My boy was slaughtered by an online groomer – it’s time apps like TikTok stood up to predators lurking in the shadows
BRECK Bednar was like any other teenager, impossible to tear away from his games console the moment he arrived home from school.
It was an innocent passion for which the 14-year-old would pay with his life.
Six years ago this month, the schoolboy was brutally murdered by a twisted groomer he met online.
His death shone a chilling light into the dangers which lie behind the anonymity of social media and gaming sites – yet his grieving mother believes that despite his harrowing story, little has changed.
“Our youngsters are more at risk than ever from the spiralling growth of content sharing websites aimed at our children,” says Lorin LaFave.
It’s one reason the 52-year-old, from Caterham, Surrey, is joining Sun Online is backing our TikTok Time Bomb series, highlighting the dangers of the app which has been branded a “magnet for paedophiles” by children’s charities.
“You wouldn’t put your child on a stage in the park to perform in front of a bunch of older strangers – but by letting them use TikTok they are opening themselves up and showing their vulnerabilities to strangers,” says Lorin.
“It’s a creepy thought – but however innocent the content your child uploads the reality is that it could be being watched by anyone in any bedroom around the world.
“It’s like putting on a show for predators.”
TikTok Time Bomb
TikTok has spread like digital wildfire, snapping up over 1.5 billion users since its global launch three years ago — including millions in the UK.
On the surface, the world’s fastest growing social media platform shows short clips of lip-syncing to songs or showing off dance moves but there’s a far more sinister side.
It’s become a magnet for paedophiles as well as a hotbed for violent and extremist content, with TikTok predators exploiting the platform’s young user base and lax security to prey on the vulnerable.
We’ve seen kids as young as eight being groomed on TikTok, while other creeps take advantage of young girls posting sexualised content of themselves on the platform.
And that’s especially worrying on a site which is attracting millions more children every year, with 53 per cent of kids now owning a smartphone by the age of seven.
That’s why we launched our TikTok Time Bomb series — to make sure parents are aware of the risks their kids are being exposed to, and what they can do to better protect them.
Everyone agrees social media can be a force for good, but it has to be used the right way and with proper controls in place.
We want TikTok to better moderate its content so that it’s not being left to kids to protect themselves online.
Sadistic killer’s web of lies
As Lorin knows too well, grooming can come in all shapes and forms.
“Typically, we think of grooming as something that is done to young girls by creepy old men, but as we have seen from what happened to Breck that is far from the truth,” she says.
A loving, affectionate and clever boy, Breck was Lorin’s eldest child and brother to three triplets. Like many boys his age he was drawn into the world of gaming as a teenager, joining pals in online chatrooms.
He was quickly befriended by sadistic Lewis Daynes, who told Breck and a circle of other school boys that he was a 17-year-old computer engineer who ran a multi-million pound company in New York City.
In fact, he was an unemployed 18-year-old living alone in Grays, Essex – and three years earlier he’d been accused of raping a boy and possessing indecent images, though he was not prosecuted.
Breck, however, took Daynes at face value.
“Most of us cannot comprehend the sickness that some people harbour inside them,” says Lorin.
“Breck would certainly not have understood it.”
Daynes tightened his grip on Breck, showering him with lavish gifts including an expensive new smartphone.
Slowly, Lorin began to see her son’s behaviour change.
“He became withdrawn, didn’t engage, and every sentence seemed to start with ‘Lewis says’,” she explains.
Most of us cannot comprehend the sickness that some people harbour inside them
Lorin LaFave
“I tried my best to stop it, but Breck saw him as some kind of tech guru.”
After hearing what was clearly an adult voice speaking to her son – and concerned about his growing influence – Lorin contacted the police, passing on Daynes’ real name and county of residence, and expressing her fears that her son was being groomed.
They did nothing.
“At the time I actually thought he might be being groomed for a radicalisation programme,” she says.
“But they didn’t even bother to look him up. If they did then the information was there to show he was a danger to children – although never in my worst nightmare did I think he was being groomed for murder.”
Unimaginable horror
But in February 2014, Breck travelled to Daynes’ council flat, lured by Daynes’ claim that he was ill and wanted to pass on his company to someone he trusted.
The exact details of what happened in the flat that night are still largely unknown, but the following morning Dayne made a chilling 999 call to the police.
“My friend and I got into an altercation… and I’m the only one who came out alive,” he said.
The police arrived to find Breck wrapped with duct tape and stabbed to death with his neck slashed.
