SPEAKER_01: 0:38

Welcome back to Speak Out Standout. I'm your host, Elizabeth Green, and today's guest is Seth Carolina State Representative, Brandon Duffy. And before we dive in today, I just want to put a trigger warning out there that we are talking about difficult things today, including losing a child by suicide and the crime of sex torsion. So if you are listening to this with little ears around, I suggest you pause it, but please do come back. This is a conversation that every parent needs to hear. Brandon, I I hate that you're here for the reasons that you're here, but thank you for taking the time to chat with us.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

Thank you for having me on. Part of my mission is trying to educate parents and students alike. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14

And and so Brandon, let's just dive in. Your your son Gavin was a victim of sex torture. And I want you to, if you can, explain all to because some people don't even know what that means yet. Um but if you just want to tell us, tell us your old story.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28

So I for uh first I will explain what happened and then I'll explain how I found out what happened, if that helps.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36

Um, but I had just won my primary in District 48 of South Carolina um in 2022 and was headed off to the general election. I came in late one night um uh on July 26th and he was sitting in my bed replying to emails, kicking my feet up, and my teenage son, Gavin Guffey, who's 17, um, left his room and shortly thereafter went into the bathroom and took his life. Um I didn't understand what happened because Gavin appeared to be living his best life. Uh he had just recently graduated from high school. He was finally at that stage where you're confident in who you are and proud of who you are instead of trying to be someone else. Um but what we found out very shortly afterwards um was that Gavin was a victim of sex tortion. And what sex tortion is, is whenever someone pretends to be someone else online. So what happened is a teenage girl profile reached out to Gavin, pretending to be a volleyball player at an at a school nearby, um, started off with simple conversations on Instagram, such as you're cute. Um, they start chatting back and forth, which is not uncommon for the younger generation to have friends online that they've not physically met. Um, and uh pictures were sent over to Gavin. Gavin replied and um or complied with the request for pictures of him. And as soon as he sent over compromising photos, they began to blackmail him and demand money right away, or they were going to spread these and make them go by. Um through Gavin did send over some money, but these extortionists never stopped. Um, and it was only an hour and 40 minutes from the time that Gavin was contacted until the time that he took his life. Oh my goodness. And so this started in my house at midnight um on July 27th, and by 1.40 a.m., we had lost our son. Um as I started researching it, we're now up to over 60 teenage boys publicly that have taken their life. Um, I know of a couple dozen just in the Carolinas that parents have not released why their children took their lives because of the shame that's involved. Um so I've made it my life mission to try and prevent this from happening to someone else. We have it's a multi-layer problem. Number one, we have social media that is allowing these predators to contact our children and to exchange child sex abuse materials throughout their platforms. Um, number two, we have the problem of societal problem that I believe algorithms have created of putting people in boxes and making people feel that shame is unbearable. I guess is the best way to put it. You know, I often say it took me 30 years to find my faith because I thought everyone was either perfect or a hypocrite. And it wasn't until I felt that we all fall short that I could move forward. And yet these children are taking their lives because one of the most embarrassing moments that you could imagine happening to you is going to get released publicly is overwhelming.

unknown: 5:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:06

And it's an even more of a risk now, I mean, because of AI, right? We're seeing this happening, like even fake photos with using AI is still is becoming an even bigger problem.

SPEAKER_00: 5:19

So Gavin's story was one of the first that came out there publicly. Um, and that was a discussion that even my wife and I had after it happened. Do we go public with this? Will this hurt the reputation of our son? How will people perceive this? Um, you know, and the same reason he wouldn't want to come out, the people think that he's a creep. And I didn't know if I was being targeted or he was being targeted just because I'm in politics, or if this was something that was not as malicious and just targeting other teams. By the time I came out with this story in November of 2022, um, four other teenagers had also taken their life across the country due to the same crime. So whenever I started advocating, there was another group of parents there with me advocating. And then the FBI started releasing statistics, warning, because as soon as kids go on break, that's whenever a lot of these situations were happening because they're online more. Oh, yeah. They have access to their devices more, their own video games more. Um by the end of 2024, those stats were one in 17 teens had become a victim of sex torsion. That's how prevalent it was. By October of 2025, I was speaking at Denver University in a group called Thorn, which was set up by Ashton Cusher, um, to stop sex trafficking, they do a lot of research. Those stats are now one in five teams. And we're talking about ages from 11 to 17. And I tell parents often that if you are fearful to have the conversation with your child about what sex torsion is and what to do if this does happen to them, imagine how fearful they are whenever it does happen to them.

