This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
My son Breck Bednar was bright and happy-go-lucky. He loved science and technology and figuring out the way things work. He had the most inquisitive mind, taking apart old radios and putting them back together again. He was my right-hand man. Breck would change lightbulbs, build flat-pack furniture and remove spiders from the house for me – and he was a cool big brother to his siblings, my triplets.
Clever and from a loving family, you might imagine he wasn’t the sort of boy who would fall prey to online grooming. But my son’s generation, growing up in the early 2000s, were guinea pigs to the technology that pervaded our home, a place where he should have been safe. Breck was brainwashed and groomed while playing video games. When he was 14, he was lured to his predator’s flat under false pretences and murdered.
Discussing Breck’s death 12 years ago is triggering and painful; it takes me straight to the horror of that day. But I want Breck’s story to help others. That’s why I want people to watch From Minecraft to Murder: The Killing of Breck Bednar. If I’d had the chance to see a documentary like this then, when the issue of online safety was rarely discussed and boys were not considered potential victims, Breck would be here today.
Breck started playing Minecraft and then Battlefield and Call of Duty as a young teen. I wasn’t keen on the wargames but saw how he interacted with his school friends. It felt like a team effort as they “saved the world”, pretending to be the good guys.
His groomer, Lewis Daynes, ran the online server on which Breck and his classmates played, and over 13 months of communication, lied about his identity and gradually turned Breck against his family and friends.
I could see my son changing and tried to listen to their communication. I began to sense, as a mother, that something was very wrong. But Breck was convinced this person was telling the truth. Two months before Breck was murdered, I went to police with my concerns. Surrey Police failed to deal with my call properly and failed to check the Police National Computer database on which a record existed for Daynes.
The police instructed me to take away his devices and later, to protect Breck, I removed his access to computer games. I thought then, as we happily refurbished his bedroom together, that we’d fixed the problem. What I didn’t know is that the predator secretly sent Breck a new smartphone. That made their communication even more dangerous, pushing it underground. Breck said he was sleeping at a friend’s house near our home in Caterham, Surrey, when he travelled to see Daynes.
After Breck was murdered – with Daynes sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison in 2015 – I founded the Breck Foundation. Our young ambassadors do brilliant work visiting schools where they educate pupils, teachers and parents on online safety, gaming environments, and grooming signs.
I have also been trying, with other bereaved parents, to make the platforms safer. Campaigners have asked nicely for over a decade, and nothing has happened. Now there are lawsuits in the US and profits are involved, they might listen.
I welcome the UK Government’s decision to ban social media for under 16s – giving children more time to develop and parents more power to protect them – and the fact that gaming platforms are finally being considered in discussions about online safety. But children are constantly being harmed, with more parents joining the Bereaved Families for Online Safety, and there is further work to be done.
Because he was quietly confident and reserved, Breck would say, “Mum, you can stop talking about this now. It upsets you.” But as a mother, I care about the protection and safety of our children and while I can’t turn back time, I hope learning about Breck’s story – as one of the first victims of online grooming – will help others.
From Minecraft to Murder: The Killing of Breck Bednar is available on 20 October on Prime Video.
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