I was groomed by someone I met playing video games online: What I want parents and kids to know
Harrison Haynes was a 12-year-old, video game-loving middle school student when he said he met a stranger online through a video game.
Over the next few months, Haynes says that stranger, who claimed to be 19-years-old and whom Haynes never met in person, became someone whom Haynes considered his "best friend."
"I'm not making friends, so this gaming space was like a really good space for solace for me," Haynes, now a 20-year-old college student, told "Good Morning America."
Referring to his friendship with the "teenager" he said he knew only as a fellow video game lover, he added, "We had so much fun."
As the virtual friendship deepened, Haynes said the "teenager" asked him to move their conversations from video game apps to texting.
From there, over the next year, Haynes said the "teenager" exposed him to pornography, self-harm and created a distance between Haynes and his own family.
Now, Haynes said he is sharing his story to help other kids and their parents become aware of the potential dangers of technology like cellphones, social media and texting.
"I think for almost every generation in America right now, everyone was told that there's going to be a stranger in a white van handing you candy, and you should say no to that stranger," Haynes said. "But I think for us and for my generation, the danger isn't the stranger in the white van. That's not where the call is coming from. The call is coming from inside our pockets. It's coming from inside our iPhones."
A 12-year-old struggling to make friends
Haynes said he was a 12-year-old who was struggling to make friends in school when he met the "19-year-old" he says would go onto sexually groom him.
"In so many ways, his relationship with me, our friendship, it started so slow that it didn't feel like I was talking to a stranger. It felt like I was talking to a mentor, like a brother," Haynes said. "I definitely connected with him better than I did with my peers at school, because for every time I got bullied, he was there to support me."
Haynes says he and the "teenager" became friends through communicating on gaming platforms, but said their conversations eventually moved to iMessage, an instant messaging service developed by Apple.
On that platform, which Haynes said he accessed on an iPod and later an iPhone, he said the conversations moved beyond gaming and into darker territory.
"Now I was getting more messages at school," Haynes said. "He slowly started exposing me to content like self-harm and images and videos of online pornographic content as a 12-year-old, my first time being exposed to porn."
Haynes said the "teenager" would send him messages of self-harm and pornography while Haynes was at school and at extra-curricular activities and eating meals with his family.
During that time, Haynes said he saw a personality shift in the "19-year-old," who he said started messaging him four or five times a day instead of two to three times a week like their initial communications.
With the exposure to pornography and self-harm, Haynes said he began participating in the content on his own.
He also said he kept the friendship with the "teenager" a secret from everyone in his life.
"When things started to go south with our friendship, and he started exposing me to pictures and videos of self-harm and internet pornography, I didn't think I could reach out to an adult anymore," Haynes said. "Part of the issue was the taboo and the stigmatization of all of that. I didn't feel like I could reach out to a principal or a counselor or a teacher or my parents, because I felt like I was going to get in trouble."
'It felt like being trapped against a wall'
Haynes said that as time went on, he felt like he was "trapped against a wall" in his conversations with the "19-year-old."
"It was someone that I really did deeply care for, and I knew that if I had reached out for help, that potentially would put him in danger," he said. "There was this weird back and forth ... in my head, like, I want to get out for myself, because now I'm self-harming and now I'm consuming pornography as a 12,13-year-old boy."
After over one year of communicating with the "teenager," Haynes said his parents discovered him using his cellphone in his room at night.
At the time, Haynes said he had gotten into a practice of retrieving his phone from the downstairs of his home, where he said his parents stored it away every night as part of the rules around his usage.
That night, Haynes said he was communicating with the "teenager," whom he said was threatening to take his own life.
"I cried so loud that I woke up my parents down the hall," Haynes said, adding that his parents then went through his phone and discovered his messages with the "teenager."
"They told me that they saw everything, and they didn't seem upset. They didn't seem mad at me like I thought they would," Haynes recalled. "They sat me down and told me I was being manipulated in some sort of way. I don't think anyone in our world had the language yet for grooming. I don't think we knew that yet."
