14-Year-Old Girl Forced to "Drink Toilet Water"... Online Platform a Hotbed of Child Abuse

Forcing and Sharing Child Abuse Content
New Accounts Created Despite Account Deletion Measures

Popular online chat platforms such as Discord are being exploited for child abuse, according to a report by the American daily The Washington Post (WP) on the 13th (local time).

As a result of an investigation conducted by WP together with the U.S. IT magazine Wired, German media Spiegel Online, and Romanian media Recorder, it was revealed that there are emerging international online groups on social media that target thousands of children for sadistic acts.

According to the report, in 2021, a 14-year-old girl named A living in Oklahoma, USA, was deceived by a person called "Brad" whom she met in an online chat room and sent nude photos of herself. Brad and several others threatened A by saying they would send the nude photos to her classmates, forced her to tattoo the chat room nickname on her thigh, and made her drink toilet water. They also forced her to slit the neck of her pet hamster. Meanwhile, the group watched A's actions in a Discord video chat room. They even demanded the girl to commit suicide in front of the camera, but fortunately, the girl's mother stopped it.

U.S. judicial authorities identified boys and men in their mid-40s as perpetrators. They were investigated for threatening children with mental health issues and forcing them to self-harm. The online group of these perpetrators is called "764".

[Image source=Discord homepage capture]

The crimes of the 764 group also occurred in Romania in 2022. A teenage German member of this group streamed live on Discord the murder of an elderly man with a weapon. The perpetrator, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison on murder charges, stated that he committed the crime to provide content for the "764" group.

Some of these online groups are known to have thousands of members. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uncovered eight online groups engaging in sadistic acts against minors aged 8 to 17 last September and warned the public to be cautious of them.

Telegram is also being exploited for child abuse. According to WP, online groups committing crimes similar to those of 764 are uploading child pornography, videos of corpse mutilation, and photos encouraging children to self-harm on Telegram. They also boast about these abusive acts in chat rooms with about 5,000 members.

As these crimes have come to light, online platforms are working to delete problematic accounts. Discord removed 34,000 user accounts related to the "764" group last year. However, since the perpetrators quickly create new accounts and regroup, there are calls for effective countermeasures.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.