A British man has been jailed for 28 months after being found guilty of grooming a teenager via “dangerous” online game Roblox.
18 year-old Carlo Tritta first met the 14 year-old victim on Roblox before encouraging her to communicate via Whatsapp and Snapchat over an 11-month period instead. “The young girl in this case thought she was in a loving relationship but it was founded in coercion, control and abuse,” said Detective Superintendent Kenny at the hearing yesterday (April 9) via the BBC. “The offender’s main driver was to obtain indecent images of her as a child. He used a number of methods to do that – flattery, gifts, rewards.”
The relationship was revealed when the victim’s mother saw messages on her daughter’s phone and discovered “a lot of sexual images [and] videos.” Tritta was then arrested before being released on police bail with strict conditions not to contact the girl. However he travelled to the victim’s house twice to confront her about the case, and sent two cards asking her not to support the prosecution.
In a statement read out in court, the victim said she “felt trapped” and was “scared of going downstairs at night” because she thought Tritta would be there. Her mother told the BBC her daughter was suicidal following the incident.
Tritta was sentenced at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court yesterday after pleading guilty to making indecent images of a child, sexual communications with a child and causing a child aged 13-15 to watch a sexual act. He also admitted to two counts of intimidating a witness and criminal damage
“Roblox is dangerous – it needs to be watched,” the victim’s mother told the BBC. “It’s a kids’ game and adults are getting on there to groom children, so they need to do something about it.”
“With more than 144 million daily active users on Roblox, 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,” Roblox said in a statement. “While no system is perfect, we continue to evolve and strengthen our protections every day.”
At least three separate lawsuits have been filed against The Roblox Corporation in recent months over “concerns” about child safety on the popular gaming platform.
Earlier this year, Roblox implemented new age verification checks which are designed to stop people from different age groups from communicating in the online multiplayer game. However some people are worried potential predators can simply use AI to bypass the safety checks. Last year it was reported that Death Stranding 2: On The Beach’s photo mode could be used to trick the UK government’s age verification checks.
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