Jordan: Please, bro….It’s over. You win, bro.
Dani: Okay. Goodbye.
Jordan: I am KMS RN….which stands for, I’m killing myself right now….because of you.
Dani: Good. Do that fast or I will make you do it. I swear to God.
And that message … was the last one that he sent to Dani.

Bob Sullivan
Some stories are much harder to write than others. I’m not sure I’ve had a more difficult project than this week’s episode of The Perfect Scam. For this story, I speak with Jordan DeMay’s parents, and the detective who investigated Jordan’s sextortion and suicide.
You’ve probably heard about Jordan’s case, or other cases like it. Sextortion is extortion fine-tuned for the social media age. A criminal pretends to be an attractive person and approaches a victim with a simple private message or text, then slowly escalates the conversation until the victim shares explicit photos. Then the criminal threatens to share these photos with friends and family unless the victim pays a “ransom” — and even then, criminals continue to apply pressure, issuing more and more demands. While high-profile cases of sextortion often involve teenagers, anyone can be the target of a sextortion scam. They are powerful; the pressure criminals exert can be immense. Most times, criminals are working off fine-tuned scripts, learned from YouTube or purchased from a criminal service. Or they are trained as “employees” of a large criminal enterprise.
We are all saturated with unwelcome texts right now, many appearing as accidental wrong-number connections. My cell phone number begins with a Seattle area code, so I get messages with vague requests like, “I’ll be in Seattle for a couple of days. Where should I go to dinner?” Unsolicited private messages on Instagram and Facebook often begin the same way. Many of those messages are attempted sextortion scams.
That’s why it’s so important to understand how they work. And this week’s episode gives a rare, blow-by-blow account of a sextortion in progress. At times, it’s hard to hear. It was certainly hard to talk about. But this is the kind of story you shouldn’t turn away from. John DeMay and Jennifer Buta are incredibly brave and compassionate, despite enduring pain no human was meant to experience. And Detective Lowell Larson dispenses deep wisdom that only arises from years of very serious, meaningful work.
The scale of the sextorition problem is probably wider than you think, and might be even wider than law enforcement knows. John DeMay has identified more than 40 sextortion victims who’ve commited suicide; and many people believe the real number is much higher. Jordan deleted all his social media content before taking his own life. Only subsequent investigation revealed the truth about the attack he suffered It’s possible many suicide stories end without someone like Detective Larson completing a thorough investigation.
That’s why it’s important for everyone understand how sextorion works. I hope you’ll listen to this episode – Jordan’s parents have so many powerful things to say, and how they say it is just as powerful — but if you aren’t into podcasts, there’s a partial transcript below. It inlcudes a text version of the dialog between Jordan and his attackers. But perhaps more important, it also includes Detective Larson’s advice about what parents can do to help their children navigate this increasingly complex and threatening digital world — and it includes some of the wisdom that John and Jennifer have to share.
But I’d like begin with the end of this story, because Jordan’s 17 years of life add up to much, much more than those years would suggest. Here’s his mom:
“Jordan was this larger than life perso, and I don’t think he knew it. And so for this to happen to him and be this … landmark case and have this media attention. Sometimes I just sit back and I’m like, of course. Of course this happened with you because you were this bright light and the center of attention. Here you are in the afterlife still holding that. It’s just that it’s no longer your voice. It’s my voice with your story.”
—————Partial transcript————-
The below transcript includes in-depth discussion of suicide. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 and get help right now.
[00:05:11] John DeMay: It was a Thursday night. He was at his mother’s house for that week, but he had had to come to our house a little bit earlier. We were getting ready to leave on vacation for two weeks. The next morning on Friday, we were heading down to Florida for, uh, for a beach vacation that we do every year, and he was really excited about that. And it was one of our, one of our favorite trips that we do every year. So we were packed and ready to go, and he came strolling into the house. I saw him for the last time at around 10, 10 15 that night. And I just had passed him outside on the, on the patio and he was rolling his bag in, coming from his girlfriend’s house. And I had just told him goodnight. I’m, I’m heading to bed and cut you in the morning. And that’s what I did. I went to sleep. My wife was up finishing laundry, getting the, getting our other two kids bags packed. Jordan was downstairs in his room getting his bags packed. He was doing some laundry.
[00:06:01] Bob: doing laundry packing, saying goodbye to his girlfriend before trip. Normal teenage stuff. And then Jordan gets a private message, a one-word message from someone he doesn’t know. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve received one just like it, probably more than once. The message says it’s from a woman named Dani Robertts. It comes at 10:19 PM.
