As she got herself ready for bed, Sally* felt exhausted. Hosting a sleepover for her sons and their two friends, she couldn’t wait to drift off to sleep.
However, unbeknown to the mum-of-three, this would be her last night of rest for over a year, as downstairs her seven-year-old and his friend had discovered violent porn online.
The sleepover was to celebrate the end of the second lockdown, back in 2020. It was jam-packed with fun: popcorn, the trampoline, fancy dress, and – perhaps the coolest part – the den. Made with built-up pillows and draping sheets, Toby* and his friend begged to sleep in there that night.
Until 5am, the boys watched graphic, sexual videos and chatted with strangers on the iPad Toby’s friend had brought with him. The pair had even been coerced to show a man their genitals.
‘I thought that was the worst bit,’ Sally tells Metro. ‘But then my son started suffering really awful nightmares.’
For the next 18 months, Toby – in just his third year of primary school – struggled with both night terrors and intrusive thoughts. Unfortunately, the schoolboy’s long-lasting trauma from explicit content is not an isolated case.
Dr Catherine Knibbs, a Consultant Trauma Psychotherapist who works in cyber-trauma and online harm, tells Metro: ‘My clinical practice is maxed out at the moment. My DMs and emails are full of it.’
Just a click away
The dangers of social media seem to become more apparent every day. Last year, violent videos like Charlie Kirk’s assassination spread like wildfire before the news had even been reported on mainstream media.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has warned that X might lose the ‘right to self-regulate’ after it was discovered that the platform’s AI-powered chatbot Grok could generate explicit images of women and children without consent, which, as of this week, is a crime. Ofcom also announced they are considering banning the platform.
Last November, the Australian government went as far as prohibiting social media for under-16s, largely due to the fact 96% of 10-15-year-olds had an account, and seven out of 10 of them had been exposed to harmful content such as misogynistic and violent material, as well as eating disorders and suicide.
In the UK, concern about children online is particularly present from parents – in its latest study, Ofcom found that 76% were worried about their child seeing age-inappropriate content and there have been calls to ban smartphones in schools.
That’s why Sally had a zero-technology policy. ‘My kids are really outdoorsy. They do football on a Saturday, rugby on a Sunday,’ she explains. ‘They weren’t into games or devices.’
Opening Pandora’s Box
Instead, it was her son’s friend who brought the tablet over – while he might have only been seven, it’s not much of a surprise he had one. Currently, 96% of six to seven-year-olds go online, and 80% of them use a tablet.
Sally still remembers when she found out what Toby had seen. A few days after the incident she was making dinner, her five and three-year-old running around, when he told her he’d watched ‘naked people’ on his friend’s iPad.
‘I felt absolutely gutted, ashamed, and guilty. I’d let him down.’ Sally recalls. ‘And that was just the first thing.’
The mum compares the next few days to ‘Pandora’s box’ – Toby would recall the aggressive things he saw that night. And then came the final blow.
Clad in their pyjamas and tucked away in their den, Toby and his friend had downloaded Telegram – a secure video messaging app – where they spoke to a range of strangers, including a man who asked them to show him their genitals.
‘It still gets me,’ says Sally tearfully. ‘You just feel so violated. I felt like I’d I’d just opened the front door and let them in our house.’
Shortly after this, the trauma responses began. Toby’s ‘sexualised nightmares’ about porn would leave him screaming and crying, with mum Sally running to the rescue in the middle of the night. Then, there were the intrusive thoughts.
It was Christmas, the happiest time of the year, and Sally and her sister-in-law took their children to Santa. The kids were buzzing – until Toby had a panic attack.
The aftermath
Scared and confused, the young boy told his mum how he imagined Mr and Mrs Claus performing sexual acts. Thoughts like this lasted for 18 months, leaving Sally and her family isolated.
She was scared to send her kids anywhere, but was just as worried about them having friends over. She was also in fear her son would have a sexual, intrusive thought in front of others, and she’d have to explain what happened to people she doesn’t know.
‘I felt like I was going to have a breakdown,’ recalls Sally. ‘I didn’t know what was happening. At one point I’d look at him and think, “What is happening to my child?”’
The intrusive thoughts became so much, Toby had to leave school for four months and undergo ‘intensive therapy’ for nearly a year. It was only with this ‘amazing’ therapist that Sally realised her son’s behaviours were a response to his traumatic experience.
Dr Knibbs explains: ‘We make an assumption that an image or video isn’t as harmful, but when children use these devices, they hold it close to them. This distance to our screens means there’s a neurobiological override, and it’s no longer a screen to us.’
She compared holding our phones to sitting opposite a friend, and that safe distance makes you feel secure. What can be so harmful about online graphic images is the lack of warning – you felt safe, and then all of a sudden: violence.
‘For many children, what they’re experiencing is something they don’t all have the emotional capacity to manage,’ she says, adding that kids showing repeated signs of distress, which can come in forms of bed wetting, grades dropping, or an avoidance of tech, should seek a professional.
