“My son was groomed while gaming… a year later he was murdered"
When Breck first switched schools and began reconnecting with his friends, his mum Lorin was overjoyed.
Aged 13, he was quickly invited into a gaming group where he would spend time playing against his pals on various platforms.
With a keen interest in gaming and technology, the teenagers from Surrey spent evenings ‘laughing, gaming and socialising’ with one another. But when Lorin noticed a ‘deeper sounding voice’ coming from her son’s room, alarm bells started to ring.
The fun quickly stopped as the concerned mum began to work through a web of lies to uncover the identity of the unknown man whose manipulation meant he was able to turn the teenager against his own family.
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Lorin has told of how she was ‘up against brick walls’ at every turn, and how her desperate attempts to report the predator on the other side of the screen went unheard until it was too late.
Their harrowing story will now be told in a documentary airing on Prime on 20 October, titled From Minecraft to Murder: The Killing of Breck Bednar. It will reconstruct the pattern of online manipulation which tragically claimed Breck's life.
"I noticed a deeper sounding voice... my mum ears pricked up"
In an interview with LADbible, Lorin told of the moment she first realised something was wrong.
"Breck had reunited with friends he knew from primary school, and they invited him into a gaming group," she explained.
“At the time I was so pleased because he loved gaming, technology and computing. He just understood how things worked.
“I was glad that he would meet up with the guys at school and then they'd make a plan and meet up in the evening, gaming and socializing. I could hear them laughing and joking. They were just having fun.
“But at one point I noticed there was a deeper sounding voice within the gaming group. Immediately, my mum ears pricked up. I was like, who is this that sounds older?
“I asked Breck how he knew him and if he was the same age, and he said to me, ‘mum, he runs the server. He’s super clever. All the guys have been gaming with him for years’.
"He had nothing bad to say about this stranger, but I still felt like we didn’t know who he was. A lot of people thought I was paranoid, but that’s what parents do. We have rules, we have worries and we have concerns.
“I really struggled to get anyone to believe at that point there could be anything untoward about this relationship. But as a parent I felt I had a right to question an older sounding voice, who in the end, turned out to be a predator.
“In the back of my head, I always thought that this predator was older. I pictured some creepy, fat, old guy in his underpants trying to entice the boys to send them naked photos. It made me sound even more paranoid."
Breck, who played games like Battlefield and Call of Duty with his friends, was actually communicating with an older teenager called Lewis Daynes, who ran the online server.
Within weeks of playing alongside him, Breck, a member of 135 Squadron Air Training Corps, began refusing to go to church, said he didn't need to go to school, and stopped sitting with his family during mealtimes.
Breck's personality 'changed' as he was groomed online
Lorin described how his ‘personality changed’ and that she knew he was being groomed, sharing her concerns with police and the school. Her son had also become more distant from friends and family.
But looking back, she said there was a lack of understanding and education about grooming, especially when boys were the victim. Despite this, she always trusted her instincts.
“I actually didn't really know that much about grooming other than what I had heard in the news,” she said. “It was usually about the poor girls who were groomed in Rotherham and Rochdale and groomed face to face with drugs and sex involved, so it was a completely different situation.
“But I still felt like he was mentoring them, teaching them, but also changing the way they thought. Breck would say odd things like ‘Lewis says I shouldn't have to join the family dinner if I'm not hungry. Lewis says I shouldn't have to go on family walks anymore. Lewis says I don’t have to finish school because he can get me an amazing job'.
"And I felt like I was suddenly up against some stranger who was like some other parent."
She went on: “I could tell it wasn’t a healthy relationship. I tried to talk to other parents and they either didn’t want to know or I didn’t have their contact details. I felt like I was up against brick walls.”
“I could tell something didn’t feel right, but I couldn't get anyone to believe me. Breck thought he was just having fun, and I think when you are being groomed, it’s enjoyable because this person is paying so much attention to you.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but Breck was getting gifts, free software, free games. So it was probably more exciting for them learning from this predator than sitting in a class.”
Concerns raised to police
When Lorin would enter Breck’s bedroom, she claimed Lewis would organise for witches to appear on the gaming screen When I’d go into Breck’s room, I’d see gamers on one screen in a bid to embarrass her son.
She eventually called the police and informed them of Lewis’ name, explaining how the Essex-based teenager had claimed to be a different age and falsely from New York.
Nothing went any further, despite Lewis previously being reported for offences on other young victims.
After an intervention meeting with other involved parents, Breck had his devices taken off him.
But what Lorin didn’t know, was that Breck had secretly recorded the conversation with an old MP3 player, which was given to Lewis and revealed that ‘they were onto him’.
“Then it all became even more dangerous because it went underground,” Lorin confessed. “When I spoke to people, they would all say ‘Breck’s a nice boy’ and ‘he’ll grow out of it’.
