This is a continuation of last week's episode. Officer Gomez shares more shocking information, but gives us hope through some of the success he's had in protecting his students and teaching us how we can keep our children safe from online predators.
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Jen: Hello and welcome to the Parents’ Place, a podcast put out by the Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting efforts. No matter our skills, we can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host, Jennifer Daly, the education director at the Family Place and my co-host is Sarah Hendricks, a family educator at the Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us. Now, let's get started with today's episode.
Jen: This is part two of a two-part episode, the information shared in this episode is very important, but might be too much for small children to overhear. We advise listening with headphones or in private.
Sara: Welcome back to the Parents’ Place podcast. I'm your host, Sara Hendricks,
Jen: and I'm your co-host Jen Daly.
Sara: Last week, Officer Gomez shared some powerful information about what can happen when our children have access to the internet. Today, we're going to continue that conversation and learn how we can keep our children safe from online predators and safe from desensitization through exposure to more than we even realize. The information he shares is quite shocking. But please know that this conversation is important, and we, as parents, need to know how to talk with our children about these things. Because the internet and technology aren't going away and children are becoming younger and younger when they start using apps and owning their own devices. Now let's jump back in with part two of this episode. So, I teach an abuse prevention program in our elementary schools, and one of the statistics that we share is that nine out of ten times the child knows the person that's doing the abuse, that it's not a stranger that's doing this. And then in our older grades, we dig deeper into the different types of abuse and we talk about sexual abuse having two components, one being touching and the other being non-touching and non-touching obviously encompasses these things that happen on social media where it shows private body parts. But no touching is happening. And it just makes me wonder how much that statistic is changing that nine out of ten times the child knows the predator because of these online ways that predators get to children, they are strangers. These children have not met these people that are exploiting them. So, can you feed us maybe some more statistics just in general on this whole topic? It could be anything from like statistics on how kids get exploited or how quickly an image circulates, or how many kids get approached, or how many victims does a single predator have. Any kind of statistics that you want to share with us?
Officer Gomez: Usually, these predators are addicted, so once they start exploiting children, they won't stop until they're caught. Now the statistic about nine out of 10 predators knowing they're their prey. I would say with social media, we're quickly changing. It's about 30 to 40 percent now are known, whereas a much larger are unknown. And the reason is because some kids think that if it's somebody far away, there's no way they're going to get caught. They don't have to get emotionally tied to them. But yet they still get this, you know, adrenaline rush and excitement and adventure of talking to somebody and being more mature and sending out their nude photos. Here's a statistic that's really important. By eighth grade, about 50 percent of girls have already sent out their nude photos. OK, by the end of 10th grade, it's closer to 85 percent. And by the time you're done with being a senior in high school, I mean, we're talking ninety five percent have sent out nude photos. Now I, as a police officer, have taken reports from eight and nine-year-old kids who have sent out nude photos, boys and girls. All right. But I talked to officers around the country, and by eighth grade, about 50 percent of the girls have already sent out their nude photos. Right, that is huge. And the problem that causes is we have sextortion that's good for lifelong. We have sex trafficking that occurs from that right because once the right predator gets a hold of a young girl's nude photo, they send them an email. Hey, I have your nude photo. What's it worth to you? If I don't blast this everywhere or send it to your mom and dad, send it to your school. And then pretty soon, they're even if they're a little older girls. Ninth, tenth grade the predators are starting to ask for dates. Hey, I'm going to be in Boise tomorrow. Meet me here and wear this. Or else I'm going to expose you to everybody, right? And by then, they already have a collection of stuff on that kid. And every time I've arrested these guys and I've arrested plenty of them, they have multiple victims. It's not just one victim, it's over and over and over and over again. And many times, the people already have sexual charges. They're just so addicted they can't stop even when they've spent time in prison, even when they’re registered sex offenders, even when they're police officers, doctors, teachers, those things. This pornography thing online is such an addiction that they can't stop themselves, even though they know it's wrong. So those are the things that parents really need to be concerned with, because that affects your kid's life that can change forever. And that is where the danger lies when they start getting oversexualized. Start getting, you know, your nude photos out there, nude videos. The latest trick that people are using. And I'm actually going to pause here and we'll start a new trick here. Tik Tok, we have predators that are asking for pictures of girls’ feet and offering to pay them for that. They say, I will give you $15 for a picture of your feet. So, the girls sends a predator a picture of their feet thinking, this is strange, but if they give me $15, it gets me $15. The predator then says, Oh, you sent me a picture of your feet. Those are beautiful. Let