Haynes said he and his parents shared what happened with his school resource officer, who worked with them to report it to police.
A spokesperson for the Hanover County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to "GMA" that a police report was filed in Haynes' case. According to the spokesperson, the case was not prosecutable, "due to a lack of evidence and limited cooperation from the family."
"We always encourage parents to be proactive and check their children’s devices regularly. Often times we find that kids use very innocent apps to maintain communication with offenders," the spokesperson said. "Anything that allows children to communicate or send messages can be used in an inappropriate way and allow a gateway for offenders to reach children in otherwise safe environments."
A call for change
Once his parents knew what was happening, Haynes said he cut communication with the "teenager" and began to heal from what he said he experienced.
He said part of his recovery included limiting his exposure to technology and social media, including spending nearly two years using a flip phone and staying off all social media apps.
As he got older, Haynes said he was able to look back at what he had been through and identify it as online grooming, a process in which a predator establishes a connection online with a minor by "offering support and attention to gain their trust," according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
In cases of online grooming, the predator sometimes "gathers personal information about them, desensitizes them to sexual content by introducing sexually explicit conversation and pornographic imagery and exploits any vulnerabilities the child may have," according to DHS.
In some instances, the predator may manipulate minors into sending compromising photos or videos of themselves and then use that material against the child, whether for a ransom or for more graphic images, according to DHS.
Haynes said his experience did not include him sending photos of himself to the "teenager."
Haynes said as he got older, he became angry that the iMessaging platform the "teenager" used to communicate with him did not have features to keep him safe, including the ability for Haynes to report and block him.
"When we moved over to iMessage, there was no way to report him. For him, he was safe on iMessage," Haynes said. "Other platforms had these reporting features available."
In June, Haynes participated in a protest at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, calling on the tech giant to implement more measures to protect kids' safety in its products. The protest was organized by the Heat Initiative, a nonprofit organization that describes itself on its website as, "a collective effort of concerned child safety experts and advocates encouraging leading technology companies to detect and eradicate child sexual abuse images and videos on their platforms."
A spokesperson for Apple referred ABC News to the multiple safety features the tech company now has in place on iMessage and its other platforms, including a Communication Limits feature that allows parents and guardians to choose with whom their children can communicate.
In 2021, with the release of iOS 15, Apple deployed additional Communication Safety features for minors, including a warning when they attempt to send or receive images or videos containing nudity. Starting with iOS 17, the feature is now default for child accounts under the age of 13, according to Apple.
Parents can adjust and enable the feature in Settings > Screen Time > Communication Safety, according to Apple.
The company says its Siri, Spotlight, and Safari Search features also now deploy a pop-up feature with resources to get help and/or file a report when users perform searches related to child exploitation.
At home, Haynes said he would encourage parents to have open and honest conversations with their kids about everything from online safety to topics they may be exposed to online like sexuality, pornography and self-harm.
"Parents, I cannot emphasize this enough, do not be afraid to talk to your kids about uncomfortable things," Haynes said. "If I'd had that conversation with my parents, I wouldn't have needed to find solace in an online stranger."
He continued, "If parents can engage with their own kids in the space that makes them feel comfortable, in their own homes, where they're safe, I think we can have a much better future."
To help others, Haynes has become a volunteer with Wired Human, a nonprofit organization that works to make the internet safer for kids. The organization recommends parents and caregivers follow the "Rumb Model" to protect kids online, with relationships, understanding, mentorship and boundaries as the key tenets.
The FBI also offers advice for parents and caregivers who want to protect kids online including having conversations with kids about what is appropriate to share and say online and what is not.
The FBI recommends parents make sure their kids use privacy settings online and educate themselves about the games, apps and websites their kids are visiting online.
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You can reach Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 (U.S.) or 877-330-6366 (Canada) and The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386.
