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The movie Trust dramatises internet sex crime. It’s about 14-year-old Annie who embarks on an online relationship with someone she assumes is 16. When she eventually meets him face to face, she discovers that he is actually a grown man in his late 30s. But he has managed to convince her that “age really doesn’t matter” and that he “loves” her. This leads to statutory rape in a hotel room, although she does not recognise it as such until much later in the film. Sex with a minor is still rape in every sense of the word.
Trust is a harrowing, emotional drama involving the FBI and an elusive sex fiend who uses online chatrooms to “groom” young girls for sexual encounters. It’s worth watching with your teenagers and will hopefully lead to frank discussions about the topic. My daughter thought the character was just plain stupid to be misled the way she was; but the truth is, it can and does happen to young people. The lesson they can learn from the film is that not everyone is who they say they are online.
Director David Schwimmer explains the aim of the film: “We just want people to engage more in being a more present parent.” It may be that many more sex crimes against minors are perpetrated by people who know them and that only a small percentage are similar to the scenario in this film, but any child who is emotionally or physically harmed by a sexual predator is one too many. And that’s why I’m quite chuffed that the hacker group Anonymous have reportedly released the IP addresses of almost 200 visitors of child pornography sites, in the hope that law enforcement will have probable cause to arrest these individuals.
We must be vigilant. We must know what risks our children face out there. And we must help them navigate the online world.
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