me send you $15. Do you have Venmo, PayPal, do you have cash king? What do you have? And usually the girls don't have. So now the girls work to get a cash payment system, whether the naïve parents help them, whether an 18-year-old nearby helps them. Whatever the way they do it, they get a cash account. Now the predator knows they can accept cash. Hey, send me a picture of you in your underwear and I'll send you $50 and they do. Now send me a topless picture. I'll send you $100. And they do. And I've talked to middle school girls who have thousands of dollars already because they take one topless photo of themselves and they can sell it every day, every day. And this is starting to become a trend. It's starting to become such a bad thing, especially with OnlyFans, where kids set up accounts specifically to sell naked photos. That now kids are like, college is for people who don't have good bodies. Right, and that's becoming an issue here, because I mean, it's for ugly people's college, you know, you're ugly, you better go to college because you can't sell your pictures on OnlyFans and stripping and all those things are becoming a lot more mainstream, a lot more acceptable. Because using Tik Tok, Snapchat, you have millions of men who are in a group grooming all these young girls coming up. This is what's important. All your body parts are important and you have lots of parents who won't put down the phone and be a parent themselves. Right? As a parent, you've got to put down the phone. You've got to put down the iPad yourself if your whole family is eating at the dinner table with social media. Guess who's teaching your kids, right? And those are really bad things that are happening that I see changing. I've been an SRO 10 years. It's getting worse as we go. And parents are spending less and less time with their kids. And I can grab almost any kids phone that's sixth grade or above. And almost every one of them has spent more than four hours on social media yesterday. And that's easy to see on Android and Apple. I know it's like, where's the bucket? I'm going to throw up.
Sara: Well, I was just thinking that I did a presentation today for a third-grade class and we talk about neglect as one of the abuses and the basic needs that we need in order to survive. And a lot of kids think that a cell phone is a basic need that they will not survive without it. And I had this class raise their hand, all the students that have a cell phone. And it was easily half the class raised their hand and they’re third graders. And it just blows my mind. They're just getting younger and younger that they're given these phones. And it's not a dumb phone, it's a smart phone that they have and they have all these apps on it. And granted, I don't know what kind of access they have with these phones, if they share it with their siblings, if they only have it when mom and dad aren't home. You know, I don't know if they're carrying those phones to school, but half that room raised their hand. And so, it's just shocking to think that they have that kind of access.
Jen: Yeah, I was just in one of my groups for adolescents yesterday, and we were talking about cell phones and I had said, I don't even think I got my first cell phone till I was twenty-six, twenty-seven. And they just all about died. And they're like, Why I had one. When I was nine, I was 10, and I'm like, oh my goodness, they go all the time. I'm grateful I was an 80s kid. And what's in all of this stuff out there?
Sara: Yeah, it's funny too. With the third graders, I have them raise their hand who has a cell phone and then I say, OK, put your hands down. Those of you in the room who do not have a cell phone, raise your hand and the other half of the room raised their hand. I'm like, I have a question for you guys. Listen close. Are you guys surviving? Yes, you are surviving and you do not have a cell phone like that is not a basic need. You do not need that in order to survive. You know, I'm just trying to put that idea in their head like you do not have to have this device in order to survive. And from a parental perspective, I just I want that out of my kids’ hands for as long as possible to just keep them safe because we know that there is all kinds of crazy things out there.
Officer Gomez: So, people always ask me where I get my statistics, where do I get 70-80 percent of high school kids that have sent out nude photos. Well, I teach classes all over Idaho. In fact, I teach classes in some other states as well. When I walk into a 10th/11th grade class, I will tell them, Hey, look Gomez thinks 70 percent of girls have sent out their naked photo by 10th grade. Raise your hand if you disagree with me. And you know, in most classes have between 20 and 40 kids. I've probably asked thousands of kids that and that wouldn't, you know, know. But I'm not outing anybody. Just raise your hand if you disagree with me. And I probably had three kids ever raise their hand unless they're raising their hand to tell me, no, it's more like 90 or 100 percent. I've only had like three kids ever raise their hand and tell me I'm wrong because they know and I tell parents, ask the kids how, how much percentage do they think it is? Kids know everybody sending out nude photos because it's all over the schools. And more often than not, now I get very good kids from religious backgrounds. Officer Gomez, I just think it's normal to send out nude photos. It's what we do and you guys don't understand because your adults.
Jen: I think so many people are afraid to talk about it. I mean, it's just one of these things that if we don't talk about it, it will away, and that is not the case at all. And I was thinking back on something that you had said about how they think, Oh, well, this person's in California or Florida or whatever. And I think that they get this sense of safety that they'll never have to meet that person. But I have heard many times to where that person will come from Florida and meet that girl in Idaho or in Utah or wherever that girl is. And so just because they live across the country doesn't mean they're not willing to come all the way over to where you live to come see you.
