14-year-old groomed on gaming platform Roblox

Carlo Tritta was convicted of grooming a 14-year-old girl, and encouraging her to send sexually explicit pictures of herself, on the popular gaming platform Roblox. Tritta, who is 19 years old, has been given a 28 month jail sentence.

Carlo Tritta, who was 18 at the time, tricked the girl into thinking that they were in a loving relationship. He started with casual conversations on the gaming platform before encouraging the girl to move to other messaging services.

Roblox is one of the world’s largest gaming platforms with around 40 million user-generated games. It has more than 144 million daily active users and is extremely popular with children.

The victim’s mother said that she was “shocked, bewildered and really angry” when she discovered what was going on. Having spotted a message on her daughter’s phone, she said: “I just knew then … I needed to see what was on this phone. That's where it all started to unravel. There were a lot of sexual images, videos, really bad ones.”

She said that her daughter was unable to sleep and feeling suicidal as a result of Tritta’s actions. “This was because she was stuck in this situation where he had passwords for all her social media,” she said. “He knew who she got the bus home with, he knew who her friends were. He knew what activities she did outside of school. So he controlled everything she was doing … She was trapped in something that she didn't think she could get out of.”

Tritta admitted to charges of making indecent images of a child, engaging in sexual communications with a child, and causing a child aged 13-15 to watch/look at a sexual image. He also admitted two counts of intimidating a witness and criminal damage.

The victim’s mother warned other parents about the dangers of platforms such as Roblox. “It's dangerous - it needs to be watched,” she said. “It's a kids' game and adults are getting on there to groom children. So they need to do something about it … I think a lot of social media needs to do more to protect young children.”

A spokesperson for Roblox said they were “saddened to hear of this troubling case” and went on to say that “cases of harm are rare, but we know any incident of harm is one too many and we are committed to building safeguards designed to prevent that from happening.”

“Our policies firmly prohibit any kind of child exploitation and we have extensive safety systems in place to help prevent user-to-user image sharing, limit chat for younger users, and block the sharing of personal information,” they added.