Important information about your children and danger of online chat rooms

It’s unthinkable but “sextortion” is happening to children locally and Kelly Truax of GBMC’s Safe Program joined the Maryland Crab Cake Tour for a community awareness message about the strangers your children can easily interact with online. Please support their April 11th “Walk A Mile In Their Shoes” event on the GBMC Towson campus to raise funds for a local program to benefit Safe

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes brings the community together to walk in solidarity with the victims and survivors of sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence and human trafficking. The walk benefits the GBMC Sexual Assault Forensic Examination (SAFE) and Domestic Violence (DV) Program, which provides confidential services to victims of all ages, at no cost to the patient. Additionally, the program provides comfort and counseling to re-empower patients. The SAFE & DV Program at GBMC never closes its doors, the team is available 24/7/365.

The GBMC SAFE & DV team relies entirely on the support of our community. Your participation in Walk a Mile allows the team to continue to provide necessary services to victims in our community as well as community outreach to move the needle toward prevention.

Kelly Truax from GBMC discussed the serious issue of sextortion targeting children, emphasizing the need for education and awareness. She explained that sextortion involves sexual blackmail using explicit images, often facilitated through social media platforms like Instagram and Roblox. Kelly highlighted GBMC’s Safe Program, which provides comprehensive support for victims of sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence. She announced the 10th annual Walk a Mile in Their Shoes event on April 11, 2023, to raise funds for these services. The event includes a one-mile family fun walk, games, prizes, and raffles, with notable supporters like John Harbaugh and the Stevenson football team.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Sextortion, GBMC, Safe Program, children exploitation, social media, Roblox, Instagram, Snapchat, April 11 event, Walk a Mile, sexual assault, domestic violence, community support, education, outreach.

8

SPEAKERS

Kelly Truax, Nestor Aparicio, Speaker 1

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. Nothing more Baltimore positive than when we move the Maryland crab cake tour to a place where the sign says best pizza. We’re pizza John’s. We’re in Essex. They do have a crab cake here. It is tasty, not as tasty, so it’s French fries and gravy are going to be a little later on in the cheese. Later on in the cheese steak. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery. I have the magic eight ball. I’m hoping that the lucky Tony Gwynn jersey, along with the magic eight ball Luke Jones, is going to be here a little later on day shine. I’m going to talk Orio baseball and get the season off. We’re going to be in Toronto next week. We’re going to be back with the magic eight ball. Scratch off Wednesday for Game Two, when the Red Sox comes to come see us down at Faith Lee’s at Lexington market, where I’ll be having a shrimp salad the crab cake as well. I am going to be getting a pizza here today, probably several pizzas, probably a cheese steak. I’m going to swallow a lot of aggression and some french fries and gravy. All the brought to you by the Maryland lottery. But we’re going to start things with a very serious topic, but I’m going to start it light hearted, because Christina from GBMC, we were working together, talking about this very important program that’s very serious we’ll talk about. And I said, We got to get we got to get Kelly on the show. And Ali knew her first name at this time. And I said, Sure, we’ll do well, you know, there’s a sextortion thing and recognize, prevent, protect, we’re going to talk about all these things with GBMC in a safe program. But I said to her, you know, I’m doing a show this week Friday. You know, if Kelly wants to come out, maybe she wants to come to fadelies or Cocos, or maybe we’re going to be over in Catonsville. We’re going to be uptown at Cooper’s in April, because GBM sees sort of Towson. My brother was born at GBMC and I said, I’m gonna be in Essex. You know who wants to go to Essex, except the guy from Dundalk? And she said, No, no, no. Kelly lives in Essex. And I’m like, well, then get her over. Does she know where Pizza John that’s dumb, right? Anybody that you know are you from Essex? Do you know where pizza John’s is? And then Kelly shows up here, like for breakfast, to be the first guest, and has stared at me. However, families here, when you said you were doing the show pizza, John’s, it’s no problem getting the family out to eat pizza, right?

