Four years after Robyn Cory’s daughter was groomed at 15 on Meta’s platform and sold for sex by a gang, she is still missing
Robyn Cory’s daughter Kristen was 15 when she was allowed to open her own Instagram account. “We thought we’d been responsible and done everything we could to make it safe,” says Cory.
Months later, Kristen disappeared from the family home after being groomed on Instagram’s direct message service by a criminal gang, who then sold her for sex on the streets of Houston.
Her daughter never recovered from her ordeal, Cory says. Kristen returned home but has since gone missing after being trafficked again. Her mother does not know if she is still alive.
Cory blames the gang who trafficked her daughter for destroying her life. She also blames Instagram, which she believes played a critical role in her daughter’s sex trafficking.
“If Instagram didn’t exist, this wouldn’t have happened to my daughter,” she says. “Instagram is why it was so easy [for these people] to do this.”
"she was targeted by a criminal gang running prostitution rings in Houston city centre in 2019.
Boys working as scouts for the gang at Kristen’s school identified her as a potential target and she was then bombarded by messages from gang members through the direct message function on her Instagram account.
“They promised her Louis Vuitton bags, they promised her yacht trips, and things like that in the Instagram messages,” says Cory. “They would say, ‘come and party with us’.”"
Yeah… clearly social media is the only way that happens…
it could’ve happened through SMS as well, they would’ve just had to find her phone number.
or literally in person, that’s possibly even more effective.