The internet provides countless benefits, but it also comes with its share of risks. Positive experiences can lead to more rewarding opportunities, while negative ones can be disturbing.
In Florida, a young girl age 15 went missing in December 2018. She left her home in Sunrise, a city in central-western Broward County located a few kilometers north of Miami, at around 3 a.m.
She was missing for months, before her own mother contacted the police, and said that the had received information about "sexually explicit images" of her daughter being shared on the internet, including on the social media Snapchat and Periscope, and pornographic websites like Pornhub and Modelhub.
The images in question were screenshots from videos, showing the girl performing sexual acts, including intercourse, with two adult males.
Approximately 58 videos of the teenager had been shared online, the police said.
The saga of the girl began a day after Christmas, when she left her home for unknown reason.
She didn't tell anybody, and that no one from her school or home saw and heard anything from her since that day, the police said.
Her family filed a missing person, and towards the beginning of 2020, the Sunrise Police Department put out a missing juvenile alert to police jurisdictions, and shared it on social media.
This was when the police received the first information about the missing girl.
They received the tip about the missing girl, suggesting that she was at a convenience store in Davie. She tried avoiding eye contact with anyone, but the store's clerk however, recognized her.
The girl knew that her cover blew, headed straight to a parked black Dodge Challenger, with two men in it.
They quickly drove away, and the clerk was not able to get the license plate and as a result, the police couldn't track the vehicle.
According to the store surveillance video, the girl is seen trying to shield her face, as if she knew that she had to keep per presence discreet.
It wasn't until seven months later that the police received another tip on the case.
The mother of the victim showed the images to the police, and the police determined that one of the males in the videos was 30-year-old Christopher Johnson.
"The posted videos depicted [her] performing sexual acts on two unknown black male adults," Detective Adam Granit wrote in the report.
The girl "is either fully nude (or) topless in all videos and performs oral sex and sexual intercourse in at least two of the videos."
And later, the police again received another tip, but this time is about the black car, and that it was spotted at a nearby store.
The police were quickly tipped because the black Dodge Challenger had been visiting the 7-Eleven for two days straight.
The police was quickly dispatched to the location, and was given the car's license plate.
This was when the police was able to trace the car back to an address belonging to Johnson, located in Davie.
"Surveillance was conducted on this address by several detectives," the police department said.
Days later, on October 22, Johnson was pulled over and arrested during a traffic stop after leaving his apartment with the victim.
Johnson quickly tried to defend himself, like denying having sexual intercourse with the teen, the police said.
The girl however, "stated that she got pregnant from the defendant and he took her to the clinic to have an abortion," Detective Adam Granit wrote in the report.
During a search of Johnson's apartment, detectives have indeed found paperwork from an abortion clinic.
The girl told the police that after she got pregnant, the man took her to a clinic to terminate the pregnancy.
As for the explicit videos, she said that they were filmed on her smartphone, right there at the apartment.
The Florida man faces charges, after investigators were able to link him to almost 60 pornographic videos that depict the missing 15-year-old girl.
Johnson is charged with lewd and lascivious battery on a child younger than 16, and was held on a $75,000 bond.
Responding to the case, Pornhub verified that a 15-year-old woman who was missing had made into its Modelhub program. It was then forced to shut down the program completely, and Pornhub has removed more than 90% of the content upon request.