VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — An Isle of Wight mother is warning other parents after her daughter was a victim in a child sexual abuse case.
News 3's Kelsey Jones spoke exclusively with the mother, who says her daughter was groomed online by a man from Virginia Beach.
It all happened on a device so many kids have: a smartphone. In this case, a popular app that many minors use led to the 14-year-old falling right into the hands of a man now convicted of sexual abuse.
"As a child, you can't really process that type of thing," said the mother of the victim.
The mother says she never would've thought her daughter would be a victim of child sexual abuse, especially by someone they would have never suspected.
"It wasn't just a stranger, but somebody I knew," the mother explained. "It's just that feeling that gets under your skin where you know somebody has access to your children, and you assume certain people are safe in certain environments, but they're really not."
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Thomas Cervantes, 24, pleaded guilty Wednesday to production and distribution of child sexual abuse material. According to court documents, from at least 2020 through March of this year, Cervantes used social media apps like Snapchat and Kik to coerce minors into creating inappropriate pictures of themselves to share over the internet.
Cervantes posed as "Thomas the Turtle" online to chat with minors. But in the case of this Isle of Wight woman's daughter, this wasn't a random internet stranger - she says Cervantes was her niece's boyfriend who she saw as a trusted member of her extended family.
"[My daughter] actually considered him a best friend," the victim's mother added.
The mother says Cervantes discouraged her daughter from telling others that he was chatting with her online.
"She expressed to me that Tommy explicitly told her that she was not to tell me about any of that," said the mother.
According to the Department of Justice, Cervantes would offer money to a minor to get them to take sexual videos of themselves. When some of his victims would say no, he would threaten them, the DOJ says.
"Unfortunately, on Snapchat, the messages do disappear. So there's not a lot of hard, concrete evidence afterward. In his case, we were able to match the IP addresses," the mother said.
Cybersecurity experts like Len Gonzales said as technology evolves, so are the risks that come with it for children.
"It's a situation where people are just not aware of what their children are doing online," said Gonzales.
The mother told Kelsey that if her daughter never told her about this, she would've never known this was happening.
Gonzales says it's important for parents to look through their kids' phones and devices and to have conversations with them about online safety.
"Check out the parental controls," Gonzales advised. "See what type of features those devices have and really understand the totality of communications that are available with those devices for their children to communicate with people outside the household."
The mother shared the following advice to other parents about keeping their children safe:
"I think if I had asked my daughter more questions earlier on, you know, she may have eventually felt comfortable enough to talk to me about it," said the mother. "I will urge other parents to ask your kids questions. Ask them what's going on. If it seems like they're not really telling you everything keep asking."
Cervantes is scheduled to be sentenced on April 25, 2024. He faces a minimum of 15 years and a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.