Kelly Truax  02:06

No, absolutely not. They’re here for pizza. John’s, not for me. All right, what’s

Nestor Aparicio  02:09

8

your background? Like your sister’s over here, stemmers, which is right around the corner, and your Essex. But when I found out your last name was true, x, t, r, u, A, X, I’ve only known one other true acts, one of my all time favorite humans in the world, and I was hoping you were related, but you’re not. Terry true X during March Madness, no less, the long time Towson basketball coach was just a dear friend of mine. And I’m disappointed to hear that you’re not related to him, but you’re nice enough and smart enough, and you got this, this Terry would be, would be pleasure that you’re doing something good for the community, because he was that kind

Kelly Truax  02:48

of man. That’s good to hear. That’s good to hear. Maybe I wish I should I was related to him. Well, Terry

Nestor Aparicio  02:53

gave me all sorts of well, Terry’s big sponsor that helped him was my dear friend in Dundalk at Captain Harvey’s the Great. Steve Cerrone, I ate so many Captain Harvey’s cheese steaks. He loved Terry, and Terry loved him, and I had this relationship before I was even on the radio, I knew Terry, and I was always out watching at the Towson center and doing all that, but Terry gave me one of the great gifts ever, and this is for everybody out there. And I’ve had UCLA grads on the show that didn’t know about this. John Wooden was the U, C, l, a coach, and he has a thing called the pyramid of success, life pyramid, and it’s a building block that he shared with everyone. And Terry was a devotee of John wooden’s basketball coach, right? He also worked for Dean Smith, so he gave me this pyramid to success that literally is autographed by John Wooden and it’s on my poster wall. So Terry true axes with me every single day of my life. Kelly true axes here, she’s from GBMC and a safe program we’re gonna get serious about. You gotta you got an event coming up in a couple of weeks, but let’s talk about what’s going on. Because social media has, Lord knows, I get more hate mail than I could possibly get if I just, you know, social media is open things up for a whole bunch things that we don’t want to know about, but we have to know about, especially when involves children, right?

Kelly Truax  04:13

Absolutely, yes. So one of the big topics that we, you know, talk about at the Safe Program at GBMC is the topic of sextortion. We are seeing it happening at an alarming rate with children. So when you

8

Nestor Aparicio  04:27

say that word, I’m thinking, like, is that like porn revet, you know, like amongst adults, but you’re, you’re talking about children. This is children.

Kelly Truax  04:34

It’s basically sexual blackmail. It is exploitation, you know, just to put it in simple terms, hey, I have these explicit pictures of you, and if you don’t do what I tell you to do, or give me what I’m asking of you, then I’m gonna release these out to your family, your church, your school, your coaches. I’m gonna post them on the internet, and

Nestor Aparicio  04:54

they might not even be real, right? Absolutely. I mean, AI has changed the gaming every month. Sunday morning, I see these press conferences after football games where they change the coaches lips to say awful Yes. And I’m thinking, I gotta be next for this, right? But this is but kids have the ability to do this, and obviously it’s a terrible thing. And this is boys to girls, girls to girl. What is this?

Kelly Truax  05:19

8

So we have seen it at the Safe Program, where it has been peer to peer. But typically, what we’re seeing is that this is a person that is they’re meeting them on the internet, and this person is pretending to be someone that they’re not. So what we are seeing is typically, it is a teenage boy that believes that he is talking to a woman or another teenage girl on the internet, and basically forming a relationship until they start exchanging pictures or videos. And then at that point, the person you know, the person that is doing the exploitation, knows that they have this child with their back up against the wall, and they will say, I’m not who you think I am, and if you don’t send me $500 in Amazon cards, or you don’t send me so much money in gaming tokens, or if you don’t you know cash at me, then I’m gonna, I’m gonna send these pictures to everyone you know. I have already done my research. I know who you know. Every single person that follows you on Instagram. It is gonna go out to your entire friend group. So you better do what I’m asking you to do, or else, tick

Nestor Aparicio  06:24

tock. Big problem with this and young so we’re talking 11 to 17. Are we talking younger kids, nine and 10? Are getting on social media? Absolutely, absolutely, some I gotta wake up. I mean, I’m glad you’re here, because this is, I mean, I I just don’t know if I had a grandchild, how quickly they would they would have one of these in their hands by the time they open their eyes, pretty much, right? And then, then it becomes much like, I guess, our cable boxes, when our parents is trying to navigate what you can turn on and off on a phone, correct, but email, right?

