For 10 months, an Aussie teenager was forced to share sexually-explicit images of herself and carve things into her own body by a depraved online paedophile ring.
Now, the teen’s mum is warning other parents of the potential dangers, as much of the abuse was happening right under their noses.
The Courier Mail reports the teenager, who can’t be identified, was finally given an order to kill the family cat by an online satanic cult known as 764.
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764 is one of many online child abuse networks with satanic and neo-Nazi links, and was recently named in an alert list issued by the FBI.
When she refused, the cult began making hoax calls to the family’s home from the US, including one occasion that saw police surrounding their home with guns raised, demanding the teen’s father come out with his hands up.
What terrifies the girl’s mum is she had no idea any of this abuse was happening.
"They know who to target"
The abuse would happen while she was on her laptop in her bedroom, often through the night, right under their noses.
“They know exactly what they’re doing,” the teen’s mum told The Courier Mail.
“They know who to target. They know what to say.
“It’s like a playbook and then they share it amongst themselves.
“(It becomes) a competition to see who can get the worst stuff.”
The cult first “love bombed” their teenage victim, who had unwittingly stumbled across them after clicking a link on Discord, a chat app popular with gamers worldwide.
“I just saw a link on a random person’s account on Discord, it was a girl,” the teenager told The Courier Mail.
That first link led to others, and soon enough the teenager found herself in chats with members of 764.
She recognised some members as being active on Roblox, a game they would trawl for new victims.
The teen was soon tricked into handing over control of her social media accounts, and the group started blackmailing her.
Ongoing abuse right under parents' noses
The Courier Mail reports the group were looking for ‘hurtcore’, particularly for images of children suffering, and competed with each other to publish the most grotesque images.
The teenager was forced into making at least 100 sexually explicit images of herself, and was also ordered to cut herself on the legs and torso during live streams.
The teen’s mum told The Courier Mail she was also asked to write the names of group members in blood on her bedroom walls.
The girl was so caught up in the group that she would sneak into her parents’ bedroom at night to take her electronic devices to continue following her ‘orders’.
Her mum knew something was up, but didn’t realise the true extent of her daughter’s trauma until the group published images of her on her own social media account.
The teenager’s mental state had become so precarious she had to be hospitalised, but even then her abusers’ demands didn’t stop.
When she eventually refused to kill her family cat, the group “swatted” her family, resulting in armed police coming to their home, a shocking event that was captured on their doorbell video camera.
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"The violence is next level"
The mum told The Courier Mail she was speaking out after losing faith in local authorities.
She said local police dismissed her as “hysterical”, while the AFP failed to remove abusive images of her daughter.
“I haven’t heard from the authorities in a very long time, at least six months,” she said.
“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. The violence is next level.
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“It’s very explicit, awful, the worst things that you could possibly imagine.
“Every time I close my eyes, that’s what I can see.”
The Courier Mail reports the family has managed to cut contact with the group, but are still working to remove images of their daughter online.