A police officer of the Cybercrime unit of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Terence Addey Adams, has warned that criminals are increasingly grooming children online, gradually gaining their trust in order to recruit them into sexual exploitation, cybercrime, labour exploitation and even terrorism.
According to him, grooming is a critical aspect of cybercrime that has not received enough attention.
Speaking on Channel One TV and monitored by NewsDesksGH on December 31, Officer Adams explained that perpetrators often pretend to be young themselves in order to gain the trust of young users.
“You find people grooming a child over time. They usually will pretend to be children and gain the trust of these kids over the internet, over the gaming console,” he said.
He noted that popular online games such as Roblox, Minecraft and PlayStation games have instant messaging features that allow direct communication between users.
According to him, these messaging features are exploited by criminals to build long-term relationships with children.
“With that, these perpetrators are able to communicate with these kids and get to groom them over a long period of time, gain their trust and then either sexually exploit them, recruit them for any other thing, from terrorism to labour exploitation and other aspects.”
Mr Adams added that public discussion around grooming often focuses only on sexual exploitation, when in reality the practice goes far beyond that.
He noted that young boys in particular are sometimes lured with promises of wealth.
“Boys are groomed into believing there’s a good life somewhere where you can get a whole lot of money, the most beautiful cars which will bring the girls and what have you.”
The cybercrime officer cited a case as recent as 2 months ago.
“A 16 year old who was groomed over about 3 months and made to travel to Nigeria, got kidnapped in a way and was made to work as a cybercrime person and was defrauding people over the internet.”
Officer Adams urged parents and guardians to closely monitor their children’s activities on online platforms, particularly gaming sites and social media, to help protect them from online predators.