Kelly Truax  06:56

Any child that has a device is at risk for being exploited. It’s very, very scary. Instagram is, you know, you know, plays a big factor in that. But I mean, some of the other web apps that are, you know, that we’re seeing this on Roblox, which a lot of children have access to, what they will do to, you know, get with, you know,

Nestor Aparicio  07:17

I’ve never heard of this. Say that again, Roblox. It’s just, I’m not a parent,

8

Kelly Truax  07:21

go ahead. So it’s a game for kids. And what they will do is they will go in and they will start messaging the child in Roblox, and then encourage them to move to a different app, like Snapchat, where they’re able to exchange pictures. This

Nestor Aparicio  07:35

isn’t a pedophile thing, per se. This is an extortion money thing, absolutely, targeting adults, targeting children. Yes,

Kelly Truax  07:43

these are adults. And what we’re seeing more and more is these are people from other countries. These are people from other that

Nestor Aparicio  07:50

8

doesn’t shock me at all. That doesn’t shock me at all that part of it, yeah,

Kelly Truax  07:54

it’s very, very scary and and the other thing is, any app that has a chat feature is, you know, it should be monitored heavily if that is in the hands of a child. You know, those apps are really, really scary, like I said, Roblox, Instagram, Snapchat. Well, every adult

Nestor Aparicio  08:12

has been phished. I mean, how many people do you know that have had their Facebook hacked? They’ve, we’ve all gotten the email from the King of some place in Africa that wanted a billion dollars, and like chain letters. I mean, I started with chain letters, right? This is a disturbing place, and you’re doing an event here to benefit on april 11, and talk a little bit about the event and what people can come out. Because I want to talk more about how to protect these young people,

Kelly Truax  08:39

sure. So the event is on april 11. That is a Friday. That is our annual Walk a Mile. It is the 10 year anniversary of walk a mile in their shoes. It is a one mile Family Fun walk around the campus of gdmc. There’s going to be tons of beautiful campus, tree lined. It is a beautiful campus, and they’re

8

Nestor Aparicio  09:00

still under construction? No, no, it’s over now. It’s done. All right, I gotta find out. Sort of like Boston, it’s was under construction for a long time. Yes,

Kelly Truax  09:08

and it’s beautiful. It’s, it is gorgeous, I do have to say. All right, it’s gorgeous, but it’s a family fun walk. There’s going to be a lot of games, prizes, there’s raffles, there’s going to be excursion giveaways, just a really nice event, and all of the proceeds go back to support the GBMC sexual assault forensic examination and domestic violence program, which

Nestor Aparicio  09:29

is a much larger thing than what we’ve just talked about. Tell me about the big picture safe and and domestic violence program. There’s boy that’s all encompassing, right? I mean, there’s a lot of things that go on, a lot of work that you do. And I know from for talking to Christine about this, that if, if a woman is assaulted in in this region, you are really the place that that woman would be examined, would be helped mental health, just all the wraparound that needs. To happen after the unspeakable house? Yes,

Kelly Truax  10:02

8

so any person that is the victim of a crime, such as sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, human trafficking, if they are a victim of one of these crimes, they come to our hospital if they are needing medical attention. You know, we also true that region or the county, to sit anywhere the only provider in Baltimore County, yes, in the county, okay, we treat across the lifespan, from birth till death. So all of our nurses that work for our program, they are certified to work with children all the way up through adult we also have a 24 hour advocacy program where we have advocates that are able to work with patients to give that like one site, immediate crisis counseling, and then link them to other resources in the community. Because after you know, suffering, you know, from such a traumatic event, we just don’t want to provide medical care and say, Okay, here you go. There you go. So you know, we’ve made sure, you know, with this program that we have, we’re able to provide every single service that you know, that we possibly can to our patients, to, you know, work them. You know, work with them through this process and back to healing.