[00:06:25] Lowell Larson: So the very first conversation that occurred between Dani Robertt’s profile and Jordan DeMay started out with Dani asking, “Hey.”
Jordan – “Who is you?”
Dani – “I’m Dani from Texas, but in Georgia at the moment.”
Jordan – “Nice.”
Dani – “Yeah. Hope I didn’t invade your privacy. Just bored.”
Jordan – “Nah, you good.”
[00:06:49] Bob: The conversation bounces back and forth with simple chat like that for about an hour. You can imagine Jordan stuffing clean clothes into a suitcase while chatting, and then at 11:29 PM…
[00:07:02] Lowell Larson: Dani – “What do you do for fun?”
Jordan – “Lift, play sports and listen to music. What about you?”
Dani – “Sound fun. Well, I like hanging out with friends and playing sexy games. Sorry, that came out wrong. My bad,”
Dani – “Sorry if I got upset. Just bored, to be honest. I thought you might want to do something fun. It is actually a sneak pic exchange. No screenshots. You’re down? It’s just for fun though. Nothing else. It’s actually a live mirror pic exchange showing your sexy body, no screenshots. You get what I mean?”
Dani – “Yeah. And it’s set up view once after viewing it disappears. Of course. I can go first if you like, but you’re home, right?
Jordan – “Yeah.”
Dani – “Cool. Can you just take a mirror snap showing you’re ready when I’m. Then I will go first with the sexy pic.”
[00:08:02] Bob: The game goes on for another hour, two hours. The pictures are innocent enough at first, Detective Larson says. Within three hours after that first, “Hey,” Jordan sends a revealing picture of himself and Dani pounces instantly
[00:08:20] Lowell Larson: After Jordan had sent an unclothed picture at 1:23 AM, Dani Robertt”s account sends three photo collages with a message, “I have screenshot all your followers and tags and can send this nudes to everyone and also send your nudes to your family and friends until it goes viral. All you have to do is cooperate with me and I won’t expose you.”
Jordan – “What I gotta do?”
Dani – “Just pay me right now and I won’t expose you.”
Jordan – “How much?”
Dani – “$1,000. Deal or no deal?”
Jordan – “I don’t have a grand.”
[00:09:02] Bob: Whoever is on the other side of the keyboard is now extorting Jordan, and he doesn’t know what to do
[00:09:11] Lowell Larson: And this goes back and forth for a time and then is basically negotiated down where Jordan agrees to pay $300. And Dani agrees to accept that and not expose him. So he sends $300 via Apple Pay. Dani tells Jordan that she’s deleting everything,
[00:09:33] Bob: But Dani doesn’t. The cruelty and the pressure continue,
[00:09:39] Lowell Larson: Dani comes back and says that she wants more money to delete his images off of a different platform. And so they go back and forth and they start negotiating again. And basically Dani is looking to obtain another $800 to delete the images off of Google.
[00:09:59] Bob: And the demands continue. Jordan tries desperately to figure out what to do. The person making these demands exerts maximum pressure.
[00:10:10] Lowell Larson: You know, a troubling thing is the Dani Robertts account would, she’s asking for more and more money, would start giving it a countdown. Next message would be 14. Next one 13, 12. You know, and so every message coming in was the countdown, which is, uh, kind of very powerful for someone that’s very scared.
[00:10:32] Bob: Scared, and from his messages, feeling out of options.
[00:10:37] Lowell Larson: And basically Jordan tells her that he doesn’t need him to have $500, and eventually Jordan agrees to send the remaining money that he has, and that’s $55.
[00:10:49] Bob: Jordan sends every last dollar he can cobble together, but the cruelty gets so much worse. Jordan begins to express how desperate he feels that he doesn’t want to go on and five hours into this nightmarish encounter…
[00:11:07] Lowell Larson: And at one point Dani Robertts at 3:28 AM says, “Okay, then I will watch you die a miserable death.” And Jordan says, “Please, bro.” Later on at about 3:43 AM Jordan says, “It’s over. You win, bro.”
Dani – “Okay. Goodbye.”
Jordan – “I am KMS RN”
[00:11:30] Lowell Larson: Which stands for, “I’m killing myself right now.” And then he says, “Because of you.”
Dani – “Good. Do that fast or I will make you do it. I swear to God.”
[00:11:41] Lowell Larson: And the message that I read to you was the last one that he sent to Dani Robertts.
