Social media, chat rooms, and high res cameras on cellphones have become part of our daily lives. But this new way of connecting with others also provides access for people with deviant sexual interests to “reach out and touch someone” - sometimes in unexpected ways. Take, for example threadclub.com [not the actual name of the site]. This is not a site where quilters go to share patterns, or knitters can find the world’s softest yarn. It’s actually a site that hosts chatrooms on Harry Potter, the Twilight series, and Stephen King novels, alongside threads where you can chat about bestiality and download a beginner’s guide.

On a popular dating platform where you can hook up with someone for anonymous sex you’lll also find bestiality threads where you can share images, experiences, and fantasies with others who are like-minded. A couple of weeks ago, for example, a 35-year-old California man was arrested for sending a pornographic image of an infant to a woman in Indiana who moderates a bestiality-themed chatroom on Kik. Another Indiana resident, a 39-year-old mother of three, used her husband’s Kik account to share images of bestiality and children being bound and raped.  

In October 2019, a 38-year-old high school teacher in Florida was sentenced to 9 years in prison for chatting online about his sexual interest in children. His cellphone and a thumb drive located at his home were full of child and bestiality porn.  

This past summer, a 58-year-old serial child sex abuser in Nevada was sentenced to 25 years for using online chatrooms to share nearly 600 images and videos of child porn involving bestiality and BDSM. The convicted sex offender admitted to exposing himself to others as a young boy, escalating to contact offenses with children by the time he was a teen. Somewhere along the line he developed a “diaper fetish” and attempted to control his urges by watching child porn online and talking in chatrooms about his diaper fetish.

In March 2019 a 40-year-old homeless meth dealer in Arizona raped a cat multiple times, and barely three months later was arrested for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl he met in a chatroom. That same month, a 30-year-old EMT in Florida kept hundreds of images of child porn and bestiality on his Dropbox account and used Kik to share them as well as offer his friend’s 12-year-old daughter for sex.

The Internet is a powerful resource providing a quick and effective way of connecting with others. But for those with deviant interests, video games and chatrooms can be the perfect place to share sex, lies, and videotape.