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When TikToker Carly Burns (@carlyburns_) was in middle school, her vice principal pretended to be a 13-year-old boy and was Snapchatting her, along with more than 50 other children.
One day, she was out back-to-school shopping with her parents when he added her on Snapchat and started talking to her. He claimed that he was from out of town.
Carly felt like he was trying to bait her into sending inappropriate pictures, so she just stopped talking to him. He started talking to her again around wintertime.
“The amount of time that he was talking to me and how consistent and fast he was replying just makes me wonder where his wife was,” said Carly.
“How did she not notice him on his phone on Snapchat like that all the time as a grown man? I don’t know their situation, so she could have been at work for all I know.”
As time went on, things began to get really weird. Carly was in a group chat with her vice principal posing as a middle-school boy and another guy she was friends with at the time. Her vice principal was telling some crazy, inappropriate stories in the group chat.
At one point, he was trying to get Carly and her friend to meet him at a restaurant because he was in town with his dad. It was 10 p.m., and the restaurant was 25 minutes away.
He tried to convince Carly to get someone to drive her or ride her bike, even though there were feet of snow on the ground.
“I was not about to get on my bike, sneak out to meet this kid, and he was being so pushy,” said Carly. “And then, we obviously didn’t go because we were children, and that’s not realistic. I just remember him being so pushy and getting so upset that we couldn’t go. Looking back now, it makes me sick.”
She added that she was glad they didn’t meet up and that nothing happened. Shortly after that situation, her vice principal was arrested. His wife stood by his side during the trial.
About a week before her vice principal got arrested, he started getting close to her at school. He always sought her out during lunch and recess and would let her go on her phone, even though the school had a strict no-phones policy.
He invited her to come to his office if she ever needed anything and even found her between classes to joke around with her.
On the day her vice principal got arrested, everyone found out that he had been posing as a 13-year-old boy named Brett Larson. Carly immediately burst into tears because she felt like she had done something wrong and would get into trouble for it.
She told the boys on her bus about her experience, and one of the boys advised her to tell her mom. Her mom called the police and told them that Carly had been involved.
The next day, a detective came over after school to chat with her. By then, Carly had already blocked “Brett” on her phone, so the police weren’t able to retrieve any of the messages.
Carly also got called into the counselor’s office and saw her once a week for the rest of the school year. After that, she was referred to a therapist, and she saw the therapist for a couple of years. It was not a good time for her as a 13-year-old.
“It definitely taught me the lesson not to talk to strangers online because nobody had ever told me that,” said Carly. “After that, I learned my lesson, and I did not talk to random people that I didn’t know ever again.”
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