Nestor Aparicio  11:13

How long have you been with GBMC and safe? And how long has the program been implemented? So

Kelly Truax  11:18

I have been at GBMC for six years. I volunteered for the program for a few years before that, and I believe the program has been around. I’m really not how far along

Nestor Aparicio  11:32

that this has come. In regard to there used to be a point where a woman would have this happen to see we don’t believe you, which is on the one end to now where we’re bringing that, that there really has been a lot of thought in this century, I would say, about the mental health part of this, not just the perpetrator and the crime and but understanding better that there needs to be more than just you go to the clinic after something like this happens, it is a and This is where the funding comes in. I’m sure, absolutely,

8

Kelly Truax  12:02

yeah, that’s why the funding is so important. We you know, we get a small reimbursement for our patients. However, we do not make money for the hospital. This is a free and confidential service that we provide to our community members. So we heavily rely on our community and philanthropic giving, you know, to keep our program running

Nestor Aparicio  12:26

this 10 years, you guys been having the walk a mile, walk a mile in the shoes. It’s a GP MC benefiting the GBMC safe and domestic violence program. It’s Friday, April 11, four o’clock. April 11, Friday four o’clock. So that’s perfect. It’s going to be 65 and sunny, right? Yes, perfect day to take a walk. And

Kelly Truax  12:42

John Harbaugh is our honorary Is he coming out? Yes, he is gonna walk a mile. He walked him out with us last year as well. He did. He came out as as a supporter. He, you know, just he walked the

Nestor Aparicio  12:53

8

Stevenson fight, doing things in the community. That’s good, especially this time of year. Yeah,

Kelly Truax  12:57

the Stevenson football team, they’re a huge supporter. They’ve come to the walk for several years when they saw John Harbaugh it, you know, they were starstruck. And he, he literally took pictures with every single person that asked for a picture. He took team pictures. It. It was really cool to see. It was cool to see, you know, how excited these guys were to see him. There was actually one of the players that walked up to him and said, I’m never going to be good enough to play for the ravens, but can I still take a picture with you, which I thought was super cute, you know, but it’s a really great event, you know. And especially with that walk, we want to be there to support our survivors. We have a lot of survivors that do attend, you know, and just get and be able to give back to the community. You know, this is an interesting

Nestor Aparicio  13:42

time to do a walk on a Friday afternoon, because a lot of these things are 10am to Sunday morning, or not able to Saturday morning, or they’re somewhere at no offense to United stadium or the camping yards or but you’re doing it right on your campus. Yeah, like, so that’s, yeah, I don’t have to ask where

Kelly Truax  13:58

it is. No, absolutely not. You just pull up the hill and you will see the signs directing you to the

8

Nestor Aparicio  14:03

walk. How many folks will do this? It varies every

Kelly Truax  14:07

year. You know, we’re thinking this year is going to be is going to be pretty huge. Well, I think a

Nestor Aparicio  14:13

Friday afternoon is interesting because it feels like a little sunset hat late in the day this time of year, perfect. I went for a walk yesterday. 65 degrees. Yes, got to think warm around here. I’m going to Toronto next week for opening day. And I looked at the forecast, 38 snow, 35 snow. And I’m like, I’m going to need to walk around GBMC on april 11. You can go learn more about all of these things at gbmc.org/walk, a mile. I’m gonna have all this up on the website at Baltimore positive as well. Other things going on at GBMC. I know it’s like big year, big things happening over there, constructions over and all that. What other events the safe do during the course of a year? And what other information, what people know about other than just that, obviously, the beginning of this sex fortune thing, which I had. I literally never heard about with kids. I mean, you what’s the name of that game? Row? ROBLOX, okay, all right, I haven’t played that game yet. Now, you

Kelly Truax  15:08

8

know, this is our. This is our, our big annual fundraiser. We really heavily rely on walk a mile. Our community is great. We, you know, we have donors that give back to us all year long. But this, this is the big one that that we have so, you know, and our program is very, very big on education. You know, education is the key to prevention. So we run a very successful outreach program. We are out in the community, at least one one of us, every day of the week. We go into a lot of schools. We just presented at Eastern Tech last week. We were there for two full days. We present to all of the health classes on topics like intimate partner violence and social media safety. So, you know, we’re none of

Nestor Aparicio  15:54

this stuff was happening from an educational standpoint 25 years ago, really, wasn’t?