And while therapy is neither easy to find nor cheap, with each session costing Sally £90 per week (roughly £3,240 overall), the mum believes it has allowed her son to come back to ‘a really good place’. He’s 13 now, and just like before, loves football, rugby, and seeing his mates.
Sally’s only worry is when her son gets into a relationship. After Toby told her a harmless, but raunchy, music video made him feel ‘uncomfortable’, she worries how he’ll cope with sex and love as he gets older.
‘The one thing we’re meant to do is keep our children safe’
This is the same fear Kate* has for her daughter Olivia*, who was groomed online in 2022.
Just like Sally, Kate had done all the right things. She had parental controls, which included a restricted screen time and monitoring of what apps could be downloaded, but her 12-year-old daughter had still fallen victim to online harm.
The mum can still remember what she was doing when she found out: she’d gone to do a food shop, and when Olivia didn’t come down to unpack groceries, she went to find her.
‘She was wearing an oodie,’ Kate recalls. ‘But she didn’t look like she was wearing any clothes underneath. I could tell – her chest and legs were bare.’
Kate explains that this is particularly strange behaviour because her daughter is autistic, so struggles with sensory issues. Last year, Ofcom found that children with an impacting condition are more likely than their counterparts to say they have seen online content they found worrying.
It was only when Olivia took one, ‘discreet glance’ at her tablet that Kate knew something was wrong – and after her daughter had gone downstairs, she opened the device.
Inside, she found 11 days worth of grooming messages from an older man via the messaging app Discord. Olivia had been coerced into sending explicit photographs and performing fetish acts like urinating.
‘Initially, I was in complete disbelief,’ Kate says. ‘My husband broke down crying. He said, “The one thing we’re meant to do is keep our children safe, and it failed.” The grief was immense.’
Seeking justice
Olivia’s parents did everything they could to get justice. After reporting it through CEOP – the National Crime Agency’s command dedicated to protecting children from sexual abuse online – the police got involved.
Within 24 hours of Kate unlocking her daughter’s device, a digital forensic team was on standby, and two detectives plus a safeguarding officer were sitting in the family’s living room. Upstairs was Kate’s son, revising for his GCSE’s, and Olivia, hiding under her bed.
The team needed to speak to the 12-year-old girl – not only did they need to understand what happened, but they required her password. Without it, evidence could disappear.
Thankfully, Olivia gave them the information. Sitting with the safeguarding officer, she was asked to draw her ‘safe people’ – included was her mum, dad, big brother, as well as the family dog and horse.
Kate recalls that her daughter was always receptive to officials when they were doing these activities, but when she is asked about what happened to her? Silence.
Police found the perpetrator in the Netherlands, and the case was handed over to Dutch authorities, where the man was arrested and jailed for 30 months.
Kate still has days of ‘immense sadness’ when thinking about this incident – despite knowing everything that happened, and keeping an open dialogue with Olivia, her daughter remains quiet. ‘She’s never said a word, and that’s one of our biggest concerns, that she can’t talk about it,’ the mum says.
Olivia is 16 now, and Kate’s worries have developed. ‘She is struggling with low mood, but it could be the stress of her GCSE’s, it could be hormones, it could be rage.
‘We’re also concerned that this experience is having an impact on relationships. She is against men, and completely against sex. And we’re asking ourselves: is that because she’s a typical teenager, or is it because she’s damaged?’
Watch out
Despite their children’s ordeals, both families have shown great perseverance and strength – rather than letting the situation fester, they have tried to move on, using what happened to keep open dialogue with their children.
According to Dr Knibbs, this is the best way to deal with online trauma. She points to her book, Tech Smart Parenting, which helps parents understand the internet and make decisions about technology.
She explains, ‘Parents need to have conversations repeatedly with their children about what they’re doing online.’
She also gives some examples, like using a TV show to open up a dialogue. ‘When you’re watching Peppa Pig,’ she says. ‘Ask “why do you think Peppa Pig bullies her brother? That’s not very nice.” Then you can bring in the internet.
‘We live in a society where wars take place in the mainstream media, and children are going to see this. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to damage every child.’
Today, Sally goes to local primary schools to discuss Toby’s experience and the need for safety online and runs an anonymous website where famlies can share their online stories. Meanwhile Dr Knibbs is training more professionals in cyber-trauma.
‘It’s about the parents and people around the children helping them manage what they’ve happened upon.’ Dr Knibbs says. ‘And we are trying. We’re getting there.’
For those worried, the NSPCC has advice on keeping children safe online.
A spokesperson for Discord told Metro: ‘Discord is deeply committed to safety and we require all users to be at least 13 to use our platform. We use a combination of advanced technology and trained safety teams to proactively find and remove content that violates our policies. We maintain strong systems to prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming on our platform and also work with other technology companies and safety organizations to improve online safety across the internet.” – Discord Spokesperson
Metro has also reached out to Telegram for comment.
*Names have been changed