Sara: Officer Gomez, you said something that really stood out to me that I just want to grasp on for a second for our listeners. You said that you have students that come from very good homes, very religious backgrounds, and they think that it's normal. And because I have been wondering this knowing the area that you live in, I imagine there's a pretty predominant religion in that area. And I've wondered, like how you have these experiences in the area that you live in? Right. And I think that as a parent, we kind of get relaxed, maybe in that because we raise our children with values. And then so we don't think we need to have these conversations. Our children know they're not supposed to do these things, so we don't need to talk about it. But you said those students say it's normal. They don't even think of it as anything other than normal. And so, I just want to say to our listeners, one thing that I teach in the schools to kids is that if ever they feel trapped in this. Obviously, I use more age appropriate words, but trapped within this exploitation and where they're being blackmailed, they've sent that photo and now that person's blackmailing them to keep sending more and more photos. I tell these kids, I know there will be students in this room that make that choice and send that initial photo. And these kids are looking at me wide eyed like this would never happen. They don't even understand how this kind of thing would happen. And they say, I can promise you there are students in this room that will do this. And I want to tell you that even if you make that initial mistake and you send that photo and you get trapped in this cycle and you feel like you can't get out because you can't talk to mom and dad because you made the mistake, I promise you, your parents want to help you. They do not want you to be stuck in this kind of cycle. And so please remember to talk to your parents. There might be consequences that you made that mistake, but it's better to face those consequences than to feel trapped and feel like there is no way out. But to give in to this person on the other side of your screen, that's blackmailing and making you do these things. So, to our parents that are listening. Please have these conversations with your children and open up those channels of communication so that they know that they can always come to mom and dad for help if something's happening to them.
Officer Gomez: Yes. So, I tell parents in my classes. So, you have to talk to the kids ahead of time and I tell them, Hey, look, picture a 10-year-old girl just got her shiny new iPhone. I said, if she has any kind of apps, I promise you she is going to get a penis picture from somebody she doesn't know. And in her mind, she has a shiny new iPhone. Her life is opened up. She's got all this contact with her friends and other people. When she gets a penis picture from somebody she doesn't know, in her mind, if she tells her parents that she got a penis picture from somebody she doesn't know, what her parents are going to go to freak level five. Take her phone and she's never going to get it back. And that's pretty close to what's going to happen because I've talked to many parents who this has happened to, but I promised parents, this is going to happen. If you don't talk about that scenario beforehand, it's similar to the sending out nude photos. Hey, let's talk about this scenario ahead of time. If you do if you have a smartphone, they are going to get a penis picture from somebody they don't know. Let's go through the let's do a table top exercise. What's going to happen when that happens? Come to us. We're going to talk about it. We're going to be upset. Not at you. We're going to be upset. We're going to work through it as a family because we want to be on your team. I tell the kids same thing with me as a school resource officer. The worst trouble you're in the better friend of mine, right? That the straight A kids, we never make mistakes. They don't need me. It's the kids who have made a mistake. They need me more than anybody else, right? But I want parents to be the same way. Parent, you're their kid's coach, right? And your kids are going to have problems. Let's help the coach them through. And when I get a parent that says, Hey, my kid's being bullied, I say, great. This is your opportunity. Coach them through it, right? They're going to make mistakes. Let's keep them a little and not life altering.
Jen: I love that. So, Officer Gomez, what would be something that would really surprise parents about kids being exploited and what would be the most surprising thing you can think of?
Sara: Not that we need any more shock at this point.
Officer Gomez: A couple of things that are very surprising. Number one is most predators gain access to kids through parents supplied phones, right? So, parents, you are on the predators’ team. Number two is when kids start having sexual thoughts, right? I tell this in my class all the time. I have an 11-year-old granddaughter on a dance team, wears tutus and cute little ribbon in her hair. And in my mind, she's not going to have sexual thoughts until she's 25. Right? But in reality, at sixth grade, you have to start having some talks about sexualization. If you give your kid a smartphone, they're going to be subjected to pornography. You've got to have your pornography talk in line if you let your kid have a smartphone in their room. Even more so your pornography discussion with your kids better be really strong. And one of the posts I always put is most parents would not let kids have a pornography magazine in their room overnight, yet they'll let them have a smartphone that has access to five billion times what's in a pornography magazine? No problem. Right. And then I get calls from parents. Oh, my goodness, Officer Gomez, after you talked to us last night, we checked our phone and they've been looking at pornography in their bedroom. Really? Of course, they are. They're especially good with boys. Of course, they are. But girls just look it up just as much. They see words or situations on Tik Tok or Snapchat that they want to know what they are, so they're going to look them up. And then once they look them up, it may be a curiosity. It may be an addiction, it may be all kinds of things. But they have access to that right in front of them in their bedrooms at night, so these are things that when you give your kid a smartphone, you better have that pornography talk in line, and if you give your nine-year-old a smartphone, you better have that pornography talk online. I recommend 14 or 15 before you give your kid a smartphone. Even driving age is better. I recommend 18 years old for Snapchat and TikTok just because they are so addictive. But those are the things that would really, they should shock parents and some parents just want to put their heads and then please don't tell me anymore or I don't want to know, this is my cute daughter. This is my cute son right now, and I'll call parents seventh graders. Hey, I just caught your seventh graders having sex out on the field. The parents: no, they're not old enough. Yeah, they are.