Kelly Truax  15:58

I know, I know it’s very, very scary, but what the rewarding thing is, is, you know, we do these presentations, and we put our emails out there, and then you get emails not from the teachers. You get emails from the students. And I, you know, just at Eastern Tech, I got five emails from students that said, hey, you know, we, we have a one love club. Would you be willing to come back and talk about intimate partner violence with our one love club, we had to that said, Hey, can we volunteer at your walk? You know, that’s, that’s the rewarding part, because you know that these kids are listening, you know, getting that feedback. And you know, even if one kid out there is is listening to what we say, We’re protecting one child.

Nestor Aparicio  16:36

We are in Essex, where pizza John’s talking about all sorts of community things going on here in EVT, we got you got Essex and Kelly true axes here from GBMC in their safe program, talking about the big event. It is the walk a mile in their shoes. Events, 10th anniversary. It’s Friday, April 11, benefiting gmbc. GB MCs safe and domestic violence. I knew I would get that wrong before it’s all over with, and I’m big appreciation to Christina for putting this thing together. Um, did I leave everything in or out? Are we good? We’re gonna talk about pizza. What’s on your pizza here? Pizza, John’s Miss peach. Pizza. John’s real Essex person here. So what’s your

8

Speaker 1  17:11

favorite? I want to hear about this. Um, I don’t want you to I don’t want you to get on me. I’m not

Nestor Aparicio  17:15

gonna judge you if you eat anchovy, it’s just cheese.

17:21

I know you have an issue

Nestor Aparicio  17:23

8

cheese, you know, like, so my thing is the and I’m trying to get them to rename it the Dundalk Venezuelan special, but it’s called the Hawaiian up on the thing. But you don’t want to get the Hawaiian because it’s just got ham and pineapple. You need to get the crispy pepperonis on it. So I get the ham pineapple, which is Hawaiian, and then I add the pepperonis. And it’s really important. And you know this that the pepperonis go on top because they get crispy, they get nice. And then that’s, that’s, you don’t eat pepperoni. I like cheese. You don’t eat mushroom.

Kelly Truax  17:55

I love mushrooms, and I want to eat it on my pizza, but it, my preference is just a plain cheese. Is

Nestor Aparicio  18:00

it the way it looks, the way it tastes? Is it texture thing? What is the problem?

Speaker 1  18:04

I don’t know. It’s just what I like. All right. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  18:08

that’s fine. That’s more toppings for me. I mean, that’s what it is. That’s fine. Cheese pizza, any kind of pizza you want. Stop by and see your friends at Pizza. John’s. Kelly’s actually from Essex, so it made it nice and easy to come over. This guy’s not from Essex, but we let him hang out over here. Todd Schuler is here from Blondel Miller. Schuler, the former, you were councilman, right? Not a state. I said, Senator, you delegate. You were delegate, not a councilman. So I knew I was going to mess that up all these politicals. Todd Schuler will be here. We’ll be discussing democracy pizza, accidents. Basketball and probably it’s it’s March will be discussing is Preakness, crawdad Boyle. Don’t ask. It’s a long story. My thanks to Kelly, true acts. My thanks everybody from GBMC for making it over. Walk a mile in their shoes. I get Kelly’s got her sister family all staring at us, waiting for cheese. Is that you’re not gonna order cheese, right? You’re gonna get some toppings, all right? Get some proper french fries and gravy. That’s what they do here. I’m gonna get me a cheesesteak with and they make fun of me because I get lettuce, tomato, onion, mushroom, little bit of May or no hots. I don’t need any hots this weekend, but get it all down here. Come get your chicken parm, get you some pizza. And if you like cheese, they make that too, and it’s delicious and it costs less. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 for being on the program. Kelly’s getting a magic eight ball Maryland lottery. Scratch off ticket. Thank you. I’m going to sandbag Shuler. I think I gave you the lucky one there. We’re back for more. We’re pizza Johnson Essex. Stay with us. It’s the Maryland crab cake tour. You.