Warning: this text incorporates descriptions of kid sexual abuse
When the police lastly arrested Luis Carvajal, investigators not solely discovered the standard digital software package of on-line predators looking for teenage victims – video video games, social media accounts and WhatsApp – however a worrying new addition: ChatGPT.
A 35-year-old Uruguayan grocery store safety guard residing out of a cramped bed room in his dad and mom’ home in Canelones, Carvajal contacted a whole bunch of boys from throughout Latin America on Free Hearth, a free cell sport wherein as much as 50 gamers compete to be the final participant standing, between mid-2024 and March 2025.
After establishing friendships with the boys, Carvajal would transfer their conversations to WhatsApp to groom them privately, utilizing ChatGPT to tailor his messages to every youngster based mostly on the knowledge he elicited from them. He coerced at the least 30 teenagers into sending him sexual pictures or movies of themselves, and raped at the least 5 in a neighborhood lodge. Most of his victims had been aged between 11 and 15, in keeping with the prosecutor dealing with the case, Irena Penza.
By means of unique entry to the court docket ruling, interviews with Penza and an nameless supply on the specialised police unit that dealt with the case, openDemocracy has examined how Carvajal’s grooming displays a wider failure to recognise and forestall a type of abuse that’s evolving alongside know-how. Specialists and officers working in youngster safety – each in Uruguay and additional afield – have informed us the case suits an rising sample of kid sexual predators utilizing digital instruments to focus on victims.
The place abusers as soon as lurked in parks and outdoors faculty gates, the Web has given them entry to much more potential victims, in addition to higher anonymity and harder-to-trace instruments. This has real-world implications; one in eight youngsters worldwide is estimated to expertise on-line grooming or non-consensual publicity to sexual pictures or movies every year – equal to 10 circumstances each second – in keeping with a 2024 study by the Childlight International Little one Security Institute. In Latin America, the researchers discovered that just about a fifth of youngsters are victims.
Video video games, lengthy a central a part of childhood, are more and more the entry level for these crimes. Youngsters are gaming from youthful ages and at greater charges; 83% of five- to 12-year-olds within the US play video video games for at the least an hour per week, in keeping with the 2025 report from the Entertainment Software Association. The place play was as soon as restricted to these in the identical room, youngsters now work together with strangers from around the globe by way of headsets or reside textual content. This shift from remoted play to international social areas has created new alternatives for abuse, with related circumstances recorded in Perú, India, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
As was seen in Carvajal’s abuse, which regularly focused boys from poorer households with guarantees of cash or materials items, on-line abusers exploit existing vulnerabilities, together with inequality, poverty, abandonment, neglect, violence, and impunity. “The digital world is a mirrored image of the actual world,” stated Lydia Guarín, a Latin American youngster safety knowledgeable from Save the Youngsters.
The net predator
In 2024, Carvajal, who had two prior prison convictions for sexual abuse, spent months crafting a digital façade to hide his true intentions.
The court docket ruling reveals how he contacted a whole bunch of youngsters and adolescents throughout Latin America after establishing himself because the chief of a ‘clan’ in Free Hearth. The online game, which is rated as appropriate for customers aged 13+ in Uruguay however 12+ in most countries, was probably the most steadily talked about gaming platform in grooming circumstances involving youngsters beneath 12 in Uruguay, in keeping with December 2025 research based mostly on surveys of 135 Uruguayan schooling, well being, justice, and social safety professionals by Pablo López and Manuela Costa on the School of Psychology of the Universidad de la República.
As soon as Carvajal established a bond with a possible sufferer, he would invite them to the clan’s WhatsApp group, asking for selfies as a situation of membership. “Don’t you need to belong to the clan?” he requested those that hesitated, including: “Don’t you perceive what I imply after I ask for pictures?” and “I can provide you issues.”
Carvajal then started personal conversations together with his victims, utilizing varied manipulative ways. Generally, he would use a faux title or an Argentine cellphone quantity to pose as a pleasant grownup or a peer, and even use the pictures of different boys he had added to the group. In the meantime, he was cementing his id as a gaming influencer on TikTok, a video social media app utilized by 77% of nine- to 17-year-olds in Uruguay, in keeping with UNICEF’s Kids Online 2022 report, which is predicated on surveys of youngsters, dad and mom and lecturers. Carvajal amassed greater than 10,000 followers from throughout Latin America on the platform and provided prizes to supposed winners – additionally youngsters and youths – at conferences he organized.
