35-year-old Brian Grinnell of Lakewood, Ohio was recently arrested for allegedly sharing an explicit image of an underage girl from Connecticut on TikTok. However, TikTok isn’t the real story here.
Now, I don’t blame news outlets for using TikTok in the headlines considering how popular it is. I mean, I sort of did it myself with this headline. The problem is with reporting like that it gives the impression that TikTok is the bad guy here. A lot of people will see the headline and say ‘that TikTok is bad’ while missing the crux of the matter.
Getting back to Grinnell, he’s accused of allegedly posing as a 15-year-old girl online and convincing a girl under 12 to send explicit pictures of herself. The victim became uncomfortable and blocked Grinnell on social media.
Out of revenge, this 35-year-old ‘man’, messaged a friend of the victim on TikTok and said that if the victim didn’t respond to him he’d post the pictures on TikTok, which he did.
Here’s the thing though. Grinnell didn’t meet his victim on TikTok. According to reports, Grinnell met his victim on everyone’s favorite website to meet strangers Omegle.
Omegle is a website whose tagline is “Talk to strangers!”. Omegle lets people engage in video chats with random people. There are no age checks on Omegle that are actually effective. Omegle is not an app. There is nothing that needs to be installed on any internet-enabled device to use Omegle. There are no app icons to look for on your kid’s device. Omegle is used strictly in the device’s web browser. Of course, none of this stops minors from using Omegle and predators know this. But wait, there’s more.
After meeting his victim on Omegle, Grinnell is said to have moved communications with his victim to Snapchat which is where the photos were said to have been exchanged. Let’s not lose sight that the victim in this case was under 12-years-old.
No one at that age needs to be on social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat let alone a predator playground like Omegle.
If you don’t teach your children about the dangers of the internet they might find out the hard way.
(Sources)
- New Canaan Police: Ohio man posted video of naked girl on TikTok
- Feds: 35-Year-Old Man Indicted for Distribution of Child Pornography
UPDATE 4/20/2021: Grinnell has pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 19th.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 
You definitely have a valid point with people using social media titles to gain readers. Sadly, most people don’t read beyond the headlines and apps like TT get the heat. I’d like to see more reports on sites like Omegle and ChatRoulette so these unmoderated pornmills can get shut down.
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Well, if it means anything as long as I’m around I’ll be keeping the heat on Omegle. I probably get more traffic for Omegle stories than any other.
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I’ve gone on that site a handful of times between 2011 and 2013… not good.
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The New York Times posted a glowing puff piece hyping Omegle in July.
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And this was all they mentioned about predators…
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