Vignette 1A

Moderators: Gavin Burton & John Pizzuro

The words below have been provided anonymously by someone with lived experience:

Example 1: The obvious inappropriate predator

“There are different types of predators who lurk within digital mental health communities - predators who have the intention to do harm to minors. One type of predator is the easy to identify type which I have labelled as the Obvious Inappropriate Predator (button below has more details). I will describe a scenario depicting an adult who is masquerading as a minor on a digital mental health community. This adult pretends to be a child under the age of 18 so they can gain access to peer-to-peer volunteer supporters who are legally minor-aged children accessing the same online space as the predator. Obvious predators are the easiest type to identify and moderate because they make their intentions to do harm clear or obvious to the minor child. Digital mental health communities usually have safety features in place for the real child to block or report the offending adult. Even with on-app safety protocols in place to block and report the obvious predator, the amount of time it takes for the child's brain to register they are in danger during the conversation, the minor child has already been exposed to potentially harmful or graphic language sent by the adult offender. The example chat below is a fictional chat derived from real chat experiences of a 15-year-old teenager chatting with an obvious predator on a digital mental health site. As you read their direct messages to each other, please think about what potential safety measures could be put in place to prevent situations like this from occurring in the future and what potential mental health needs would a teen who underwent this type on online abuse would need to process what just happened to them while they were accessing a mental health app. In the fictional chat, the user named "HappyPineapple" is a 35-year-old male adult masquerading as a 15-year-old child. He is chatting in a direct message with a volunteer peer supporter who is a real 15-year-old site volunteer under the volunteer name "CoffeeAddict". During this chat example, the real teen, "CoffeeAddict" will immediately notice the danger and then proceed to follow the community guidelines for handling an inappropriate chat. Warning: the example chat contains sexually explicit conversation.”

Example 2: The Friend or Foe Predator

“In this example, we will examine another type of online abuser which I call the ‘Friend or Foe Predator’ type. I call it this because the child has to make spilt-second decisions to determine whether the anonymous person they are speaking to online is either a friend or a foe. This is not an easy task even for the most skilled adults, but we expect children to have the skill set to navigate digital spaces. Online mental health communities and parents expect teens to have the skills for determining who they can or cannot trust online. This is particularly important when creating community safety guidelines and protocols for online digital mental spaces, especially ones that include teen peer-to-peer volunteers on their platforms. The fictitious chat scenario depicted below (click the button below) demonstrates how an adult pretending to be a same age peer can force situations to occur in a direct message (DM) conversation that require the real teenager to make spilt-second decisions on whether or not they can trust that person. For background info purposes, I want you to imagine that the predator and the real teen have been speaking to each other online on a mental health platform for the past few months. They have developed a friendship and the predator has been successful in manipulating the conversations to where the real teen is beginning to see them as a friend instead of a foe. This can lead to very dangerous outcomes. In the fictional chat below, the user named "HappyPineapple" is a 35-year-old male adult masquerading as a 15-year-old child. He is chatting in a direct message with a volunteer peer listener who is a real 15-year-old site volunteer under the volunteer name "CoffeeAddict". During this chat example, the real teen, "CoffeeAddict" will be faced with a difficult decision where she has to either report their "friend" or she ends up falling for the manipulation of the adult. Notice how the predator can use their new friendship to coerce the real teen into doing what the adult wants. The predator will also refer to the real teen by their first name, thus demonstrating how the online friendship has developed to the point of exchanging some personal information to each other in previous conversations. As you read their direct messages to each other, please think about what potential safety measures could be put in place to prevent situations like this from occurring in the future.”

