An Instagram account encouraging students at Maple Park Middle School to send nude photos is now down after a student told a parent.
It’s still unclear who created the account. The biography read: “600 followers and I’ll tell you who runs this page. Send nudes and I’ll give you this account. 8th grade at mp. and I don’t expose.” The account had 10 followers while it was still active.
"If my child was going to that school I would be really mad right now," said North Kansas City resident Dianne Holtry.
The North Kansas City School District said it does not believe a student started the account. They notified Instagram and said the account was taken down within two hours, and that no nude photos were found on the account.
The Kansas City Police Department is investigating.
41 Action News reached out to the Kansas City FBI to see what parents need to know. They said it’s important for kids to alert an adult when they see anything alarming online.
"They need to be able to go to their parent, or their grandparent, or an adult that they trust and let them know about that communication that they received," said Bridget Patton with the FBI.
Patton said it’s important for parents to stay up to date on social media as well as teach their children not to accept any communication from strangers.
"If a child receives an email message, a text message from someone that they don’t know, you stop, you block that person and you tell someone that that person is reaching out to you. That is one of the three steps that we teach kids all the time: stop, block and tell," said Patton.
The Kansas City FBI told 41 Action News it works on 200 local cases a year involving people targeting children online, and that each week they serve a search warrant to these online predators.
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Ali Hoxie can be reached at ali.hoxie@kshb.com
