Two men were recently arrested for distributing child pornography Ambrose Ledezma, 24, of San Angelo, Texas and Cody Brett Wilcox, 26, of Lubbock, Texas. They both used an a popular chatting app called Kik’.
Lubbock Police Department investigated the case, Commander of Crimes Against Children Lt. Ray Mendoza said people can create an anonymously create a username and enter in group chats based off of topics.
“They’ll create some flashy username and then they can attract the kids who are the primary users of the app to get them to send messages so they can communicate and then try to convince them to send photographs or their friends,” Lt. Mendoza said.
The Lubbock man who was convicted, Cody Wilcox communicated with a man on the app who was looking to talk about ‘Dads into incest, taboo etc’. Wilcox then sent photos of young girls to the man.
The local rape crisis center Voice of Hope, Leslie Simmons said that young women and boys can fall victim through what they call the grooming process, where a predator pretends to be your friend and learns your interests.
“These predators can sound like a 14 year old girl, they know what young kids are into, they know how to sound like them and use their language,” Simmons said. “They can take all the time in the world to groom somebody over this apps.
