.

An AFP spokeswoman said these conversations could mark the beginning of grooming a child.

“A child can be approached in a matter of minutes and some grooming operations are quite sophisticated,” she said.

“Police have seen offenders using multiple platforms, with multiple identities to groom as many children as possible.

“Offenders often use a direct message as a gateway to initiate contact with a child and will then often direct the child to continue chatting with them on other platforms with image-sharing capabilities, to elicit photos and videos.”

A Teen Chat spokesman said the site was aware there could be online predators using its platform, but insisted it “meets or exceeds the standards set on much larger websites”.

“We have a report button and active moderation on our site. Once our moderators action a report sent by a user or witness it themselves, the predators are permanently banned,” he said.

“The platform is fully moderated but how can we see the private messages unless they are reported? We have to adhere to privacy but at the same time ensure we have moderation.

“We also work with law enforcement to active pursue those committing major violations.”

A lot of older men, claiming to be aged in their late 20s, 30s and 40s, were sending messages. Picture: Herald Sun

Most conversations turned sexual. Picture: Herald Sun

The spokeswoman said the AFP and Australian Centre for Countering Child Exploitation (ACCCE) regularly saw cases involving children and teenagers being targeted through social networking platforms in an attempt to manipulate them, despite child abuse offences carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment.

The eSafety Commissioner put the onus on tech platforms to do more to identify predatory accounts and protect teenagers.

“They have the analytical tools to identify when adult accounts are following a teenager’s account and the capability to pick up and remove sexualised comments,” an eSafety spokesman said.

“eSafety strongly advocates for a concerted Safety by Design approach where tech companies build in safety protections at the front end to prevent online harms, rather than responding after the damage has been done. The burden for safety should never fall solely upon the user.”

The eSafety Commissioner also had genuine concerns about the lack of guardrails or age verification tools available on the online chatrooms.

“At eSafety, we have been aware for some time of predators weaponising online platforms to target children and teenagers, and posting inappropriate comments,” the eSafety spokesman said.

“This is a serious safety concern and privacy settings alone will not keep these at-risk young people safer.”

But despite these concerns, it’s not enough for authorities to take down such websites.

“Since 2020, eSafety has received a very small number of reports from three of the platforms investigated by the Herald Sun,” the eSafety spokesman said.

“We commenced our own content investigations and did not find evidence in those cases of violative material.”

Wayne Holdsworth and daughter Daisy, 15, are behind a campaign for a social media blackout with the organisation called SmackTalk. Picture: Jason Edwards

The spokesman encouraged parents and children who came across child sexual abuse material to report it to the eSafety Commission, while online grooming should be reported to the AFP and ACCCE.

Neurophysiologist and Re-MIND Institute founder Dr Ashleigh Moreland said children were more vulnerable to predatory requests because they don’t have the brain development to see and understand the risks until it’s too late.

“They’re not emotionally equipped to handle (social media) yet … it removes people from the reality of life and almost sucks them into a vortex of a fake world,” she said.

The therapist, who works with both victims and perpetrators of trauma daily, said online predatory behaviour was “just as traumatic for children as being raped or physically abused”.

“We tell our kids, ‘if someone ever says ‘don’t tell anyone’, who is the person you are going to tell?’. Our kids need to know that anything kept in the dark is going to be used for evil,” she said.

While removing devices from home was one way parents could protect their kids, Dr Moreland said setting some simple ground rules could go a long way in safeguarding children from online predators.

“When we eliminated devices from our home, we got our kids back. They started playing outside again, engaging in imaginative play, it was completely transformational,” she said.

“But if parents don’t want to remove devices, make a rule that devices should only be used in open spaces and that you as a parent will be monitoring instant messaging conversations.”

A spokesman for Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said ensuring Australians were safe online was a key priority for the Albanese Government.

“The exploitation of children is a sickening crime against the most vulnerable in our society, and is totally unacceptable in any form,” he said.

“We encourage Australians to report any harmful or illegal content or behaviour to the eSafety Commissioner and law enforcement agencies.”

Under the Albanese government’s proposed social media age limit reforms, Australian children under 16 won’t be able to access social media even if they have parental permission.

The onus will also be on big tech companies to take “reasonable steps” to ensure underage children are not using their platforms, with privacy protections to be put in place for any age assurance information provided by users.

The new age limit would come into effect after a 12-month implementation period, and there would be no “grandfathering arrangements” allowing underage users who already have social media accounts to retain them.

A new definition for age-restricted social media platforms will also be created to ensure access to services used for health and education aren’t impacted by the ban.

Kids Chat was contacted for comment.

Wayne Holdsworth, with son Mac, who took his own life after being “terrorised” by a 45-year-old man.

‘We’re coming for you’: Parent’s warning to sex creeps

St Patrick’s College Ballarat student Rohan Cosgriff was just 17 when he took his own life after being blackmailed by a Nigerian criminal in an evil sextortion scam in 2022.

Two years on, his parents Anthony and Beck Cosgriff say not enough is being done to protect young people online and are calling on the government to step up.

“It’s been over two years now since we lost Rohan to online sextortion,” the parents said in a statement.

“In that time literally hundreds more young people have been lost worldwide to sextortion and yet it seems little is being done to protect them.”

Rohan was coerced into providing an intimate image of himself to a person on Snapchat called “Christine”, who then demanded the high school student pay them or risk having the photo distributed online.

It’s a scam authorities say they see all too often, and it’s not the first time it’s claimed an innocent child’s life.

“We know the social media companies have been advised by their own experts how to better protect young people, but they simply refuse to take any meaningful action,” Mr Cosgriff said.

“That being the case our own government authorities have to consider stepping in and implementing the expert advice.”

Rohan Cosgriff was just 17 when he took his own life after being blackmailed by a Nigerian criminal in an evil sextortion scam in 2022.

The dad said every parent should ensure they talk to their teenager about online issues and keep the lines of communication as open as possible.

“We had discussed online safety with all of our children but back then we were simply unaware of the scale of the problem and the sophistication of the scams,” he said.

Meanwhile, father Wayne Holdsworth has one simple message for predators hiding behind fake profiles online: “we’re coming for you”.

The Melbourne dad lost his 17-year-old son Mac to suicide just over a year ago, after he too became a victim of sextortion.

Mr Holdsworth said his son was “terrorised” after he met a 45-year-old man who pretended to be a 15-year-old girl online.

The predator allegedly coerced Mac into sending him a nude photo, before demanding he pay $500 or risk having the picture leaked online.

After making the payment, the perpetrator asked for another $500, but when Mac refused, the intimate photo was published.

Rohan’s parents say not enough is being done to protect young people online and are calling on the government to step up.

Mr Holdsworth used his son’s death as a catalyst for change and founded registered charity Smack Talk in a bid to educate others about suicide prevention.

He is also sharing his son’s story to convince the government to implement social media reforms to protect children.

“As every day goes by we’re losing more children,” Mr Holdsworth said.

The father said there’s three steps every parent should follow if their child becomes a victim of sextortion or online grooming.

“Block (the perpetrator) immediately, make sure as a parent you support your child unconditionally and tell them that you love them, and report it to the authorities immediately,” he said.

As for the father’s message to those preying on vulnerable teenagers, Mr Holdsworth warned: “we’re coming for you”.

“We are not waiting for the tech giants to prohibit you from coming into our lives, we’re coming for you,” he said.

“The government and our education is our means of coming for you and mitigating the risk of being exposed to the terrorists that they are.”

Originally published as ‘Watch me naked?’: Parents warned over sex creeps in ‘safe’ kids chatrooms