Mom Intervenes When Man Asks 6-Year-Old to Call Him 'Daddy' on Phone App

A mom shared the disturbing story of her six-year-old daughter being harassed on a phone app by someone who wanted her to call him "daddy."

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Your parents always warned you to be wary of strangers when you were growing up, but nobody was prepared for how to attack that problem in the digital age. With social media, online gaming, and other mediums connecting (mostly) anonymous users all over the world, it's hard to avoid dealing with strangers and weirdos altogether. 

One young girl and her mother found this out the hard way. Jemma Casey, a 24-year-old mother from Scotland, recently shared photos on her Facebook page from a gaming app her daughter was using called Roblox. The images were disturbing, showing a man trying to coerce Casey's six-year-old daughter into calling him "daddy":

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Casey's Facebook post revealed a deeper problem; she claims these were far from the only messages sent to her daughter through the app. 

Morgan mentioned earlier that somebody messaged her earlier on it calling her a 'little pal' and inviting her somewhere. 

I did not realize in any way that this 'game' had a chat feature. After looking through the app and parental reviews I'm disgusted by what I've seen. Included are some pictures of what I found. It was me who replied to the chat not Morgan but there was loads of messages from random people. 

Included with her post were a series of reviews she discovered on the app, all from concerned parents who made the same horrifying discovery she did:

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Other parents have had their kids come far too close to encounters with wrongdoing strangers. The Daily Mail tracked down other parents after Casey's story started to circulate, and one mother, Jackie Gordine, told a similar story about her eight-year-old daughter, Daisy:

It was only when I saw Jemma's post on Facebook that I found out Roblox had a chat feature, and sure enough when I had a look she had a message from a total stranger.

Roblox released in a statement in the wake of the controversy, assuring customers the safety of their community was "a top priority." 

The total surprise from parents at abuse on the app speaks to a certain detachment from the activities of their kids. Those reviews seen above were readily available when Casey decided to do some digging, so the dangers for her daughter were already confronted by other concerned parents. A little due diligence ahead of time might have prevented such a situation, and thankfully the abusive messages didn't lead to a bigger problem.

Stories like these only underscore the need for parents to stress privacy and safety to their children in dealing with faceless people online. It's easy to dissuade kids from interacting with shadowy strangers in real life, but blocks of text are nowhere near as threatening. As "catfishing" has proven, even adults are mere steps away from compromising their identity, location, and all sorts of other pivotal and private information, so protecting the youth from predators online should be a major concern for parents.

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