A man in Edmonton says his daughter was fun and kind, but it began to change as a 13-year-old man was involved in a psychological game with an older man online.
Noah Madrano, 40, was arrested by an Oregon FBI agent a week after the girl was reported missing. He has been charged with rape, sexual abuse and kidnapping and will reappear in court in Oregon City on July 12.
“Your child is safer to play in the park than to play on the internet,” the girl’s father said in an interview Wednesday.
The Canadian Press has not identified a man or his daughter.
The father said his family had all electronic devices controlled by their children and was talking about the security of the Internet. They also monitored the girl’s tablet.
His daughter’s personality began to change about a year ago, he said, and she became even more isolated shortly before she disappeared. Over the last few weeks he has talked to her about how her online persona differs from the way she actually acted.
He thought it was a teenage anxiety. Maybe his daughter was trying to understand herself and this was just a stage.
The father knew little about strangers in other countries being part of the problem.
The father said he didn’t know how their communication began. However, they had conversations on several popular social media platforms.
The man gained some trust with his daughter, the father said. “Then his hook is in.”
The father claims that the man broke his daughter’s spirit and self-esteem and then used manipulation to isolate her from friends, family, and her social network.
The man welcomed her into his world when his daughter’s self-esteem was crushed, the father said. The man told her she loved her and accepted her.
The girl was finally seen arriving at junior high school, but did not appear in class. She was reported missing on June 24th. Police said the suspect was believed to have traveled to Edmonton, but it is not clear how the girl crossed the US border.
The father first said that the family thought she was at a friend’s house. But it soon became clear that something serious had happened. The family was scared, her father said.
The girl was missing for more than a week before being found in Oregon on Saturday.
He said they hugged and cried when the father reunited with his daughter. But the trials are not over.
He said everything was stressful. Going to her doctor means rehashing all the terrible things that happened to her. There are also police interviews and future court dates.
“It’s a long way to go,” said his father. “I don’t really know exactly what will happen.”
Cross-border kidnappings are rare, according to experts, but there are a surprising increase in reports of children being kidnapped online.
The Canadian Child Protection Center, which operates a national hintline for reporting child sexual abuse online, said reports of child temptations online have increased by 120% over the past six months. rice field.
“What I noticed is that there is no regulation or control of the Internet,” the father said.
According to experts, one in three Internet users in the world is a child and one in five in Canada. Many countries are pressing social media companies to ensure that the platform is safe for young people.
Canada has established an online safety advisory board to form a regulatory framework for dealing with harmful content online.
The father said he saw how good social media was when his family was looking for a teenager. But it’s clear that the Internet also has some ominous and dangerous aspects, he added.
“Social media and internet companies feel that they owe it to the world,” he said.
“This makes people so dangerous that we need to do something.”
Kelly Geraldine Malone
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