By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Russ Tuttle told students at Hays High School on Wednesday he wanted to remember just one thing — cola cockroach.

Tuttle grew up in India. On one particularly hot and miserable day, he bought two Thumbs Up colas from a street vendor. He was so hot, miserable and dripping with sweat that he chugged the first cola.

To his horror, a cockroach had been bottled inside the beverage and now was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

He told HHS students he never heaved so badly in his life.

His point to the students was social media is like sweet, fizzy cola. A little of it is OK. Too much is bad for you, and there can be lurking inside cockroaches ready to take advantage of you.

In his BeAlert program, Tuttle noted human trafficking is not something that just happens in the Third World.

At least 100,000 children in America are taken of advantage of in the sex industry each year. Three of four of those young victims are trafficked online.

“I am here as an adult male to tell you guys there are people who want to harm students,” he said

Youth put on social media their dislikes and their desires everyday. Cockroaches, the bad guys, use that to take advantage of students, Tuttle said.

Tuttle acknowledged the disconnect between youth and adults. He explained that simply. Brains in humans don’t fully develop until on average a person is 25 years old. The thinking part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, is the last part of the brain to fully develop,

“You are in high school, so right now I want you to understand something, this is not a slam,” Tuttle said. “It is not a put down. It is not a derogatory comment, but right now you turn to your neighbor on the left and your right and with your best compassion and empathy, look them in the eyes and tell them, ‘You are just a half brain.’ ”

Tuttle said adults need to understand students make mistakes because they were half-brain formed decisions. He then turned back to the students.

“When you feel like no one understands you and you feel like you don’t have a trusted adult you can talk to about something, online is not the place to go,” he said.

Teens often feel lonely and isolated because they look at social media and compare their weaknesses to others strengths. Teenage suicide is up 20 percent in American in the last six years.

In Tuttle’s daughter’s high school, two students killed themselves in the same weekend. One was a boy, and the other was a girl. They were in different grades and did not know each other. Both were expressing on social media they were lonely, isolated and depressed.

“There were students in my daughter’s school that were responding to these students saying, ‘I think you should end your life,’ ” he said.

He said students need to take responsibility for their own actions and the care of others.

Tuttle said he was becoming increasingly distressed about students falling into controlling relationships as young as elementary school.

Recently during a presentation at a small Kansas school, a seventh-grade girl came up to Tuttle after his presentation and said a fifth-grade boy had started harassing her when she was in the fourth grade. He began threatening her. In the fourth grade, he convinced her that she needed to take her clothes off, take a “hot pic” and send it to him.

“She is now in seventh grade, and she comes to me and says, ‘How did you know my story?’ I don’t know your story. I don’t know you. She said, ‘Everything you just talked about unpacked for me. That is my life. How did you know?’ I said these are the patterns when people control others in a relationship,” Tuttle said.

This young girl in the seventh grade was suicidal. She was cutting herself.

“This is not a rare story for me,” he said. “She got in a controlling relationship, and now, in the seventh grade, all the images that had been taken and used against her — she had over 100 men trolling her, catfishing her, harassing her through social media.”

This kind of manipulation does not only happen to girls, Tuttle said.

“I don’t want you to live in fear,” he said. “I want you to be wise.”

Predators use video games, such as Minecraft and Fortnite to prey on boys. Twenty-three men were arrested out of Kansas who were recruiting boys using Fortnite.

Boys are getting naked pictures from who they think is a girl, but it is really coming from a predator. The predator, posing as a young girl, convinces the boy to send naked photos of himself. The predator offers to meet. The boy goes thinking he is meeting the girl, and there is the predator.

Unfortunately, once these “hot pics” are out there, they are usually passed on. If you receive a pic of a teen who is undressed, and you pass it on, by federal law, you are a child pornographer. One in five pornographic images is of a child.

“You are only a safe online as your stupidest friend,” he said.

Jesse Logan, 18, trusted her boyfriend, so when he said, “If you really love me, you would take your clothes off and send me a hot pic.”

She did, he broke up with her and started passing the image along. Her parents found her hanging dead from suicide in her room.

Eighty-eight percent of the time once these photos are sent, they go semi-viral, which means they are seen by at least 1,200 people.

If someone approaches you online and you don’t know them or they try to harass you, Tuttle said you should block that person, save the information and report it to a trusted adult. This can help police put predators in jail.

“I recently encountered a 12-year-old girl who had saved the online exploitation she had been going through,” Tuttle said. She was 12 years old. She thought she was talking to a 14-year-old boy for several months. It turned out it was a 57-year-old man in Philadelphia, who had 14 others girls he was doing the same thing with. Because she saved the information, that guy is in jail today.”

Tuttle shared the story of a young woman who became a victim of sex trafficking. At 10, she was a star softball player. At 12, she fell into a manipulative relationship through social media with who she thought was a 14-year-old boy. When she met him, he was actually a 21-year-old-man. At 12, that man raped her, and he used all the images he took of that event against her.

Three weeks before her 18th birthday, she was sold against her will. The predators used alcohol and drugs to control her. On her 22nd birthday, she was in ICU with only 5 percent heart function.

“This is the result of what her life did to her,” he said. “This is the impact of porn on real people. This is the impact of controlling relationships — to take someone to a place where they are willing to exploit a young student through social media to get them to go to the depths of horrific horror they never thought they would go to.”

“I am asking you to be half brains searching for cockroaches when you are online to keep each other safe,” Tuttle said.

Tuttle ended the presentation by leading the students in the cola cockroach chant: “Not in my life. Not in my school. Not in my future. Cola Cockroach.”