'Clash of Clans' Used By Pedophiles To Groom Children

• comments
• 
• 

There is no doubt that many are hooked to Supercell's popular online game "Clash of Clans." While many enjoyed the game, some pedophiles took advantage of it by forming pedophile clans that advertised child abuse parties. Some other else groomed children and deceived them.

According to Movie News Guide, "Clash of Clans" and several other apps are used by pedophiles to target children as young as 7-years old. It might be surprising but over 400 young boys and girls are groomed through these apps.

For the past three years, the police in Greater Manchester received 389 reports concerning this incident. Two-thirds of the said incidents just occurred last year, Manchester Evening News reported.

One of the youngest victims was a seven-year-old boy from Tyldesley who was targeted via Instagram. The suspect sexually abused the child, yet no charges were brought because the person on the other end could not be identified.

Per the report, the sexual predators used Facebook and WhatsApp to find their potential victims. At some point, they also used Snapchat, BBM, Skype and Oovoo. It was revealed that most of the crimes involved young and teenage girls, with just a handful cases involving young boys in 2013 and 2014. However, this trend changed in 2015, with boys being the youngest recorded victims.

One of these cases is that of David Telles, 38, who posed as a teenager and struck up a conversation with a 14-year-old British girl through "Clash of Clans" from his home in California, The Herald reported. The twisted man flew to Heathrow, hired a car and gets the girl, who climbed out of her window in the middle of the night.

The girl denied of sexual acts but admitted about it two months later, revealing that Telles had put pressure on her to keep quiet. Telles was arrested and admitted meeting a child following sexual grooming, abducting a child, three offences of sexual activity with a child and engaging in a sexual act in the presence of a child.

A spokesman from Supercell stressed that "Clash of Clans" is for 13 years old and older. They only allow public and no private chat with other players in the game with regular warnings being flashed up about the risk of sharing personal information. He added that there are tools to report inappropriate behavior and players can also mute other players so that chat will no longer be possible with them. "Supercell takes security very seriously," he added.

Are you aware of the pedophiles roaming behind "Clash of Clans?" Do you know any stories or victims? Share it in the comment section below to warn other players.