Sara: Oh, my goodness. That's a lot to take in because I am totally in that boat where my oldest is barely getting into late elementary school. So, I just can't even imagine, you know, that she would get to that point and to think of having these conversations with her. It's just all a lot to process. So, with all of this information and feeling overwhelmed and feeling like there's no chance of me winning as a parent, what can you tell us? Like, what can parents do to protect their children?
Officer Gomez: I mean, many, many parents who feel the same way. Sit down and plan it out. Don't let this be a luck thing, right? Come up with your game plan. You know who's on the opposing team, right? Predators are on the opposing team. Screen time addiction is on the opposing team. You know what their game plans are. How are we going to combat that? We're going to combat that by engineering screen time, engineering family values, engineering what our kids are worth. And when you do that, you'll be successful no matter what comes at that right? What are the biggest, greatest things you can do is teach your kids respect for all things, for teachers, for authority, for animals, for everything else. But above all, respect for themselves, right? And the kids that stay out of trouble the most are the ones that are out on Saturday night with friends out past midnight and whatever friends are with decide to do something wrong or to. They're not supposed to do what's going to keep that kid from joining. That is their respect for their selves and their own family. It's not going to be, Hey, the police might catch me or this other. It's going to be man; my parents would really be disappointed in me if I did that. That's not a lucky thing. That's an engineered response. That's parents building in our family values that parents building and self-worth, that parents showing and modeling respect in all aspects of their lives. Hey, look, we go dirt biking every Saturday, and there was some jerk on it, on a bike that was coming through the camp very fast. Instead of cursing and yelling, we had a nice discussion. Hey, please don't do that. We have kids we'd like, you know, how can we solve this situation and be a good model? Right? And talk to other situations. Hey, you know your friends got in trouble for this? Why did that happen? Why weren't they embarrassed? Look, what did their family think? What would we think? What do we think we would do to you in that case? Right. And one of the worst punishments you should ever be able to give your kid is so on, daughter. I'm disappointed in you. But yet many parents don't build that into their kids. So, I mean, if a lot of kids have their doubts that, Hey, I'm disappointed in you, John. OK, can I have my iPad back? Right. But that's engineering those things so that you can win. And if you do that, not only will your family life be better, but your kid's family life will be better, right? Because they'll know how to do that with their kids. We don't want to leave that up to luck. We want to sit down, write it out, engineer it. Let's teach respect. Let's teach family values. Let's teach self-worth. And once you do that, there's some kids who are going to make those mistakes still. But hopefully they'll be small and hopefully they can recover from them and not get sucked into a pickle.
Jen: This is a lot of lot of information, a lot of hard information, but super important information at the same time. Could you share with us any successes that you've had where you've been able to help a child, where you've been able to teach a parent and they've been able to do what they've needed to do to teach their kids what they should and should not be looking at?
Officer Gomez: So, I've had quite a few successes, but not with the kids, right? The kids are usually going to do what their friends do and what their parents’ guide them to do. My super power as a police officer is I don't have to be politically correct. Over time, I got just a reputation around the valley of parents. When you're having a hard time with your kids, bring them to me. We'll talk about it. And they always think I'm going to fix the kid. And as soon as they come in, I usually have the kids step out and I tell the parents, Listen, have you ever seen the Dog Whisperer? Well, yeah. What's the problem? Most of the time the owners. Have you ever seen Supernanny? Yeah. What's the problem with that? The parents, OK, that's the same here. And so, then I guide the parents. I tell the parents, Hey, you need to get some parent coaching for your problem. If your kid is a teenager, they're going to do teenager things. The big difference here is going to be the parenting, and a lot of times parent coaching can help because they'll take dynamics of the family into account. Whether it's a split family, whether it's a single mom family with a single dad family. Parent coaches can take all those things into account, come up with a plan and they're going to write down step by step plan how to handle these things right and those where a parent has taken it serious and gone to the classes. And sometimes it's just going to the love and logic classes that you can get for free at the library. When the parents take it serious and go and fix themselves, it usually fixes the kid and I tell the parents the same thing if your kid is depressed or suicidal. If they're anything, people want me to fix their broken kid. It's like I've never met a magically broken kid. Not ever. And I've met thousands of kids. It's always the leadership in the family that's causing their issue. And if parents will take the time to go coach and get some help, read some books, read some literature. A lot of times they are successful. They might not be. Oh, my goodness, we made it to the winner's circle, but we make some huge strides in the right direction.