On WhatsApp, Carvajal managed to get youngsters to share deeply private info and delicate information like their dwelling or faculty addresses. He would feed this into ChatGPT, which prosecutor Penza says he used to assist form his communication with every youngster. He posed as a peer to homosexual youngsters and provided acceptance to these being bullied for his or her look: “Which a part of your physique don’t you want? Present me,” he would say.
Carvajal even labored his method into the household lives of a number of the poorer boys he abused. He introduced himself as reliable to the adults round them, who would even ask him for small sums of cash, corresponding to for a haircut, till he had regularly embedded himself within the boys’ day by day routines, in keeping with a police officer concerned within the investigation, who spoke to openDemocracy on situation of anonymity.
This “ant’s tempo” method, because the officer described it, satisfied some dad and mom to permit their sons to go to his dwelling, drawn in by small comforts they may not present themselves, corresponding to Wi-Fi.
Carvajal’s charming look was no accident: in keeping with consultants, the groomer’s strongest software will not be know-how, however belief. First, he made his victims really feel seen and particular, then he abused them.
Lack of statistics
Knowledge on how digital applied sciences facilitate or allow the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors solely started being gathered on a world scale in 2019 with the Disrupting Harm survey, led by Secure On-line, ECPAT Worldwide, INTERPOL, and UNICEF. This ongoing mission compiles detailed victimisation information from 25 nations throughout each continent, collected via surveys on crimes, together with those who weren’t reported to the police.
This 12 months, the survey revealed its first findings from two Latin American nations, revealing that, in 2025 alone, round a fifth of 12- to 17-year-olds who use the web in Brazil and Colombia skilled ‘technology-facilitated’ sexual exploitation or abuse. Outcomes for Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico are anticipated later this 12 months.
Whereas equal figures don’t but exist for Uruguay, a troubling image emerged after we analysed the information that’s obtainable.
One in three minors within the nation skilled at the least one episode of on-line threat or hurt within the earlier 12 months, in keeping with the UNICEF 2022 Kids Online report. Solely half of the kids reported the occasion. Equally, López and Costa’s study discovered that greater than half of the two,500 youngster sexual exploitation circumstances raised by 135 Uruguayan professionals – wherein duplication can’t be dominated out – concerned digital applied sciences in recruitment or abuse. Contact sometimes started on-line earlier than transferring to in-person encounters.
That was Carvajal’s technique, too. In alternate for Free Hearth’s ‘diamonds’ – the sport’s in-app forex – or cell information top-ups, he coerced greater than 30 boys to ship him express pictures and carry out sexual acts on video calls whereas he masturbated and recorded. He additionally bodily abused at the least 5 Uruguayan adolescents in a neighborhood lodge, telling employees that they had been his youngsters or nephews, in keeping with prosecutor Penza. Lodge employees didn’t document the boys’ names.
One of many 5 youngsters Carvajal bodily abused was 14-year-old Javier*, who went to the lodge pondering he would play Free Hearth with members of the clan. The court docket ruling describes how, days earlier, Javier requested ChatGPT what garments to put on for the assembly and what to do if he felt drawn to individuals of the identical intercourse. Across the similar time, Carvajal was asking the AI chatbot to create an erotic card sport to undress Javier and different potential victims. ChatGPT refused Carvajal’s request, Penza stated, citing “lack of permissions”.
As soon as within the lodge room, Javier and the opposite victims discovered meals, sodas and beer. “I went, the man was there, he let me into the room […] I drank Coke, I used to be afraid it had one thing in it,” Javier informed the prosecution’s forensic psychologist about his first encounter with Carvajal. “He turned on the TV, began getting nearer to me, I knew what he wished, I didn’t do something […] I used to be scared,” he added.
To cease {the teenager}’s crying, Carvajal gave him cash. “So that you don’t really feel unhealthy,” “so we’re each equal,” Javier recounted in his deposition. Javier informed the forensic psychologist that Carvajal induced him “rejection and disgust”.
If Javier – or every other boy – didn’t comply together with his calls for to ship extra pictures or movies or attend additional conferences, Carvajal would pose as one other adolescent, ‘Nahuel’, to aim to calm the sufferer down and downplay the abuse. “I do know the man, he’s a very good individual, neglect what occurred, he’s a very good man,” Nahuel informed Javier over WhatsApp. Carvajal would additionally blackmail victims by threatening to disclose what had occurred to their households or to publish the pictures or movies of them. To scare Javier, he informed him he was following him and watching him at college. “When you make me offended, I’m imply,” he stated.
