Police recommend parental controls for kids online
Marty Gordon
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A Blacksburg man accused of kidnapping a Wisconsin teenager over four years ago is now facing as many as 55 more charges involving child abuse material.
After a search warrant at the Blacksburg home, digital items were found that point to sexual abuse.
Initially, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office charged 37-year-old Owen Lars Anderson with kidnapping, child enticement and abduction of a child.
Court filings show the search of Anderson’s home found a number of electronic devices, flash drives, journals and personal information for both Anderson and the victim. The additional charges have come about after examination of the digital items. More charges could be pending.
Court filings said the victim told police that she started communicating with Anderson online when she was 12 years old.
The teen told police she first started communicating with Anderson online, through applications Kik, Discord and Signal. All three apps have been highlighted as ones where parents need to be careful with their kids’ usage. Investigators said Anderson had groomed the teen online from a young age.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that cases of adults soliciting minors online increased 192% from 2023 to 2024.
Virginia Tech expert Jin-Hee Cho shares tips for keeping kids safe from online predators.
According to Cho, “cybergrooming” is a long-term process in which an offender builds trust and emotional connection with a minor online to enable sexual exploitation, coercion, or abuse.
Cho is an associate professor in the College of Engineering and the Stephen and Cherye Tyndall Moree Computer Science Junior Faculty Fellow.
She is the director of the Trustworthy Cyberspace Lab, and her work features a transformative approach to uncertainty-aware decision making that integrates machine learning with belief/evidence theory, addresses pivotal security challenges, and significantly advances the research frontier in artificial intelligence for cybersecurity.
“It can happen anywhere — on social media, messaging apps, online games, group chats — and more often leads to dangerous in-person interactions later,” Cho said. “It isn’t about one inappropriate message. It’s about a relationship that develops over time and gradually crosses boundaries, which is why it can be so hard to recognize early.”
Cho said do not rely on parental controls.
“While helpful, controls alone cannot prevent grooming that moves into private or encrypted spaces,” said Cho.
Social media platforms with private messaging features, online gaming communities with chat functions, and platforms that use recommendation algorithms to connect users are some of the riskiest spaces.
“Offenders often try to move conversations into private spaces as quickly as possible,” she said. “That’s where visibility and safeguards drop off.”
As parents, she said to start conversations about online safety early and revisit them often.
“Open, ongoing conversations are one of the strongest protective factors we have,” Cho said.
Co-create boundaries with teens around privacy, secrecy, and sharing personal information, and normalize reporting concerns to trusted adults.
