Stranger Dangers

How one website has become a magnet for kids and sexual predators, and what it might mean for the future of tech.

- By David Alm. Ilustrations by Borja

The two girls at the sleepover huddled together on the bed, passing the cellphone back and forth. They took turns glancing at the screen, fascinated and unsettled by what they saw but unable to look away. Their other friend wanted no part of what was going on.

Alauna, one of the girls on the bed, was intrigued. Olive-skinned, with blond hair and blue eyes, Alauna was slight for a 12-year-old. With the tap of a finger, she found herself video chatting with a stranger. About a week later, it happened again at another sleepover, but this time, one of the other girls told her mom that her friends were "acting really weird." She said Alauna stayed up all night talking to someone who "sounded like a man." After the first sleepover, Alauna became increasingly secretive and reclusive. She spent hours on her phone, disappearing into her room, and shielding her screen from her mother, Christal Martin. Finally, after hearing about the slumber parties and the person who "sounded like a man," Martin demanded to see her daughter's phone. There were dozens of images and a video of her child, sometimes naked in provocative positions. Alauna had shared these images with up to 30 men, most of whom she'd met on a chat platform called Omegle.

The next morning, Martin put Alauna in the car and drove her to the police station in Green River, where they lived. Martin, now 38, was raised in this dusty Wyoming frontier town (population 12,000) with majestic buttes to the north and a Union Pacific rail yard slicing through its middle.