I was sexually harassed online at age 12 – here's what I experienced, what parents and children need to know

A victim of online grooming has come forward to warn parents and children about the dangers of the Internet.

Harrison Haynes was 12 years old when he befriended a “teenager” while playing online video games – and was exposed to pornographic content, self-harm videos and manipulative messages.

The “friendship” led Harrison, now 20, down a dark path of isolation, secrecy and shame for over a year.

Now Haynes is telling his story to show that the dangerous people aren't handing out candy in white vans, but “coming from inside our iPhones.”

Above: Haynes takes part in a protest outside Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., today. As a 20-year-old college student, Haynes shared his story to push Apple to try harder to build better child protection features into its tech products.

“I think almost every generation in America today has heard that a stranger in a white van is giving you candy and you should say no,” Haynes told ABC's “Good Morning America” ​​on Tuesday.

“But I think that for us and my generation, the danger is not the stranger in the white van. The call is not coming from there. The call is coming from our pockets. It is coming from our iPhones.”

Haynes' story began when he was a friendless kid who found gaming a way to alleviate loneliness.

And it was at this point that Haynes came into contact with the “19-year-old” who he said later sexually solicited him.

“I don’t think anyone in our world had the language for grooming yet,” Haynes said of his ordeal.

The relationship began on a gaming platform, but once the “teenager” had Haynes under his spell, they moved their connection to iMessage.

“When we moved to iMessage, there was no way to report him,” Haynes said of the encounter. “He was safe on iMessage.”

Using Apple's messaging service, the stranger was able to send Haynes content containing self-harm and pornography.

And the stranger began to bombard the child at school and in his family circle.

Haynes explained that over time he felt “pressed against the wall.” What started out as a few harmless messages a week had turned into four to five abusive and completely inappropriate messages a day that he couldn't block on his iPhone.

He told GMA that this dark and private suffering reached its peak when his virtual tormentor threatened to commit suicide if he did not continue to comply with his demands.

In response to his tormentor's manipulative suicide threat, Haynes said he “cried so loudly that I woke up my parents down the hall.”

When his parents stormed in and began searching through his phone, learning for the first time about their son's abusive relationship with this virtual stranger, Haynes says he was surprised that his fears of shame and punishment were unfounded.

“They didn't seem as angry with me as I feared they would be,” Haynes recalled. “They sat me down and told me I had been manipulated in some way.”

'When […] “He started confronting me with pictures and videos of self-harm and internet pornography,” he added. “I felt I had no adult to turn to anymore.”

Today, Haynes (above) is a student and child safety activist at James Mason University.

Haynes, now a student at James Madison University, has joined forces with the nonprofit advocacy group Heat Initiative.

The group is described as “a collaborative effort of concerned child safety experts and advocates encouraging leading technology companies to identify and remove images and videos of child sexual abuse on their platforms.”

This June, Haynes took part in the group's protest outside Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

He and the Heat Initiative are calling on the tech giant to develop and introduce features that help parents, children and others involved “report inappropriate images and harmful situations.”

The group also wants to persuade Apple to make it harder for sex offenders to store and distribute known images and videos of child sexual abuse on the iCloud platform.

Apple, for its part, pointed reporters to the child safety features it has already integrated into its iOS operating system and apps over the past eight years.

The company told Good Morning America that Apple devices have additional communication safety features for minors since the release of iOS 15 in 2021.

These features include a warning when underage users attempt to send or receive images or videos containing nudity.

Above is another picture of Haynes as a 12-year-old at the time of the online abuse

According to the company, the feature will be the default for child accounts under 13 since the release of iOS 17 in September 2023.

Apple's attempts to identify and report child pornography hidden on its iCloud servers proved to be a more sensitive and controversial issue, prompting an outcry from privacy advocates concerned that a major corporation could monitor the data of all its users.

But Haynes also has a message directly for parents and children: In his opinion, they need to take responsibility themselves and be more careful when navigating the digital space.

“Parents, I can’t stress this enough,” Haynes said, “don’t be afraid to talk to your children about uncomfortable things.”

The child protection activist said his trust in his abuser was a lifeline to talk to about his feelings, deal with bullying at school and discuss the typical challenges and issues of adolescence, which left him feeling trapped.

“It was this weird back and forth,” Haynes explained. “In my head, I wanted to get out for myself because now I'm harming myself and now I'm consuming pornography as a 12-, 13-year-old boy.”

But at the same time, the false trust that his tormentor had built up in him had a deep emotional burden.

Apple launched its Communication Safety tool in the U.S. in 2022. The tool – which parents can choose to enable or disable – scans images sent and received by children in Messages or iMessage for nudity and automatically blurs them.

When Apple's iMessage app detects that a child has received or is trying to send a photo containing nudity, it will blur it and then display a warning that the photo may be sensitive and offer ways to get help.

“It was someone I really cared about, and I knew that if I had asked for help, I might have put him in danger,” he said.

Another part of the problem, Haynes said, is “the taboo and stigma” surrounding the graphic images and videos sent to him on his iPhone.

“I didn't feel like I could reach out to a principal, a counselor, a teacher or my parents because I was afraid I would get in trouble,” Haynes explained.

“If parents can spend time with their children in an environment where they feel comfortable, in their own home,” the 20-year-old is convinced today, “then I think we can have a much better future.”

“If I had had this conversation with my parents, I wouldn't have had to seek comfort from a stranger on the Internet.”