[00:11:54] Bob: Morning breaks and John DeMay gets up and thinks about final preparations for that family beach trip they will go on after Jordan gets home from school that day, but a text from Jordan’s mom causes immediate alarm.
[00:12:07] John DeMay: Jennifer had texted me and asked me if Jordan was at school that day, and I said, “Well, that’s kind of interesting.” So I got up, my wife and my, my two girls were up already getting ready for school. And I looked out the kitchen window and I saw Jordan’s car still parked in the driveway at 7:30 and that was really odd. He’s usually long gone by 7:10, 7:15, and frankly, he never, ever misses school and you know, so I didn’t know if he slept in or, or what was going on. So I went downstairs into his bedroom and I opened up the door and I found him. He had shot himself in his bed.
—-Later in the epiosde—
[00:27:54] Bob: So what change needs to happen? Jordan’s death raises a whole wide set of complex issues. Recall that horrible night began with a simple one-word message the kind many of us receive on a regular basis.
[00:28:09] John DeMay: At this point I’ve been speaking all over the world really and traveling and presentations and parent nights and law enforcement conferences and in Washington DC and, and what I’m finding is, especially from the law enforcement community, that the sextortion stuff in the last couple of years has gotten so rampant that most feel that it’s really not even a, an if you’re a teenager and get exposed to this, it’s when you are going to get exposed to it. To some level, and we all, we all get these random messages from random different people, from different parts of the world and, and friend requests and things and, and oftentimes those are the very beginnings of what could be a sextortion scheme. There’s a lot of groups and, and individuals that are doing this at a very high volume. It’s a numbers game.
[00:28:55] Bob: These text messages that we’re all getting right now where it, it could be just something like, “How are you?” Or it could be, “Hey, I’m in Seattle” ’cause I have a Seattle area code.
[00:29:02] John DeMay: Right.
[00:29:03] Bob: “Where should I go to dinner?” or whatnot. But, and, and behind that might be someone starting a sextortion scheme.
[00:29:08] John DeMay: That’s correct. Yeah. And you almost have to assume that at this point. Um, and when I talk to teenagers and parents, I tell them that’s what it is, you know, because it. It’s probably not anything else. People do reach out and there are people that have good intentions of meeting other people on the planet, but you know when, when some really amazingly beautiful woman is just reaching out to you randomly and then wants to, you know, now we’re into your conversation and wants to talk about sex with you, there’s probably a pretty good indicator that this isn’t what it seems.
[00:29:35] Bob: And I know your son’s story shows it can happen, it can escalate very, very quickly, right?
[00:29:40] John DeMay: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I, if you looked at every single sextortion suicide that’s happened, it’s happened, you know, under six hours for sure. Most of ’em, there are a few that have drug out over time, but a lot of ’em are literally within 30 minutes to two hours.
[00:29:54] Bob: They’ve tested these scripts, I’m sure, and then they can manipulate really, really anybody, right?
[00:30:00] John DeMay: Yeah, a hundred percent. And in our case, uh, particularly, and, and, and probably a lot of others, fast forwarding, you know, with the information that we all have now, the perpetrators, um, from Jordan’s case were, were they were educated and trained by a online group called the Yahoo Boys. And the Yahoo Boys was basically a, a loosely organized group that put together basically a training manual they had, you could go right on YouTube. The, the video’s up for were up for years. You could learn about sextortion, learn how to do it, how to get your victims could purchase scripts from them. Uh, they taught you how to get hacked accounts and buy materials, everything. So everything you need to know to learn how to do this particular crime was right on YouTube for anybody to see. And our group of suspects used that organization and were trained how to, to how to do it. It shows the professionalism in this industry and in this type of crime that young people don’t understand and parents don’t either. And I, I tell young people that it’s not your fault, right? I mean, this is, this is a crime. And these people are professionals. They know exactly what to do and what to say and how to say it. They know how you’re gonna act. They know what you’re going to say. These are all things that they’ve done time and time and time again. So they’re very well read in, in what happens. And, um, I try to stress that to them. And, uh, that’s, I think that’s the biggest piece. So when they understand, Hey, this isn’t, you know, I made a mistake, but this isn’t my fault, you know, it really is not
[00:31:31] Bob: so warning parents and teenagers, really anyone with a cell phone that they will be targeted by a extortion scam. That’s the first thing John wants, but he wants more change. He wants tech companies to do more.
[00:31:45] John DeMay: At the end of the day, the, the social media companies are, are the one that are creating the atmosphere for all this to happen. It’s really unfortunate as I meet, uh, more whistleblowers, um, from these companies and meet politicians and major players in the game, it’s, it gets scarier and scarier and scarier.
