The 13-year-old Utah boy hung out in the typical online spaces for someone his age: The chat app Discord. The gaming platform Roblox. And, of course, Twitter.
But for more than two months last year, on those very platforms, the boy was being sexually groomed by an adult who was 13 years older and hundreds of miles away. It started in private messages then moved into public view on Twitter.
It ended in a horror story. The boy’s father went to check on him one night and found him missing, his window open, the bedroom freezing. The boy was allegedly abducted by the man accused of grooming him, driven across state lines, and, prosecutors said, repeatedly sexually assaulted.
Heather and Ken McConney, the boy’s parents, told NBC News that they believe the kidnapping was preventable. It came after a series of missed opportunities over the span of nearly a month, where, they said, Twitter and law enforcement failed to effectively intervene despite an abundance of information posted online. They’re demanding answers.
“I need to move forward and figure out what the hell happened,” Heather said. “Where did the ball get dropped?”
This report is based on a review of archived online messages, state and federal court filings made in the two active criminal cases involving the suspect, interviews with the parents of the teen, interviews with law enforcement officials who worked on the investigation into the abduction, and an interview with the teen himself while his mother was present. NBC News is not naming the teen because he is a minor.
The McConneys reported the situation to local police in November and surrendered the boy’s iPhone after discovering explicit text messages between the boy and a man believed to have gone by @HunterFloofyFox on Twitter.
In tweets reviewed by NBC News, the accused adult identified as a “map” — a common online abbreviation for “minor-attracted person.” @HunterFloofyFox excitedly referred to the teen as “my lamb.” Both the teen and the Hunter Fox account made frequent references to the online furry community — a group of people who roleplay as anthropomorphized animal characters. Hunter Fox repeatedly talked about a trip he said the two would go on together.
Twenty-five days before the abduction, police sent a search warrant to Twitter to learn more information about the man police believe was grooming the teen. But they misspelled the username.
When the police corrected the error several weeks later, Twitter did not immediately respond, police said.
Five days later, the teen was abducted, according to prosecutors and the McConneys.
“He had photos, images of my son, on Twitter. Everybody could see it,” Heather said. “How do you not see this is a child? If you would have taken 10 seconds to go and look you would have seen it. And if you would have just released the information, we would have been able to find this person.”
On the Hunter Fox Twitter account, the adult interacted directly with the boy’s account, where he posted selfies of himself on a school bus and in other locations. NBC News did not directly view the adult reposting photos of the boy. Several tweets were removed from the adult’s account by Twitter before they could be archived.
The case illustrates how easily online predators can avoid detection online, even on the internet’s most recognized platforms. In a mountain of content, tech platforms sometimes struggle to detect and respond to real threats to children.
It also highlights the sometimes bold and grandiose security statements made by tech platform executives and managers, despite the problems those companies face every day. As the boy was being groomed, and over a month before his abduction, Elon Musk said that addressing child exploitation on Twitter was “Priority #1,” alleging he’d inherited a platform on which child exploitation was previously allowed to run rampant.