Example 3: the mentor predator

“In my opinion, the most difficult predator to catch is the mentor predator. A mentor predator is an adult who has a leadership role(s) within a digital mental health community. These roles give the mentor a certain respected status within the community. They are often prominent, well-known, and extremely respected within a digital space because they have volunteered their way up to a high level status. This predator's beloved status in the community enables them to gain instant trust of the minors that they mentor on the site. Teen volunteers assume respected mentors are safe because they are leaders. A mentor predator uses this to their advantage to groom underage volunteers into inappropriate sexual relationships. They are the most difficult to catch because teens fear reporting leaders, they manipulate the teen, they manipulate fellow adults, and the mentor predator having learned the site's safety features knows how to bypass them so that they avoid getting caught. Teens are particularly vulnerable to mentor type predators because the mentor has taken a long time to groom the relationship so that the teen becomes extremely attached to them. The mentor coached the teen through difficult situations and often blurs the boundary where they also learn lots of intimate details about the teen's life. Intimate details like do they have friends, do they have a troubled relationship with their parents, and they learn what their school life is like. The mentor predator guides the relationship so that they have all the power, but they trick the teen into believing no one else cares or understands them like they do. A teen is less likely to come forward and tell on this person because of the power that the predator holds over the child. In the fictitious chat scenario below you will see a chat take place between a digital mental health leader and a real age teen volunteer who has been the predator's mentee for several months. For the purposes of this scenario, the adult site leader and the mentee have already exchanged off-site social media. The predator did this to bypass the digital mental health community's safety features. The sexual abuse takes place on other social media platforms, but they continue to speak to each other on the mental health platform where they first met each other as volunteers. In the example chat the adult leader is the username "CaringHelper" and the minor-aged teen volunteer is using the username "CoffeeAddict". The adult is a 30-year-old male and the teen is a 16-year-old. When reading the hypothetical chat think about what safety measures could be put in place to prevent situations like this from occurring in the future. Also think about what education needs to be done in a digital mental health space to encourage abuse reporting.”

Vignette 1B

therapist verification and abusing positions of trust

Frankie was experiencing grief after losing a loved one. She started searching online for free digital mental health therapy and she came across a site that had a special offer of 6 FREE sessions with a certified Psychologist, which would have otherwise cost a lot! So Frankie added her personal information into the website and heard back immediately with an email confirming the free sessions. The email also came with an attachment including the certified psychologist’s electronic signature written on company letterhead.

Frankie started her first videoconferencing therapy session and while it seemed to go ok at first, she did find it somewhat hard to connect with the therapist, especially as the therapist didn’t have his video switched on because of poor internet connectivity his end.

In the next session, Frankie noticed the voice and tone of the therapist was slightly patronising and didn’t offer much empathy. Also, he would sometimes go on mute and the therapist still hadn’t gotten his video camera working yet. Frankie just tried to ignore those observations (she rationalised them by thinking that she couldn’t really complain given that the sessions were free).

By the third session, Frankie knew something wasn’t right. Her therapist told her that he needed to ‘test her level of grief using various challenges’. He first administered what he described as a validated scientific questionnaire called GAD7 that was backed by science (and sent her some published papers about it), but she was stunned by the dozens of extremely sensitive questions she had to answer. It seemed way too personal and way too off topic. Later in the session he commented about photos he could see behind where she was sitting during the therapy session, asking who they were and if any of her friends wanted to come join their grieving as group therapy sessions. That really confused Frankie. Toward the end of her session, the therapist informed her that for their next session he would need to watch her grieve in person, and spend the entire day together. Frankie immediately left the session feeling sick to her stomach. She just realised that this person must be posing as the online certified therapist and now had access to her home address, bank details, and social media information. Frankie had no idea why someone would be an imposter and invade her privacy like that, she felt traumatised by the entire thing and she didn’t know where to turn for help. How can Frankie be supported not only after this traumatic event, but also before the event how could she have been better protected? Who could have helped her and how?

Vignette 1B was inspired, in part, by real events:

Police officer assessed by fake psychologist after complaining of sexual harassment

Published by: Judy Trinh, Madeline McNair · CBC News · Posted: Jun 30, 2021

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/police-officer-mental-health-report-by-fake-psychologist-sexual-harassment-1.6083291