Recently I’ve started posting items about female erasure, trans issues and safeguarding children on Facebook. Yesterday I received a very worrying message from a friend who’s 16 year old son came out as trans a year ago. She doesn’t mind if he is trans, because she’s always encouraged her children to be who they want to be, but she doesn’t really believe that he is. She suspects that he has been groomed by a group on a gaming forum. She also suspects this group of promoting self harm. She has seen messages, the contents of which she didn’t disclose, but she said they all appear to be from older people. When her son found out he locked his computer down with passwords so she no longer has access.
She wanted to know if I‘d ever heard of grooming going on. I told her that I’ve not seen it first hand but I’ve heard about it from others, and seen screenshots of tweets where people post websites where cross sex hormones can be purchased.
I directed her to the Transgender Trend website, because to be honest I have no idea what else to do.
Has anybody else seen or heard of trans groups grooming young, vulnerable people on the Internet. I understand that this boy is very vulnerable, so he would seem a perfect target. Also, does anyone have any information or links to resources or support groups I could send her. I feel really crap because she’s come to me for information and I don’t really have any.
She asked me if I thought she was being paranoid. No, from everything I’ve seen and heard I don’t think she is.
Please help me, if you can. I’m scared because this stuff keeps coming closer and closer to home, and we are screaming out about it and no one is listening. I have a 10 year- old son myself and I’m worried for his future.