Sara: So again, all of that is so good. And we hope that this podcast is another resource for parents to really help build stronger connections in their homes. My biggest takeaway? Listening to everything that you've said today is the importance of parent involvement and building those connections and being there for their children. You know that all just to me, that's the biggest takeaway. That's how you're going to keep your kids safe is by having open conversations and being part of your child's life and not just brushing it off and being dismissive and letting everybody else raise your children. Oh, they got this education at school learned about abuse prevention at school, so we don't need to teach them at home because they've already got that information. No, these things need to be an ongoing conversation that we're having with our children on a regular basis. It's not a one and done, especially when it comes to giving our kids access to the internet. We don't have this conversation one time and think that's all it takes. We need to be revisiting it regularly and having open conversations with our children. So, I love the success stories that you shared. I think that's so good that it comes back to the parents. So, I think one thing to really help parents is resources. So, are there any resources that you can share with us?
Officer Gomez: You can look at my Facebook page, which is at Deputy Gomez, and I link other resources. So, I have other people in my same position that have different views. I have people that I share their Facebook pages that are counselors, that are teachers, that are coaches. You know, everybody has a little different take on it. And every parent is different. They may not understand me, but they might understand somebody else. You know, different points of view are going to help. There's a lot of books I know a lot of libraries offer the love and logic courses for free to parents. Those are great courses to take. And sometimes people will take a bad course from somebody who doesn't teach it quite correct. That's OK. Try again. Same thing with counselors. Sometimes there's counselors who you just don't mesh with. Go to another one and go to another one and go to another. I tell him to try five before they give up on me, because sometimes you know, people aren't the same. They have different views. They have different life experiences that got them there. There's tons of books out there if you scroll down. I've asked a bunch of times about the different books that parents read that they like about parenting, or you can just do a search on parenting books. Read some reviews. See what they like. Educate yourself. Spend some time with your family. Better yourself. Work through it. There is lots of resources for learning application. Sometimes I tell parents, get a parent group going, y'all download Snapchat and you guys can chat like that. Learn the tricks. Hey, look, I can send this. I can hide it. Here's a secret picture vault, right? Here's Tik Tok. We have our parent group. We've used it. Here's the trick. That way, you're one step ahead. Other parents who don't have that. You start parenting groups, those kind of things, support groups, internet addiction groups, pornography addiction groups, all those kind of things are out there and available. Just have to look for them. And some are good and some are not so good. You can probably learn something from every single one of them.
Jen: Well, thank you so much, Officer Gomez. You've given us so much great information and I'm a true believer in education is power. And the more we can educate ourselves in all of these different areas, the better off we're going to be. I also truly believe in being in your kids’ lives and being a part of them and letting them know how much they are worth and teaching them that worth that they do have. I'm excited to go home and ask my stepdaughter to see what her answer is with that, and I am hoping that she doesn't say, I don't know. But kids need to know that they are worth so much. We want to thank you for coming and spending this time with us. I feel like if anyone listens to one of our podcasts, this is definitely one of the top ones that they need to listen to. If you are wanting to reach out and ask questions, I'm sure you can go to Officer Gomez’s Facebook page and he's more than happy to help you, but you can also reach out to the Family Place and come to our website, thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can email Sarah and I at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can find both of us on Facebook as well. Sarah Hendricks - The Family Place or Jen Daily - The Family Place. We hope that all of you will go home, talk to your kids. That's your challenge this week. Talk to your kids about safety, internet safety and letting them know that you are there to listen and help them be the best that they can be.
Sara: Thanks again for listening. The Family Place is a non-profit organization in Logan, Utah, with a mission to strengthen families and protect children. We call ourselves starfish throwers. If you're unsure what that means, refer back to our introduction episode where we explain it. The good news is you can be a starfish thrower too by subscribing to the Parents’ Place podcast and liking our social media pages. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with others and help us get our message out to more people. Also, be sure to check the show notes for links to information referenced in this episode. That's all for now, but we'll catch you again next time on the Parents’ Place.
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