SPEAKER_01: 7:14

Now, is this something that you all had ever talked with Gavin about? Or was this something you hadn't even no idea this was happening or possible?

SPEAKER_00: 7:22

Never thought that it would happen. And I use the example as a parent, you know, Gavin was my, I don't want to say wild child because he wasn't really wild, but if he did something wrong, he always got caught. So we, by the time he had graduated high school, we already had the hard conversations. I already, as soon as he experimented with marijuana, I caught him. He had to have that hard conversation. Whenever he became sexually active, I called him. He had to have that hard conversation. Those are two of the hardest conversations that a parent and a teen could have. So in my mind, there was nothing that he could come to us that he couldn't come to us about and discuss. You know, we had a very open relationship as far as these conversations, and I never felt that he would be fearful to come to me over something of that nature. But that's the common theme with all of these parents that have lost their children.

unknown: 8:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:23

You know, I I hear some brutal comments. Well, if you had a good relationship with your child, then this wouldn't have happened. And, you know, that that's just a false narrative. The other narrative is, oh, well, if you wouldn't have given your child a phone, just don't give your child a phone. That's a false narrative. Um we have to get to where we are teaching our kids how to make smarter decisions at a younger age and to where we can monitor and we can oversee, but also we have to make sure that we are extending grace, which is what we needed as we were growing up. We didn't have, if you take your most embarrassing moment, let's just say you peed your pants coming out of the gym in high school, somebody saw you. You know, you would get changed quickly, and it was your word against theirs, and it was just a rumor mill, there was nothing there. Now that's recorded. And not only everyone in your school, but every other school is going to know about it, and you're forever going to be known as pee-pee pants, you know, or whatever it is. So whenever you start talking about things in a sexual nature, me as an adult, if my most intimate moment was released and put out there, like you can't imagine that embarrassment, and you just want to crawl into a hole and get away from it. And sadly, they feel like the only thing that they can do is go that route. Um but it it boils down and it, you know, they're we as parents have often said everything you post online will be there forever. Well, that creates this unneeded pressure that's there. But is it true? Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 10:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:10

But at the same time, you're creating this mindset that this will never, ever go away. Whereas what we should be teaching them is grace. We should be teaching them, you know what? I did something stupid like that. I tell people all the time on my social media, um, I could be a bit of a troll sometimes, and people either love it or hate it. Um, but I tell people all the time, if you think what I said yesterday was stupid, look at what I said two years ago. You'll see growth. And we have forgotten that because I know as a teenager, whenever I was growing up, and the same thing with my faith. I never felt like I was good enough to show people who I am. And we've got to get back, and that the teenagers have seen that. They see kids lose scholarships for something stupid they said whenever they were 14. We can't do that. We've got to look at trying to be a better person tomorrow than we are today.

SPEAKER_01: 11:04

So, what do you say as the what do you tell the parents listening that are thinking, I have not had this conversation with my kids? How do I begin to have a conversation like that with my kids about this risk and how to avoid it and how to know that they can talk to me about anything with like you said? I mean, you can say that all you know as much as you want, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to feel that in that panic moment.

SPEAKER_00: 11:29

We're so busy trying to be perfect. Number one thing I would tell you is quit using filters. Quit trying to portray your best life and your child, see that you and your husband are fighting at home. You know, quit trying to act perfect and try to gain everyone's approval on up to who you are. And it's okay to not be okay. And it's okay that we're all just trying to figure this out. And if we could do it together, then things would be a whole lot better. But there's a tool that I tell parents to go to and I tell teens to go to that need to have the conversation. Um, NICMEC, which is the National Center of Missing and Exploiting Children, um, they got together with some of us parents and they created an interactive video. It's a seven-minute long video that you actually interact and answer questions during. So the website is noescaperoom.org. And whenever you go there, if a parent goes through it, they see how they could never know that their child was being exploited or extorted at that time. And the teen understands, because it's called no escape room, that these are professionals. So there's not but like one way out of this to begin with. And if you get one question wrong, you're caught up in the scam. So that way they don't feel as dumb for falling for it. Um, because oftentimes that's what you hear from the teens. You know, I've dealt with hundreds of teens that are going through this. And the first year or so, it was teens calling me for advice and me trying to convince them to go to their parents but help them at the same time. What I'm grateful for is now a lot of times is the parents calling and saying, How do I approach this? Yeah. Um, for moms, I won't say that there's a whole lot of information because Mama Bear is going to come out. Mama Bear is going to be protective. Um, I will say that your child is coming to you for help, not for scolding at that moment. This is a moment to show them that you've got their back first. The conversation with what they did wrong can happen afterwards. I tell dads often, these are some of the hardest conversations I had. Because the dads immediately like, why did you do this? Why how how could you be so dumb? You should have known better than that. I'll get a dad on the phone and I will tell them something, and I don't know if this is appropriate for your audience, so feel free to mute it out. But I'll often say, you know, I'm 45. You show me boobies, blood physically leaves my brain, and I'm not thinking straight. Imagine being a teenager with raging hormones.

