Warning: this article contains descriptions of child sexual abuse
When the police finally arrested Luis Carvajal, investigators not only found the usual digital tool kit of online predators seeking teenage victims – video games, social media accounts and WhatsApp – but a worrying new addition: ChatGPT.
A 35-year-old Uruguayan supermarket security guard living out of a cramped bedroom in his parents’ house in Canelones, Carvajal contacted hundreds of boys from across Latin America on Free Fire, a free mobile game in which up to 50 players compete to be the last player standing, between mid-2024 and March 2025.
After establishing friendships with the boys, Carvajal would move their conversations to WhatsApp to groom them privately, using ChatGPT to tailor his messages to each child based on the information he elicited from them. He coerced at least 30 teens into sending him sexual images or videos of themselves, and raped at least five in a local hotel. Most of his victims were aged between 11 and 15, according to the prosecutor handling the case, Irena Penza.
Through exclusive access to the court ruling, interviews with Penza and an anonymous source at the specialised police unit that handled the case, openDemocracy has examined how Carvajal’s grooming reflects a wider failure to recognise and prevent a form of abuse that is evolving alongside technology. Experts and officials working in child protection – both in Uruguay and further afield – have told us the case fits an emerging pattern of child sexual predators using digital tools to target victims.
Where abusers once lurked in parks and outside school gates, the Internet has given them access to far more potential victims, as well as greater anonymity and harder-to-trace tools. This has real-world implications; one in eight children worldwide is estimated to experience online grooming or non-consensual exposure to sexual images or videos each year – equivalent to ten cases every second – according to a 2024 study by the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute. In Latin America, the researchers found that nearly a fifth of children are victims.
Video games, long a central part of childhood, are increasingly the entry point for these crimes. Children are gaming from younger ages and at higher rates; 83% of five- to 12-year-olds in the US play video games for at least an hour a week, according to the 2025 report from the Entertainment Software Association. Where play was once limited to those in the same room, children now interact with strangers from around the world via headsets or live text. This shift from isolated play to global social spaces has created new opportunities for abuse, with similar cases recorded in Perú, India, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
As was seen in Carvajal’s abuse, which often targeted boys from poorer families with promises of money or material goods, online abusers exploit existing vulnerabilities, including inequality, poverty, abandonment, neglect, violence, and impunity. “The virtual world is a reflection of the real world,” said Lydia Guarín, a Latin American child protection expert from Save the Children.
The online predator
In 2024, Carvajal, who had two prior criminal convictions for sexual abuse, spent months crafting a digital façade to conceal his true intentions.
The court ruling reveals how he contacted hundreds of children and adolescents across Latin America after establishing himself as the leader of a ‘clan’ in Free Fire. The video game, which is rated as suitable for users aged 13+ in Uruguay but 12+ in most countries, was the most frequently mentioned gaming platform in grooming cases involving children under 12 in Uruguay, according to December 2025 research based on surveys of 135 Uruguayan education, health, justice, and social protection professionals by Pablo López and Manuela Costa at the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad de la República.
Once Carvajal established a bond with a potential victim, he would invite them to the clan’s WhatsApp group, asking for selfies as a condition of membership. “Don’t you want to belong to the clan?” he asked those who hesitated, adding: “Don’t you understand what I mean when I ask for photos?” and “I can give you things.”
Carvajal then began private conversations with his victims, using various manipulative tactics. Sometimes, he would use a fake name or an Argentine phone number to pose as a friendly adult or a peer, or even use the photos of other boys he had added to the group. Meanwhile, he was cementing his identity as a gaming influencer on TikTok, a video social media app used by 77% of nine- to 17-year-olds in Uruguay, according to UNICEF’s Kids Online 2022 report, which is based on surveys of children, parents and teachers. Carvajal amassed more than 10,000 followers from across Latin America on the platform and offered prizes to supposed winners – also children and teens – at meetings he arranged.
On WhatsApp, Carvajal managed to get children to share deeply personal information and sensitive data like their home or school addresses. He would feed this into ChatGPT, which prosecutor Penza says he used to help shape his communication with each child. He posed as a peer to gay teenagers and offered acceptance to those being bullied for their appearance: “Which part of your body don’t you like? Show me,” he would say.
Carvajal even worked his way into the family lives of some of the poorer boys he abused. He presented himself as trustworthy to the adults around them, who would even ask him for small sums of money, such as for a haircut, until he had gradually embedded himself in the boys’ daily routines, according to a police officer involved in the investigation, who spoke to openDemocracy on condition of anonymity.
This “ant's pace” approach, as the officer described it, convinced some parents to allow their sons to visit his home, drawn in by small comforts they could not provide themselves, such as Wi-Fi.
Carvajal’s charming appearance was no accident: according to experts, the groomer’s most powerful tool is not technology, but trust. First, he made his victims feel seen and special, then he abused them.
Lack of statistics
Data on how digital technologies facilitate or enable the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors only began being gathered on a global scale in 2019 with the Disrupting Harm survey, led by Safe Online, ECPAT International, INTERPOL, and UNICEF. This ongoing project compiles detailed victimisation data from 25 countries across every continent, collected through surveys on crimes, including those that were not reported to the police.
This year, the survey published its first findings from two Latin American countries, revealing that, in 2025 alone, around a fifth of 12- to 17-year-olds who use the internet in Brazil and Colombia experienced ‘technology-facilitated’ sexual exploitation or abuse. Results for Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico are expected later this year.
While equivalent figures do not yet exist for Uruguay, a troubling picture emerged when we analysed the data that is available.
One in three minors in the country experienced at least one episode of online risk or harm in the previous year, according to the UNICEF 2022 Kids Online report. Only half of the children reported the event. Similarly, López and Costa’s study found that more than half of the 2,500 child sexual exploitation cases raised by 135 Uruguayan professionals – in which duplication cannot be ruled out – involved digital technologies in recruitment or abuse. Contact typically began online before moving to in-person encounters.
