Roo Powell Talks 'Undercover Underage' Decoys, and Her SOSA Work (EXCLUSIVE)

Roo Powell poses as youngsters online to catch predators on 'Undercover Underage.' Plus, details on her work with SOSA, and how she creates convincing decoy personas.

After Roo Powell spent per week posing as an 11-year-old woman on the net, she wrote about the revel in in a 2019 essay for Medium. The piece went viral, and she learned that she sought after to center of attention her complete attention on child advocacy work.

Roo started the nonprofit group SOSA (Safe from Online Sex Abuse), which targets to teach folks, guardians, and children about on-line safety. It additionally goals to identify possible on-line predators and to place an finish to victim-blaming.

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In addition to motivating her to start SOSA, Roo's viral essay additionally caught the eye of a tv producer.

Now, Roo and her SOSA workforce contributors, including Matt Monath, Shelby Chikazawa, Kelly Becker, and Avalon Esposito, are sharing how they determine Adults Contacting Minors (ACM) on-line and how they bring them to the government at the Discovery Plus docuseries, Undercover Underage.

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With the help of her crew (and with editing, makeup, colored contacts, braces, and a apartment house with 4 bedrooms fit for quite a lot of kinds of Gen Z-ers), the 40-year-old mother of 3 is in a position to grow to be into more than a few convincing teenagers.

Roo spoke completely with Distractify about SOSA's work, Season 2 of the show, and how she creates the ones elaborate decoys.

Roo Powell on what she hopes to perform with her 'Undercover Underage' work.

As a parent of a youngster and two pre-teens, Roo is keenly mindful that many children are spending much in their loose time online. While oldsters have long been caution their youngsters about the risks of predators, the threat is not restricted to the out of doors international anymore.

"Now, a kid can be abused in their home without ever being in the same room as a perpetrator," Roo shared with Distractify about how folks and adolescents these days are looking to navigate "unchartered territory."

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By starting SOSA and featuring the group's work on Undercover Underage, Roo desires to encourage folks and guardians to "have an open line of communication" with their youngsters.

"The biggest reason why people don't get reported, and the biggest reason why kids don't get support, is because they're engulfed by shame," Roo said, before adding that kids ceaselessly have a troublesome time determining that they've been harmed if it wasn't one thing physical.

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Those who don't seem to be regularly around teens can do their own part by way of no longer victim-blaming teenagers for being on chat rooms or on positive apps.

"The goal really isn't to point out perpetrators one by one, it's to empower an entire society to combat this," Roo said. "That first starts with awareness, and I think this show is doing a really good job of doing that."

While Roo acknowledges that some persons are observing Undercover Underage purely for the "entertainment value" of the high-stakes situations, she hopes that the "show is going to move the needle in the right direction."

The mother of 3 would be interested in sharing extra about SOSA's work in the future.

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Roo Powell and her SOSA nonprofit team contributors catch online predators via growing convincing decoys.

In Undercover Underage, Roo showcases each how she physically transforms into her more than a few teenage personas (viewers have often seen "Flori," a Stamford-based youngster, at the show), and how she emotionally prepares herself to receive sexually particular and degrading messages from those ACMs.

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When growing these decoy personas, Roo and her staff increase intricate backstories — from fundamental information like their birthdays, their full names, and the place they are living, to more in-depth main points like their house life state of affairs, their after-school actions, and their leisure pursuits. Though the make-up, the lighting fixtures, and the editing draw the online predators in, it's those other points that sell Roo as a excellent 15-year-old.

Roo noted that creating those "complex characters" is "important, because it allows us to build trust with would-be perpetrators."

Once there is a level of believe and working out, the chat room customers ceaselessly develop into more keen to proportion private (and, doubtlessly, figuring out) information about themselves.

From there, Roo and her group can get to work to find out their actual names, and the place they live and hang around. As they investigate, Roo continues to talk with the person as considered one of her decoy personas online.

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Throughout her online chats, Roo makes sure to reiterate that her persona is a young person, who is beneath the age of in consent in whichever state the predator is in.

Ultimately, Roo and the others need to have quite a lot of compelling proof to turn that the individual she's chatting with is enthusiastic about having unlawful interactions with youngsters.

Roo will incessantly set up a "meet-up" with the predator, which is able to contain just her own staff, or can include any person from legislation enforcement.

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While the work of the SOSA team has resulted in arrests (updates are given at the end of each Undercover Underage episode), Roo continuously doesn't get to determine whether her leads pan out.

"When we hand things over to law enforcement, I don't necessarily know what happens after that. My job ends when I hand stuff over."

In the cases when she does learn of an arrest, Roo noted that it is ceaselessly quite bittersweet for her.

"When an arrest is made, it's not necessarily a celebratory feeling ... I'm happy that it means that kids can no longer be hurt by that person, in theory. I'm pleased that we're able to stop the cycle of abuse in that moment," she defined. "I'm also sad and a little stoic because they could have just chosen another path."

Undercover Underage Season 2 will premiere on May 1 at 9 p.m. ET on ID.

If you need beef up, name the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or talk over with RAINN.org to speak online one-on-one with a make stronger specialist at any time.

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