unknown: 14:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:12

You know, we as males are not going to make good decisions whenever you're in a situation like that. So you are angry right now, but you're angry because it's your job as a father to protect your household, to protect your children. You're either angry at yourself because you didn't educate your child about this, or you're angry at yourself, or you're angry at yourself because you did educate your child and they didn't listen. But how many times did you listen to your parents?

unknown: 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:41

How many times did you make the same mistake over and over and over again? Right now, what they need is superhero dad. They need superhero dad to stand up and say, it's not gonna happen anymore. I'm putting a stop to this right now. We can have the conversation, and they need you to be the dad to come in and say, you know what, I've done, I've made some dumb mistakes too. It'll be all right. We're gonna get through this.

unknown: 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:04

Let me help you get to it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:07

And is there anything that we can do to prevent this from happening? I mean, besides, I mean, I know people try to they say, Well, I'm not gonna give my child access to social media. They're still texting and things like that. You know, I mean, I feel like they're people can get around anything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:23

First of all, you can't stop them from getting on social media. There's nothing that stops, there's no laws that stops them from going to a Walmart and buying a track phone and connecting it over Wi-Fi and being on social media. The law written in 1996 states that anyone 13 or older is essentially treated as an adult online. And these companies can make money off of them. So whenever you download an app, there's no law that says you have to be this age to download this app. They can download full full pornography apps on their phone directly, and it never notify you as a parent, even if you've got prudent controls. I use the example. My background started off in tech in the early 2000s, and I was fully aware of how to try to protect Gavin on the phone. Now, granted, at the same time, he's 17. He's almost old enough to fight and die for this country. I'm not trying to block everything, but I was confident I was blocking pornography on his phone because he would get mad whenever he's in class and the teacher wants him to look up something, and he's got to get parental permission before he can even go to this website that not even adult related, you know? Um, so I was confident he wasn't going to adult websites to look at pornography. But whenever we got his phone back, we looked and he had three Twitter accounts. One of them was his basic Twitter. The other two were full pornography. He was exchanging child sex abuse material. And regardless of how you want to put it, age of consent in South Carolina may be below 18. Whenever it comes to images online, that's federal. It's still 18. So if you were exchanging images, receiving or sending, that is child pornography. Um and Instagram was facilitating the exchange of these images. Um, and now, you know, whenever everything happened with Gavin, we could go back and look at the messages afterwards. And we were able to track down, and luckily in January of 2025, we extradited the person that was responsible for attacking Gavin, and now they're awaiting trial. Nowadays, Instagram has gone to end-to-end encryption. So those messages disappear and you can't get in. You can't get in to see it as a parent. So you don't have that access. If your child dies, you're not getting those messages, and Instagram says, Oh, well, we can't see them either. Wow. So you you just don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 17:54

I mean, at least you all found out what happened and you were able to take legal action and and go down this path. But many parents are going to be in a situation where they just have no idea what happened.

SPEAKER_00: 18:03

And and that's what I so I've been trying on a state level to get it to where anytime there's a death of a minor, SLED automatically investigates. South Carolina Law Enforcement Division has to get involved. But I want to ensure that they are checking the devices. So there's a subpoena to ensure nothing happened, and especially whenever there's no no. Because what we saw from 2022 through 2024 was a huge rise in teenage suicides without any explanation. I'm convinced it is due to sex tortion.

unknown: 18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:38

They were being extorted, whether that's adults and minors, we're seeing it with adults too. I believe a lot of these, you know, uh late 20s, early 30s males that are taking their lives, they get caught up on these dating app scams, you know, thinking someone was interested in them. And often that's being perpetrated from people within United States prisons that are running those because they have access to devices. Um, this podcast isn't long enough to go into all the details of all the problems, but we're trying to address it from every angle that we possibly can.

SPEAKER_01: 19:12

And as parents, besides educating our kids, is there anything else we can do to help on a on the bigger picture here with this movement?