Javier talked about a number of subsequent conferences involving different adolescents, a few of which Carvajal recorded. After raping the youngsters, Carvajal would provide them items corresponding to an iPhone 11 to play Free Hearth on and keep involved with him, or money funds starting from 500 to 2,000 pesos (round $15 to $52). Uruguay’s nationwide minimal hourly wage is round 120 pesos, and 500 pesos would enable an individual to buy a battle go or a premium ‘pores and skin’ in Free Hearth, whereas 2,000 would get them to purchase a pair of low-to-mid-end wi-fi headphones.
Javier had no authorized illustration through the proceedings; it was not potential to contact him or his household for this text. openDemocracy contacted the general public defender’s workplace in Canelones however obtained no response from Carvajal’s consultant, Valentina Solari Silvero.
Garena, Free Hearth’s Singaporean developer and writer, advises customers to “report any inappropriate behaviour” in an FAQ part for fogeys on its web site. It says it should ban or report accounts to legislation enforcement the place essential, and encourages “dad and mom to remain concerned to grasp what video games their youngsters are enjoying, and to coach them about how one can have a secure and pleasant expertise on-line.”
We contacted Garena, ChatGPT proprietor OpenAI, and TikTok, however they didn’t reply to our questions. In a written assertion to openDemocracy, a WhatsApp spokesperson stated: “WhatsApp has zero tolerance for youngster sexual exploitation and abuse, and we droop customers after we detect them sharing content material that exploits or endangers minors.”
They added: “Finish-to-end encryption is without doubt one of the most essential applied sciences for conserving everybody secure on-line, together with younger individuals. No person needs us to learn their personal messages or hearken to their calls, which is why we now have developed strong security measures to stop and fight abuse whereas sustaining on-line security. Customers can even block or report a person account or group at any time.”
Saying the unspeakable
It was two within the morning on 8 March 2025 when Javier’s youthful brother informed their mom he was scared as a result of Javier was receiving threats from a person who had a video of him. The mom spoke to Javier. Terrified, he informed her every thing.
4 days later, Penza and three police groups raided Carvajal’s dad and mom’ home. A photograph of a younger boy was on his pc desktop. There was an ID of a 17-year-old in his pockets. Police consultants additionally discovered lively and deleted recordsdata and particular person and group chats in his digital gadgets, which outlined the profile of a serial predator.
Nonetheless, the investigation fell quick. Whereas Javier talked about different potential Uruguayan victims – a few of whom prosecutors managed to establish within the content material discovered on Carvajal’s gadgets – none had been keen to report what had occurred.
Throughout interviews with the prosecutor, a number of youngsters didn’t recognise themselves as victims. Some had been accompanied by siblings or different adults and pleaded with the prosecutor and forensic psychologist to not inform their dad and mom. The digital nature of the crime additional blurs the traces, as youngsters and their households could really feel they despatched pictures “on their very own initiative”, with out recognising that that they had endured weeks of invisible stress earlier than doing so, López and Costa informed openDemocracy.
Different victims who did attempt to inform their dad and mom or family members what had occurred to them had been met with reproach or disbelief. Javier’s father informed him, “You had the choice to say no; if you happen to went, it’s since you wished to. It was your alternative,” in keeping with prosecutor Penza’s account. “There are adults who miss out on the manipulation and energy imbalance exerted by the abuser, or that this can be a crime,” stated Penza, explaining that this permits such abuse to thrive.
Uruguay additionally lacks the instruments to establish potential victims contacted by way of overseas numbers. In keeping with one of many police investigators, INTERPOL carried out the mandatory procedures, however on the time of publication, a response was nonetheless pending.
Carvajal agreed to a plea cut price with the prosecution in October 2025 and was found guilty of grooming, sexual abuse, cost or promise of cost to minors (exploitation), and associated offences. He was sentenced to just about ten years in jail. As he awaited the sentence, he repeatedly raped his cellmate, in keeping with court docket information seen by openDemocracy.
In her sentencing submission, the prosecutor included each recognized and nameless victims. But the total extent of the hurt attributable to Carvajal could by no means be identified.
*Not his actual title.