“Nobody looked at him as having a vulnerability because he was a schoolboy. This predator was finding those vulnerabilities. He was building them up and making them feel like he was giving them more attention than their parents who actually loved them. So I became the bad guy. I became the one who was ‘holding Breck back’.
“I did take all his technology away, which was the last straw. I told him I was worried and wanted him to be safe, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t feel unsafe. He enjoyed the flattery, the attention, the mentoring.”
Unbeknownst to Lorin, Lewis had actually sent Breck a new phone, which they used to keep in communication with one another in secret.
“Once Lewis knew that we didn’t want him in the boys’ lives everything became so secretive that we actually thought we had fixed the problem,” Lorin said. “He went back to acting normally, he was doing his chores when asked, sitting with us at dinner, involved in family activities. I had no idea the police investigation had been closed either, and there was nothing new to report.”
However, it was on 17 February, 2014 that horror struck.
Breck, who had been due to stay with his father over the weekend, never arrived. Instead, he said he was sleeping at a friends house, but had secretly travelled to see Daynes after months of talking in the gaming forums.
Hours later, Breck’s three siblings began to receive text messages that their brother had been murdered, and that photos of him had been callously posted on social media.
Pictures of his body had also been shared in their online gaming group, and word quickly spread.
Daynes, who was then 18, had managed to lure Breck to his flat on the premise of handing a fictional computer business. Instead, he was fatally stabbed in the throat.
There was also evidence of sexual activity between the two shortly before Breck was killed, a court heard at the time.
Chelmsford Crown Court was told how Daynes had promised Breck ‘great wealth’ through a fictional computer business.
The following morning, Daynes called the police and told them Breck had tried to take his own life, and in the struggle to save him, he had stabbed him.
But it was noticed how duct tape had been used to tie Breck's ankles and wrists, and his clothes were found in a bin bag in Daynes' flat.
“Breck got hurt because he made mistakes, and didn’t realise that online friends are different to real-life friends,” Lorin explained.
Computer engineer Lewis, who was 19 at the time of being sentenced to life in prison, was told he would have to serve a minimum term of 25 years for the attack.
There were serious questions over the police handling of the case after it was revealed that Daynes was arrested on suspicion of the rape and sexual assault of a 15-year-old alleged victim three years prior.
The offences had been reported to police in 2011 but no action was taken, meaning they were only re-investigated when he was questioned over the murder.
“There’s children that are dying”
In the years after the fatal attack, grief-stricken mum Lorin went on to set up the Breck Foundation to raise awareness of online dangers and to promote responsible use of the internet.
She told LADbible: “I wanted to really educate people about what a healthy relationship is, whether that is online or face to face.
“I am not a tech person, so I never endeavoured to teach about the intricacies of computing and gaming, it was more about recognising when someone is asking you to do something that isn’t good for you and is manipulation.
“I wanted it to have a real focus on education. It started out as awareness of grooming, awareness of online harms. Not to scare anyone, not to take it all away, but to be more empowered. Then it became empowering young people to try to stand up against this behaviour.
“As time went on, I realised I could educate until I'm blue in the face, but we really need law changes and we need changes in the platforms themselves to have safety by design.
“Being a teenager is an amazing and fun time - if you make it through. There are children that are dying for all sorts of reasons and being harmed in all sorts of different ways.
“So many people have said that by using Breck's story, it just makes this more real. Breck was one of the early atrocities. But maybe if Breck and his friends heard a story like this, things would be different.”
Lorin has previously been an advocate calling on tougher social media restrictions and championing the UK’s Online Safety Act.
It will see the introduction of age limits on certain platforms and a social media ban on under-16s from next March.
“This is why when we talk about a ban, I don’t like that wording at all. I don’t want to ban or take anything away from anyone.
“I feel strongly about raising the age of social media to give young people more time to just grow, gain their education and get a bit more maturity so they can better recognise an unhealthy relationship.”
Essex Police issues response
A statement issued by Essex Police in 2015 confirmed that an independent complaints procedure found that the initial investigation into Daynes' allegations against another minor was 'thorough'.
A statement read: "The Independent Police Complaints Commission has conducted an independent investigation into previous contact between Essex Police and Lewis Daynes relating to an allegation made against Daynes in 2011 of serious sexual assault.
"The IPCC concludes that the Essex Police 2011 criminal investigation was thorough and in accordance with Force policies. The IPCC has stated that the Essex Police officers’ decision in 2011 to take ‘no further action’ against Daynes was appropriate in the circumstances.
"Daynes did not come to Essex Police’s attention again until February 2014 following the death of Breck Bednar.
"Daynes was subsequently convicted for the murder of Breck Bednar and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years imprisonment following a detailed investigation by the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate."
Topics: Crime, Originals, UK News, Documentaries
James Holt