SPEAKER_00: 19:22

One of the things that I've done, and you know, you becoming an advocate, a national or international advocate, you get lots of companies reaching out, wanting you to push their products. Um, I actually started working with a company out of Phoenix, Arizona called CyberDive. Um, and they created a product called the Aqua One smartphone. Through the consulting that we've done, the Aqua One smartphone is a one-time purchase of a smartphone that you can give your team. You can add whatever the standard protections are on a Google device for parental controls, and it will guide you through that if you want to do so. If you don't want to have them, then fine. They're still not there, or you don't have to implement them. But it has nudity protection on it. So if your child at any time tries to take a nude photo, the screen locks and it shows the parent on their dashboard, and they have to choose whether to unlock it or not before the image could ever be sent. And if someone sends your child a nude image, let's say your child you wanted to give your child a device at 10 and they're playing roadblocks. And the worst case I've seen of sex tortion was an eight year old playing roadblocks. Um, and that that that child was sending images to this pervert for two months before the mother walked in and caught the child trying to insert something in them. Um and that's what opened up the story. But it's because and they were doing it through an iPad, not even a phone. Um so with these images, if they try to send an image, an adult tries to send an image, and if you don't believe me, if you get a smartphone or a phone for your kid, set it up as a 13-year-old female and open up social media and see how many inappropriate images are set to you. Um but this phone would block it regardless of app. There's no apps whatsoever that can bypass it because it is in the screen itself and it's a mirror technology. So let's say you wanted to see why your child was on the phone at 11 p.m. last night and they shouldn't have been, you can go back and rewind and see everything that's on their screen. Now, what that does, and as a parent, you're not gonna constantly sit there and watch what your child's doing, but it teaches your child to know that every decision that they make can be monitored by their parents. If their friends send them a message cussing, they're gonna think twice about replying with that language if they know mommy or daddy can see that.

SPEAKER_01: 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 21:59

Right? So it teaches them to make safer decisions. I would equate it to the seatbelt law that passed whenever I was 16. I don't strap in my car all the time because I wasn't raised that way. But my sister, who's younger than me, doesn't take off anywhere without putting on her seatbelt first. Given a device at the younger age, monitoring and teaching them and then being fully aware that that's not changing and mommy and daddy can always see that. Yeah, that proves it. You know, that that teaches them more responsible decisions because we can't helicopter parent our children on the current devices.

SPEAKER_01: 22:38

Right. And what do you say though to the parent who says, or what my kid's just gonna be like, you don't trust me. You don't trust me. I'm 16, you should trust me. At least they don't.

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

I was 16.

SPEAKER_01: 22:54

I like that.

SPEAKER_00: 22:55

You know, I mean, honestly, I mean, we're all gonna make bad decisions. And I would use the example. I'm 45, I don't trust myself. I'm gonna make bad decisions at times. This is just me trying to be a father to teach you. If you want a device, these are the rules. You know? Um, it's a little bit more difficult if you've given your child, say, a standard iPhone and then trying to convince them to change over. Yeah. But if the first device that they get is a safe device, they're just happy to have the device.

SPEAKER_01: 23:31

That's right. That's right. And and to say, even if even if your kid has a regular iPhone right now, you're still the parent. It's still okay to say we're changing.

SPEAKER_00: 23:46

So I got a new iPhone recently, and whenever I set it up, it's asking for age. And it's it, you know, you're verifying your age every time you get a phone. So if I verify that I'm 14, why are you allowing me to download a NudeFi app that can take a picture of anyone eight to eighty and make them completely new? You know, that so I have a bill that's called the App Store Accountability Act that takes that approach because we have to look at big tech as the equivalent of big tobacco. Well, we never said, Philip Morris, you need to go and check the age of anyone that's smoking a cigarette and be held responsible. No, we said the stores will verify the age before they provide the product. Um, and really, there's not but three stores. You got Apple, Google, and Amazon. And you're already doing it through devices. So just with that information, you should be able to do that. But yet, big tech is the world's richest company since the inception of man, and each teenager has a value of over$250 of marketing value. It's over a trillion dollar industry, and they don't want to give up that money for that 13 to uh 13 through 17 year old age group.

SPEAKER_01: 25:01

Yeah.

unknown: 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:03

And I feel like it we're just starting to catch up of with all these things that are moving so quickly with the internet and social media and now with AI. I feel like we're we're chasing our tails here.