The news – on Lorin’s birthday – came as an unimaginable horror, but in the grief-stricken aftermath one thought dominated: something could have been done to stop it.
“There were dozens of people who could have done something different if only they had been educated,” she says now.
“The signs were there – people just didn’t recognise them.”
In the wake of her son’s death, Lorin set up the Breck Foundation to both educate and campaign for tighter social media company regulation.
Daynes pleaded guilty to murder in 2015 and was given a 25-year life sentence for the “sexual and sadistic” execution.
Following the sentence, however, Lorin’s campaign stepped up after being taunted by Daynes in a series of internet blog posts.
When the police said there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, a devastated Lorin contacted internet giant Google requesting they take the blogs down. Instead, they told her to talk directly to the blog’s creator.
Take control of TikTok – change these settings now
Parents should do the following immediately...
Go private:
- Head into Settings > Privacy and Safety and look for the Discoverability heading at the top.
- Under that you’ll see a setting called Private Account. Toggle this on.
- TikTok recommends your page to lots of other users to improve video circulation.
- Switch the setting off and the account will no longer be recommended to other users.
Shut out weirdos:
- In Privacy and Safety > Safety, you can prevent other users from interacting with you.
- Most of the settings are on Everyone by default, but can be changed to Friends or Off.
- You can prevent interactions on comments, Duets, Reacts, users seeing which videos you’ve liked, and also messages.
Restricted Mode ON:
- Restricted Mode tries to limit age-inappropriate content from appearing for children.
- It’s not perfect, and works through using computer-scanning systems – so some dodgy content will inevitably be missed.
- It’s also possible to set a passcode to prevent your child from changing this setting later on.
- You’ll find this in Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Screen Time Management.
Family Safety Mode:
- This setting lets you assign accounts as ‘Parent’ or ‘Teen’, giving you remote control over a child’s TikTok access.
- You can set watch time limits, exclude inappropriate content and limit who can send messages.
- It’s possible to do this from your own smartphone, so you can make sure your child is as protected as possible from anywhere.
- This setting is in Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Family Safe Mode.
Taunted by Breck impersonators
Then, last year, one of her teenage daughters received threatening and taunting messages on Snapchat by someone claiming to be Daynes’s cousin.
One of them featured tombstone and eyeball emojis to suggest they were watching.
“It was incredibly upsetting,” Lorin recalls.
“I contacted the police again asking if my family was at risk. This time they told me to put some security systems in place – but isn’t it the responsibility of the police and the government to make sure people who are a threat are not able to threaten the public?”
Her daughter then received a friend request from “Breck” on Instagram. When they complained to the social media giant, they were told only the person being impersonated could request for the fake profile to be removed.
“My daughter said ‘how can he do that when he is dead? What is the point of reporting if no one does anything?’.”
Meanwhile, pleas to Snapchat to identify the user were ignored.
There needs to be punishment
“We have millions of people who use this app in the UK but in the end we had to go to the Home Secretary to try and get answers,” says Lorin.
“We have a voice through the Breck Foundation – but what about those who don’t?
“We need social media and gaming platforms to take real responsibility for what is on their platforms and not to hide behind their largely meaningless terms and conditions.
“We need a regulator put into place and there need to be punishments for those social media brands not performing in the safest possible way.
“They are making huge profits – often at the expense of the vulnerable. Robust age and identity verification would be an important first step.”
Snapchat has still failed to provide the details of the person posting the messages – although Lorin has since been told by a journalist that a 20-year-old male from Croydon has been arrested.
“Beyond that, sadly we don’t have any more answers yet so we’re still waiting for an outcome,” she says.
It’ll make them unpopular – but parents must be strict
Meanwhile Lorin believes parents also need to take greater responsibility for their children’s internet presence.
“We’ve gone in a really strange direction allowing our children to engage with strangers online without thinking about what that means,” she says.
“Parents need to take a step back and put some more strict parameters in place.
“It can mean making tough unpopular decisions but if you do it as a group it is much easier. Everyone needs to do their part in helping to make our children’s online world a safer place to learn, play and socialise.”
This month marks the sixth anniversary of Breck’s death, a time of year Lorin dreads. Next month he would have turned 21, a rite of passage forever stolen from him by Daynes.
Determined to mark it, however, the Breck Foundation is holding a ball at London’s Savoy Hotel.
“It will be hard because I will be thinking about him but it’s a chance to celebrate the work the foundation has done to ensure this doesn’t happen to another child,” Lorin says.
“There was a catalogue of failings that contributed to Breck’s death. And those failings are still happening right now.”
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