That was Carvajal’s method, too. In exchange for Free Fire’s ‘diamonds’ – the game’s in-app currency – or mobile data top-ups, he coerced more than 30 boys to send him explicit images and perform sexual acts on video calls while he masturbated and recorded. He also physically abused at least five Uruguayan adolescents in a local hotel, telling staff that they were his children or nephews, according to prosecutor Penza. Hotel staff didn’t record the boys’ names.
One of the five teenagers Carvajal physically abused was 14-year-old Javier*, who went to the hotel thinking he would play Free Fire with members of the clan. The court ruling describes how, days earlier, Javier asked ChatGPT what clothes to wear for the meeting and what to do if he felt attracted to people of the same sex. Around the same time, Carvajal was asking the AI chatbot to create an erotic card game to undress Javier and other potential victims. ChatGPT refused Carvajal’s request, Penza said, citing “lack of permissions”.
Once in the hotel room, Javier and the other victims found food, sodas and beer. “I went, the guy was there, he let me into the room [...] I drank Coke, I was afraid it had something in it,” Javier told the prosecution’s forensic psychologist about his first encounter with Carvajal. “He turned on the TV, started getting closer to me, I knew what he wanted, I didn’t do anything [...] I was scared,” he added.
To stop the teenager’s crying, Carvajal gave him money. “So you don’t feel bad,” “so we’re both equal,” Javier recounted in his deposition. Javier told the forensic psychologist that Carvajal caused him “rejection and disgust”.
If Javier – or any other boy – did not comply with his demands to send more photos or videos or attend further meetings, Carvajal would pose as another adolescent, ‘Nahuel’, to attempt to calm the victim down and downplay the abuse. “I know the guy, he’s a good person, forget what happened, he’s a good guy,” Nahuel told Javier over WhatsApp. Carvajal would also blackmail victims by threatening to reveal what had happened to their families or to publish the photos or videos of them. To scare Javier, he told him he was following him and watching him at school. “If you make me angry, I’m mean,” he said.
Javier mentioned several subsequent meetings involving other adolescents, some of which Carvajal recorded. After raping the teenagers, Carvajal would offer them gifts such as an iPhone 11 to play Free Fire on and stay in contact with him, or cash payments ranging from 500 to 2,000 pesos (around $15 to $52). Uruguay’s national minimum hourly wage is around 120 pesos, and 500 pesos would allow a person to purchase a battle pass or a premium ‘skin’ in Free Fire, while 2,000 would get them to buy a pair of low-to-mid-end wireless headphones.
Javier had no legal representation during the proceedings; it was not possible to contact him or his family for this article. openDemocracy contacted the public defender's office in Canelones but received no response from Carvajal's representative, Valentina Solari Silvero.
Garena, Free Fire’s Singaporean developer and publisher, advises users to “report any inappropriate behaviour” in an FAQ section for parents on its website. It says it will ban or report accounts to law enforcement where necessary, and encourages “parents to stay involved to understand what games their children are playing, and to educate them about how to have a safe and enjoyable experience online.”
We contacted Garena, ChatGPT owner OpenAI, and TikTok, but they did not respond to our questions. In a written statement to openDemocracy, a WhatsApp spokesperson said: “WhatsApp has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation and abuse, and we suspend users when we detect them sharing content that exploits or endangers minors.”
They added: “End-to-end encryption is one of the most important technologies for keeping everyone safe online, including young people. Nobody wants us to read their private messages or listen to their calls, which is why we have developed robust safety measures to prevent and combat abuse while maintaining online safety. Users can also block or report an individual account or group at any time.”
Saying the unspeakable
It was two in the morning on 8 March 2025 when Javier’s younger brother told their mother he was scared because Javier was receiving threats from a man who had a video of him. The mother spoke to Javier. Terrified, he told her everything.
Four days later, Penza and three police teams raided Carvajal’s parents’ house. A photo of a young boy was on his computer desktop. There was an ID of a 17-year-old in his wallet. Police experts also found active and deleted files and individual and group chats in his electronic devices, which outlined the profile of a serial predator.
However, the investigation fell short. While Javier mentioned other possible Uruguayan victims – some of whom prosecutors managed to identify in the content found on Carvajal’s devices – none were willing to report what had happened.
During interviews with the prosecutor, several children failed to recognise themselves as victims. Some were accompanied by siblings or other adults and pleaded with the prosecutor and forensic psychologist not to tell their parents. The digital nature of the crime further blurs the lines, as children and their families may feel they sent photos “on their own initiative”, without recognising that they had endured weeks of invisible pressure before doing so, López and Costa told openDemocracy.
Other victims who did try to tell their parents or relatives what had happened to them were met with reproach or disbelief. Javier’s father told him, “You had the option to say no; if you went, it’s because you wanted to. It was your choice,” according to prosecutor Penza's account. “There are adults who fail to see the manipulation and power imbalance exerted by the abuser, or that this is a crime,” said Penza, explaining that this allows such abuse to thrive.
Uruguay also lacks the tools to identify potential victims contacted via foreign numbers. According to one of the police investigators, INTERPOL carried out the necessary procedures, but at the time of publication, a response was still pending.
Carvajal agreed to a plea bargain with the prosecution in October 2025 and was found guilty of grooming, sexual abuse, payment or promise of payment to minors (exploitation), and related offences. He was sentenced to nearly ten years in prison. As he awaited the sentence, he repeatedly raped his cellmate, according to court records seen by openDemocracy.
In her sentencing submission, the prosecutor included both identified and anonymous victims. Yet the full extent of the harm caused by Carvajal may never be known.
*Not his real name.