SPEAKER_00: 25:13

But well, I want to point something out, especially if this is going to parents. Um, number one, like my background in tech started whenever the algorithms were being created. And I walked away because I felt like it was controlling people too much. Well, since that age is 13, I want you to think about your child being tracked and their data being tracked, and then they're being marketed to. What we're seeing across the country is your child is essentially deciding who they are at 13. If you want to push left, right, like whatever the decision is, that algorithm is picking up everything that they're looking at. And it's going to continue to feed and just continue to grow over time. But now we're looking at things such as artificial intelligence and education. And I'll use the example of my second grader. You know, he's struggling doing the reading and comprehending for a math problem right now. And we know the significance of reading levels on the third grade level with success in life. So we really are trying to focus on that. Now, I could implement a learning model into, or if the school did with artificial intelligence, and it'd say, you know what, Callahan really loves dinosaurs. So it's going to create this math problem in dinosaurs, and then Callahan's going to get it, and I'm going to say, Yeah, this is an excellent tool. But what I'm not thinking of is by the time he's in middle school and he wants to light butterflies or whatever it is, the AI is going to say, no, no, no. Dinosaurs works with you. We've been tracking you. So now it's taking away the critical thinking at an earlier age and controlling the mindset and the development of our youth. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 27:03

It does. And that's wild and scary. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 27:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 27:07

Yeah. Well, Brandon, this has really been an enlightenful conversation. And like I said from the beginning, I hate that we have to have this conversation, but I'm so thankful that you have taken such a tragic and horrendous situation and have shared it with so many people in hopes that we can save other lives throughout the process of having these hard conversations. Um, before we go, though, you talked about what happened to Gavin. Do you want to take a minute, though, and just tell us about like who was he as a person?

SPEAKER_00: 27:38

Oh. That's the the hardest part. Um but you know, he was unique artsy. Um I often use the example of whenever Gavin was born, he's the oldest of three boys. I thought he was going to be my football player. He's going to be the one to watch football games and all of this. And I remember at a young age, um, my wife coming up to me and Gavin will go to football games with me and paint his face and all this, and her just saying, you know, Gavin really doesn't like football. And in my mind, I'm thinking, like, what are you talking about? Like, we have a good time. And she's like, he just really wants to spend time with his dad. And me having the conversation with them and saying, hey, bud, like we can do things that you want to do too. And then next thing I know, I'm going to Comic-Cons and these movies, and um, as as we used to say, geeking out over, you know, which dimension this character came from. But he was just artsy, loved music. He was complete opposite of me. He didn't have the same mindset as me, um, but he was unique in his own way, um, and all often brought joy to others, even though he wasn't always joyful. He was the smallest kid in his class, usually getting picked on, being a little bit different, but that taught him how to be funny. You know, and that taught him a lot of that resilience. Um whenever he passed and we were at the funeral, we had so many people come up and share stories about how he had helped them. And I said, you know, it's sad that I feel like my 17-year-old has made a bigger difference to more people's lives than I've been able to in 42 years of my life. So the focus is trying to live more like Gavin. And we realize that none of this stuff matters. What matters is getting through life and what and at the point that we will be with them again and the impact that we can make while we are here instead of chasing all these materialistic things.

SPEAKER_01: 29:50

Well, it's an excellent reminder to all of us. And again, I very much appreciate you sharing your story and all that you're doing to try to protect kids and teens across the country. We will, if you're listening to this and you want to know more about some of the things Brandon has mentioned, we'll make sure we link to the phone. And if there's anything else, Brandon, you want to share with people. I don't know if there's petitions people can sign or what.

SPEAKER_00: 30:12

Yeah, I would like to link to the less than three nonprofit that we set up. Um that's where I drive the struggle bus around talking to teens about mental health and cybercrimes, and then they put stickers on it. So if you see an old hippie bus driving around with stickers on it, that's me. Um that's what I drive around talking to the teens. Um, and we share the message that tomorrow needs you. It's the most powerful message that there is. Um, and what we found was the correlation, because whenever Gavin took his life, I didn't know that suicide was an impulsive decision. The majority of suicides are impulsive. The average time it takes someone to make a decision to the time they commit the act is typically 20 minutes. But if there's a gun involved, it's as little as three minutes. So our mission is to share the message to get you to make it to tomorrow where your chances go up thousands of percent. Just to get through it. Don't live in that moment, don't have that chicken little attitude of one thing goes wrong, the sky's fallen. Just make it to tomorrow and seek help. Um, and I think that is the most important thing. Have the conversations with your children, they're under attack. So you need to arm them with the information. And I also want to put one more thing out there. I would love for you to put up a question, a QA section for any parents that have questions, and then me come back on at some other point and just answer the questions. Um, but yeah, that thank you so much for having me on. And I I enjoy podcasts like this because it gives me the opportunity to reach the audience that needs to hear it.

SPEAKER_01: 31:54

Yeah. It's such an important, such a hard message, but something that everybody needs to hear and be aware of. So Brandon, thank you again. Everything will be linked below, and we will actually definitely um create that QA too and look forward to chatting with you again. Thank you so much for your time.