Child Safe Australia | Roblox and keeping our kids safe

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Roadblocks has been in the news of late and there's
a story where a thirteen year old girl was groomed
by a thirty seven year old acting as a teenager
and over a long period of time she ended up
being kidnapped and abused and eventually she was able to
return home, but he was captured. But it's just a

(00:22):
full on story and it's all surrounding games and roadblocks
and all that sort of thing. We thought we'd speak
to Neil Milton from the manager from Child Safe Australia
and Neil, what could parents and roadblocks do to make
things a little bit better for us?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Absolutely, there's an assumption that's because roadblocks have parents or controls,
that parents are going to use those, and the reality
is often parents don't really know what their children are
doing and who they're actually talking to online, and so
one of the things the parents can do is that
they can actually know who they're talking to online. Completely

(01:01):
stopped that opportunity altogether and so that children be safer
online in this situation. It's interesting when you read that
story and realizing that that grooming went on for a
really long time and so there was lots of secrecy
and lots of things that were going on for that
child and for those parents, and so it's really important

(01:23):
to have an open dialogue about what's happening online and
to really think about what gaming platforms that the children
are actually using.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
I would imagine that a predator like this wouldn't be
grooming one person, that's right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Often groomers are people that's a part of a ring
of groomers, and they often are grooming multiple people at
a time. It depends on this situation whether they knew
them or whether it was just it was just only
on roadblox of what happened. But what have a new
situation is that they're the person that was the thirty

(01:59):
seven year old fake that they were the teenager in
order to gain trust, and therefore that teenager has obviously
given address where they live, etc. And unfortunately that person
has been really hurt.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
It's just a horrific story.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Are there some telltale signs to spot someone like that
a predator? One of the rules when it comes to
online gaming or any online platforms is you never give
any details, no details at all, no matter how much
you think you trust them or anything like that. You
never give whereabouts of details. You never do video calls,
you never send anything like that because you just don't know.

(02:37):
I think it's very hard these days to spot a predator.
But one of the things is that you can do
is that like really think about what they're actually saying
to the child. So if you are actually online with them,
you're connecting with them as a parent, then it's really

(02:59):
important and that you actually see what's actually going on,
and anything that you feel like this is not right,
you need to report it straight away. You know, this
is just one case that has gone out. There will
be many, many, many others. Unfortunately, Roadblocks have a real
issue in this because Roadblocks is one of the biggest

(03:20):
grooming gaming platforms in the world because of the connection
that it has with talking to people as part of
the game, and a lot of parents, like I said,
won't have put printal controls on. But unfortunately Roadblocks have
a lot of loopholes, and so if the trust is gained,

(03:41):
then that person that has gained that trust might invite
them to other chats, so it might be through WhatsApp
or things like that as well, or within the game
there's some other dark places that people can go. Unfortunately,
so parents need to be really aware that this game
isn't really the best.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
As a parent, what would you be telling your kids?

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Make sure my son or my daughter does everything they
can to protect themselves by understanding of how people really
can hurt them and that there are people in life
that don't want the best for us. And as a parent,
we need to know that before we put any child
on a platform and give them permission for that, that

(04:26):
we've done all of our research and we look at
the t's and c's and we look at all those
sort of things, and you know what, as a parent,
sometimes we just have to say no, even though everyone
else is doing it. The reality is we just have
to say no. And roadblocks doesn't have an end. There's
no end to the game. You can just keep playing
and that's the problem because it keeps you addictive.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Okay, Neil, Well, it's been great speaking with you this
morning with that insight and we don't want it to
be there, but it is always going to rear its
ugly heads. So it's important we speak to people like
you so we get a better standing of what we
should be doing.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
That is Neil Milton, General manager of Child Safe Australia,
Thanks for your time this morning, Neil, no worries, Thanks
for having me