Meet "John Doe."
One of his life's goals was to help children. However, through his own admission, he lived a double life - one being a happily married, career and community-focused family man, and the other, a "child-like peer" on the internet that befriended and exploited children.
EIE President Donna Rice Hughes spent three hours interviewing "John Doe," under the veil of anonymity, in a high security prison years ago. Donna asked him to share his story and to let parents and kids alike understand how sexual predators gain the trust of youth and groom them into online and offline sexual encounters.
In this video, he shares what fueled his actions, how he disguised himself online in order to connect on and offline with children, and how he groomed children into sending sexually explicit pictures of themselves.
"John Doe" also shares he was sexually abused as a young child and later as a teenager, and that that his journey online started with exposure to "adult pornography" that led to child pornography and then grooming kids online.
It is important than we learn from those that have been caught in the past in order to protect children in the future.
