The exact same thing has been happening at my son’s middle school and my daughter’s high school over the last few years.
This happened two years ago when my daughter was 13:
I had I thought she had canceled her Tumblr account (this site, too, has lots of NSFW material, including those showing members doing drugs, having sex, etc.). Come to find out, she had opened a new account while at school (according to her anyway, which I have no way of verifying, but numerous other kids have told me they have been able to access various SM sites on school computers also).
One day, I received a possible fraudulent activity alert from my credit card company. After talking to them on the phone, I found out the cc had been used to purchase Amtrak tickets, burner phone minutes, food in a city I have never even been to, and more. I canceled the account immediately.
I had a hunch and confronted my daughter right away, and she confessed she had sent pics of the front and back of the card to an 18-year-old she met on Tumblr via kik. He had also asked her for my now-ex-husband’s social security number, but fortunately, she couldn’t find it. I went straight to our local police station.
We were able to get her to turn her phone in to LE; by that point, he was on an Amtrak train, on his way to come and visit her (and who knows what else). With the info he had provided to Amtrak, combined with what my daughter knew about him, LE was able to identify him within a couple of hours.
He was already known to the authorities where he lived -in fact already on probation for drug-related offenses-, was apprehended within a month, and after spending a year in his local jail on probation violation, he was arrested on a warrant out of our local county.
After pleading guilty to accosting a minor for immoral purposes and credit card fraud, he now sits in prison; he is also required to register as a SO for the next 25 years.
I wish I would have been able to prevent all of this, not only for my daughter’s sake (she still thinks he was truly in love with her ...), but to a degree, the young man’s (but I also believe had he not been caught, he may still be doing the same to other vulnerable, naive, teenage girls; still, I hope and pray he turns his life around, unlike -sorry for the language- the LJ, who has proven himself incapable of doing so).
My apologies for the long post. And I do not mean to take any attention away from A. I just wanted to show how easily and quickly a situation like hers can develop.
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