A Queens girl's alleged kidnapping is part of a growing trend, lawmakers warn. Police say an online predator groomed her.
Last month, a Queens child was groomed online, then kidnapped just seven days later, according to police.
She's home safe now, but authorities say online threats like this one are exploding, with predators increasingly pushing violence.
Suspect arrested after allegedly kidnapping 11-year-old
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said the 11-year-old girl met the suspect on the gaming app Discord. They began a conversation on Dec. 5 and exchanged phone numbers. That's when prosecutors say the conversation turned sexual.
Just seven days later, on Dec. 12, the child disappeared.
"When her mom in Queens went to pick her up at the bus stop, she wasn't there," Tierney said.
Multiple agencies rushed in.
"These are the type of cases where seconds matter," Tierney said.
The next day – Dec. 13 – police tracked the girl's cellphone to a home in Bay Shore. Tierney said they found the girl in the suspect's bed. He was arrested for multiple charges, including kidnapping.
"He was not posing as a younger person," Tierney said. "He knew that he was meeting an 11-year-old child."
The 11-year-old girl is now recuperating at home.
CBS News New York spoke with the suspect's attorney. The attorney said they're waiting for discovery to see the prosecution's evidence and had no further comment.
The case is back in court on Feb. 17. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in prison.
A Discord spokesperson tells CBS News New York they don't comment on specific legal cases, but the platform requires users to be at least 13 years old.
"Discord is deeply committed to safety and we require all users to be at least 13 to use our platform. We use a combination of advanced technology and trained safety teams to proactively find and remove content that violates our policies. We maintain strong systems to prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming on our platform and also work with other technology companies and safety organizations to improve online safety across the internet. Discord has reported extremist groups and individuals to law enforcement, with our reports playing a material role in prosecution and jail sentences for bad actors," a Discord spokesperson sad.
"Predators are going to look to exploit that platform, get into a peer-to-peer chat with a younger person and then begin to groom them, begin to manipulate them and then look to meet them," Tierney said. "So it's extremely scary."
Online sextortion cases surging
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says the danger to kids online is surging.
In 2021, the center recorded 139 sextortion reports. In only six months in 2025, they recorded more than 23,000.
At a United States Senate hearing in December, mother Tamia Woods described how someone posing as a teenage girl got her 17-year-old son, James Woods, to send a compromising video. Then, predators swarmed him, extorting him for hours.
"The attackers came, not one person, but what we believe at least four," Woods said. "For nearly 20 hours, they attacked threatened, terrorized, dismantled my child."
It drove James Woods to take his own life.
"No parent should ever enter a room and see that," Tamia Woods said. "I stand here because 19-and-a-half hours is not a short time in the digital world. It is a lifetime. It is enough time for someone to intervene, to flag the account, to cancel messages, to report this behavior, yet no one stepped in."
Lawmakers warn sextortion is one part of a darker shift online. They say violent groups are increasingly targeting children in private chats, isolating them, then pushing them to harm themselves or others.
"Direct real-time torture, encourage escalating violence," Sen. Dick Durban said at the December Senate hearing. "What once was rare is now epidemic."
Authorities urge parents to stay involved in the apps their kids use, lock down privacy settings, and warn children never to move to private chats with strangers.