[00:32:02] Bob: Jennifer also wants criminals around the world to know that thanks to the successful prosecution of our son’s attackers, well, criminals shouldn’t feel safe just because they are far away.
[00:32:14] Jennifer Buta: I think that’s a huge message, that it doesn’t matter that you’re in a different country. You can be found, you can be arrested, and you can be held accountable for what you’ve done. I hope that it’s a deterrent for people. I know in Nigeria, you know, for this crime, the punishment is not harsh at all, and so that’s not really a deterrent for them there. And knowing that they can be brought here and face our justice system. Hopefully that prevents them from, you know, taking it to this level where they’re telling children to take their lives.
[00:32:52] Bob: Both John and Jennifer spend a lot of time talking about Jordan’s death now, hoping they can do as much as possible to prevent other tragedies
[00:33:01] Bob: What kind of reactions do you get when you, when you talk to people about this?
[00:33:06] Jennifer Buta: I mean, there’s several, it depends on, you know. The day for me. Sometimes, sometimes I feel better in talking about his story because if I tell someone I’ve just educated them and hopefully they’ll tell someone, and that gives me hope that another family won’t have to go through what I’ve gone through. And sometimes it’s really difficult to talk about it because you’re constantly reliving the nightmare of what did happen to Jordan. I get an overload of messages through my social media, of parents saying, thank you for sharing this story. Because I told my kid about it and it happened to them and they knew what to do. They remembered Jordan’s story. Wow. And they came to me for help. I also have parents that have reached out to me and said, this happened to my child. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go with the law enforcement things. Can you help me with this? And even yesterday, I received a message from actually our local government offices, someone contacted them trying to reach me because they were going through that situation and they wanted to talk to me.
[00:34:20] Bob: That’s an amazing thing that you’re doing, but gosh, that also feels like such a, a burden to be picking through all these emails is you have to be customer service to the world. That sounds like a lot.
[00:34:29] Jennifer Buta: It is. Sometimes it gets heavy and I can’t get to everyone. Um, at one point it was just, it was too overwhelming to respond to everyone.
[00:34:40] Bob: One point that Jennifer wants to make sure parents here and law enforcement hears is that without Jordan’s girlfriend coming forward to report the sextortion message she received. Jordan’s parents probably would never have learned the truth.
[00:34:55] Jennifer Buta: Absolutely. That was when I found out what happened to Jordan, that was one of the first thoughts in my head was, how many kids has this happened to? And their parents think that they just took their own life, but don’t know that there was actually something else behind it because they didn’t think to check their social media. Or maybe it was deleted from their social media like it was in Jordan’s case. And you know, one of the things that I think we’ve learned through Jordan’s case is this has taught law enforcement about financial sextortion, and that when they come upon a case where someone has taken their life, maybe take that extra step and check if it was something like financial extortion.
[00:35:37] Bob: The most important message they want to share is to reach a child, a teen who might find themselves in what feels like a desperate situation. And make sure they know that help is available. Make sure they know to reach out. John takes such calls and messages all the time.
[00:35:54] John DeMay: Well, I, I can tell you there’s, there’s hundreds of stories, hundreds of them, and it, it really, It gives me the fuel to, to keep going on the awareness side for sure. And it, and it, and it provides me with purpose to push for change legislatively and, and the other things that I’m doing. But just last week, last, it was last Thursday night. Last Thursday night, I did a presentation at our local middle school for sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade. We did three individual presentations on sextortion for each of those grades. And that was about eight weeks ago, 10 weeks ago. I did that right when, right before, uh, Christmas break. I think it was, and last Thursday night at about eight o’clock at night, I was sick as a dog. I had the flu covid, something was happening. I was out for days and I was riding my couch and I had a Facebook messenger pop up, and it was a 14-year-old student at that school that said, John, I need help. I know you came to the school and talked, but I honestly don’t remember what you said, but I need, I need some help. And as I, you know, I got right on it and I started chatting and he was just extorted 15 minutes before that, 20 minutes before that sent an image. Wow. And he was freaking out. So I was able to talk him off the ledge, and I messaged with him for about an hour. You know, every, every scenario is a little bit different. This, I wanted to try to get on the phone with this. Young guy and he just wasn’t interested in talking. He just wanted to message and that was totally fine. I’m like, yep, we can totally, we can message, it’s totally fine. Whatever you’re comfortable with. And I just kept engaging with him. It’s like a hostage negotiation. You just want to keep them communicating, keep him talking. You know, I, at one point I even, I even sent him a picture of Jordan and said, Hey, this is my son. He’s gone today. I wish every day that he would’ve taken the, the two minutes to walk upstairs at three o’clock in the morning and come and get me. And I, I don’t, I don’t get that. And I, and I don’t want this to be you. I want you to go tell your dad, you know, he’s going to appreciate you for this. And so we’re just trying to keep it positive and, and really make him understand that it’s not his fault really being a, he, he’s really a, a victim of a really heinous crime right now. And, um, he needs to treat it that way. Just, uh, talked to this kid and I, I told him about Jordan and, you know, told him how strong he was because he, you know, reaching out and, um, this is the right thing to do and it’s not your fault. And we went through everything. And by the end of the night he had messaged me back and said, “Hey, I just, I really appreciate the help. The cops are here. I told my dad and really, I really can’t thank you enough.” And, um, you know, and it just all worked out really good. I’ve, I’ve been following up with him in the mornings and stuff before school just to make sure he is good. And, you know, that’s the stuff that, that makes a difference because when someone asks, “Hey, can you come to the school and talk?”, It’s like, well, you know, “yeah, I guess so let’s do it. And uh, and then you get stuff like that, that happens and, and then the answer is, “Of course I will.” Right?
[00:38:33] Bob: We began this episode explaining that Detective Larson gives plenty of talks about sextortion now. He has a lot of important things to share with parents and kids. He often shows the dialogue we had him read earlier between Jordan and Dani.
[00:38:48] Bob: When you show this to groups, uh, what kind of reaction do you get?
[00:38:51] Lowell Larson: I mean, there’s, you can hear a pin drop in the room. It’s, uh, very chilling.
[00:38:57] Bob: Have you ever had somebody come up to you, you know, after a talk or, or maybe a day later or something and say, you know, “Hey, can we talk, this is happening to me,” or, or, “You know, someone, I know this has happened to.”
[00:39:07] Lowell Larson: yeah, I’ve, it hasn’t occurred at following the presentation, but for years now, we’ve, you know, been public about this case and I’ve received numerous calls from even friends and family saying that they know of someone that this happened to. In fact, uh, one person I heard, he said, you know, that thing, he went and talked to his parents and he says, you know, that thing that happened to that kid and Marquette, that’s happening to me right now. So that’s exactly what the message we’re trying to put out there is that obviously we tell people don’t send anything out online that, you know, you wouldn’t want on the front paper type of things, but, and not to send naked images. But the reality is it’s gonna happen. And the message that we wanna send to people is, please don’t do it. But if it does occur, please tell your family or friends and reach out for help. Don’t you know. Obviously don’t do what Jordan did, and you know, there’s programs that we can do. There’s things that we can do to help minimize this. In fact, there is a program run by. The National Center for Exploited and Missing Children, we often call it NCMEC off of the acronym, and they have a program called Take It Down. And that program is NCMEC working with family of minors that have some type of sexually exploited image out on the internet, and they will do everything they can to try to remove that image from the internet. So that’s a tremendous resource that’s out there. We also tell everyone to, if this happens to them. Is to stop communications with the person regardless of whatever threats that they do to. Disable their account, but don’t delete the account because if we need evidence off the account, we don’t want them to delete it. Screenshot anything they can regarding any information and to contact their local authorities along with obviously contacting friends or family.
[00:41:04] Bob: I can’t help but ask this question. This story is incredibly hard to hear, honestly. Uh, but you do this every day. How do you handle working with this, these sort of horrible crimes?
[00:41:16] Lowell Larson: I guess it comes down to someone’s gotta do it and uh, obviously we’re dealing with this, a horrible, horrible situation. We can’t bring Jordan back, but what can we do to go after the people that did this to him and then prevent it occurring to other people. So that’s where I find my strength.
[00:41:38] Bob: What does Detective Larson want people to learn from what happened to Jordan?
[00:41:43] Lowell Larson: Well, and I think it, it’s not just about sextortion, it’s just what your podcast is about scams. So just don’t think well. You know this happened to a young male and I’m not a young male or, or whatever. Think about the basics of the scam is that when you put a cell phone in your hand or utilize a computer, you are now potentially a victim to anyone in the world and you need to be very careful with what you do on that device. And you gotta be very careful of people contacting you on that device and verifying who you are talking to. Very common. What we see in these scams is it’s an unsolicited contact, which we have here. You have the rapport building, you have the pressure that’s put on someone, for instance, the, the, the scam of someone impersonating a law enforcement agency and saying, you have a warrant for their arrest and, and putting that stress on them about having to do something right now, or you’re gonna be arrested. You know, in Jordan’s case it was, you have to pay me right now, or you’re gonna be exposed. So the, so the themes are the same, and that pressure often causes people to do stuff that later on they look back and they’re like, oh, that was, why did I do that? You know, so you just gotta slow down. You gotta verify who you’re talking to. For instance, like I said earlier, with the law enforcement scam, if someone says they’re contacting you from the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office and they have a warrant for your arrest, you know, there’s nothing wrong with saying, well, I just need to verify who you are. I will contact the sheriff’s office and who should I ask for? And so you, you know, independently determine what the correct phone number is, and you call. And you try to verify that. So, you know, in, in Jordan’s case, it was the trusting of the, what someone told them or who, who they were, you know, trusting of a profile. And it’s, as you know, you can be anyone or anything on the internet. And so. There was that trust. And then the other cautionary tale I have is trust of the technology. For instance, in this case, they’re using a, a segment of Instagram that allows the picture to disappear after a certain amount of time, and it doesn’t allow for a screen capture. But it was simply that technology was simply overcome by taking another device and taking a picture of the original device. So if you know mm-hmm. Like, like Snapchat, if, if it doesn’t allow you to screenshot it. Because of the, the platform or however it’s set up, or if it sends a notification, if you screenshot it, if you just take another cell phone and put it over and take a picture of your cell phone with the image on it, you’ve just overcome that technology. So people are, you know, trusting of the technology and that you can’t do this, but you know, there’s always a way, there’s very often a way that you can defeat that technology that people have the trust in
[00:44:38] Bob: Detective Larson also includes in his presentations, a piece of advice for parents that, I think it’s just so wise, and perhaps for some of you counterintuitive.
[00:44:49] Lowell Larson: I believe the most prevalent reason why kids don’t tell their parents something bad happens online is because they’re afraid to lose their internet privileges. So, you know, if, if you’re a parent that has the attitude, well, if my kid shows me that, that’s it, they’re not gonna have a cell phone. They’re not allowed to use this anymore. I look at it a different way. I look at it as thank your child for being so mature to bringing that information forward to you and that you know that you can trust them, because if something bad happens, you will be made aware of it. So I think that’s the attitude shift that we need to have as parents is that if something bad happens online, we don’t want the nuclear option of we’re taking away all their privileges. If they bring something forward to you, I think they need to be congratulated for having that maturity. Obviously, you know, we can have a courageous conversation of what got them, got them into that point, but we need to really harness that of that maturity that they put forward.
[00:45:50] Bob: Keeping that open line of communication between parents and kids is absolutely essential, and so is having these sometimes difficult conversations about sex, but. It’s so much easier said than done. Jennifer has some wisdom about that.
[00:46:05] Jennifer Buta: I think that parents need to have open conversations about sextortion, just like they do with warnings about anything else to their children when they’re growing up. You know, if that’s about alcohol or substances or driving. I think that it needs to be a normalized conversation with your family that this can happen, and if it does, even if you fall into it, you need to seek help from an adult because it spirals. So quickly that it’s hard to tell what it is to do. And even for the kids, you know, I think they need to know that they are the victim in this no matter what they are being pursued for the wrong reasons and. There is nothing worth taking your life over. There are so many people that want to help you. If you find yourself in this situation, there is light at the other side.
[00:46:59] Bob: It, it must be such, I mean, you as a parent, you have hard conversations all the time. Right? A lot. Especially when, once you have teenagers. But this conversation strikes me as particularly like really, really challenging. Do you have any suggestions as to how to even get started?
[00:47:13] Jennifer Buta: One of the things that I have suggested and that, you know, schools have done is talk about Jordan’s story or talk about another children’s story that this happened to. I think that’s a really good icebreaker to open it up and then go into you know, what to do if it does happen, because it is a real thing, and that’s what parents need to realize. It’s a real thing and your child isn’t an exception from it. You know, Jordan was about to turn 18 years old. There was absolutely no reason for me not to trust him or to take his phone away to investigate what he’s doing on social media. He was all set to go to college and that made him the perfect target for this crime because it made him vulnerable of being exposed and being judged when he had all of this going on for him. So if it can happen to my son, it can happen to anyone. And having those conversations, that is our greatest asset right now to prevent things from happening to kids.