The front door of the Colorado Springs Police Department's Internet Crimes Against Children unit doesn't look like a door at all. It looks like a screen. A glowing rectangle with a notification chime. A game lobby where a stranger with a kind voice asks about a child's day. A chatbot that seems to listen better than anyone at the dinner table. The doorway to a predator's world is not creaky and dark; it's bright, colorful, and thumb-friendly. And on Sunday afternoon, on the campus of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the people who investigate those crimes are hoping parents will walk through a real door, a glass one, into the Ent Center for the Arts, and learn how to spot the invisible ones.
The event, titled Digital Realities: Protecting Youth in the Digital Age, runs from 4 to 7 p.m. at 5225 North Nevada Avenue. It is free. There will be refreshments. And unlike the typical parent-night slide show of "don't talk to strangers," this one features representatives from TikTok and Roblox sitting alongside detectives from the Colorado Springs Police Department and advocates from TESSA, the domestic violence nonprofit that has served the Pikes Peak region since 1977. It is a rare, almost unprecedented pairing: the police bureau that investigates crimes against children online, a nonprofit born in the era before the internet existed, and the very platforms where the grooming happens, all in one room.
"We're going to have some representatives not only from TESSA and the Colorado Springs Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children unit," said Korey Hutchison with CSPD, "but also other community members are going to be there. Community groups are going to be there, and we're also going to have a representative from TikTok and a representative from Roblox there to also provide information on the safety measures that their programs provide."
The topics on the table are not abstract. Cyberbullying. Artificial intelligence. Sextortion. The word "sextortion" alone may still feel unfamiliar to many adults, but the data suggests it is haunting an entire generation. A 2025 survey by Thorn, the child-safety nonprofit, found that one in five teens and young adults has experienced sextortion, a form of blackmail in which someone threatens to share intimate images unless the victim complies. Thorn's research also found that one in five children between the ages of 9 and 12 has experienced some form of sexual interaction online. When you read those numbers back to back, they stop being statistics and start being a description of a typical classroom.
And then there is the new wildcard, artificial intelligence. Pew Research Center reports that 64 percent of teens have used AI chatbots, and nearly one-third use them daily. A predator can now use AI to generate convincing child voices, to auto-translate messages into slang a kid trusts, or to scale a single grooming conversation into dozens of parallel ones. The familiar warning signs parents learned five years ago may already be obsolete. The goal of Sunday's event, according to organizers, is not to scare parents into confiscating phones, but to give them the vocabulary and the confidence to ask better questions. What is your child's username? Who is on their friends list? Has an AI chatbot ever asked for a photo? Do they know that a stranger who is kind today can be coercive tomorrow?
That mission connects directly to the unlikely partner in this collaboration. TESSA, though it now operates a confidential safehouse, a 24/7 crisis line, victim advocacy, counseling, and children's programs, began in May 1977 in response to a high rate of calls to local law enforcement from women threatened or assaulted by their partners. At that time, domestic violence was considered a private matter, and resources were difficult to locate, if they existed at all. With help from the legal and philanthropic communities, TESSA emerged as an information provider and referral service. It has spent nearly half a century learning a grim lesson that this event embraces: abuse does not announce itself with a uniform. It often arrives inside the most trusted spaces. The home. The relationship. The app.
TESSA's mission statement today is to help individuals and their children achieve safety and wellbeing while challenging communities to end sexual and family violence. That phrase, "challenging communities," is doing heavy lifting. It means that TESSA does not only shelter survivors after a crime; it also works to prevent harm before it happens. And there is no space where prevention matters more than the digital one. When a child is groomed online, the abuse often happens in the same home where the parents are making dinner in the next room. The technology does not create the predator, but it gives the predator a doorway that never locks, opens silently, and leaves no shoe marks on the carpet.
The Ent Center for the Arts seems, on its face, an unusual venue for a digital safety workshop. The building is a monument to analog culture: a striking contemporary arts facility that opened in 2018 on the UCCS campus, home to Theatreworks, the professional theater company founded by Murray Ross in 1975, and to the Galleries of Contemporary Art. It was the culmination of a decades-long vision that began with Ross and was championed by UCCS Chancellor Emerita Pam Shockley-Zalabak and nearly 100 community collaborators who broke ground in August 2015. The center was conceived as a pillar where artists could inspire and amplify one another rather than compete. But its true ambition, in the words of its founders, was to bring together diverse peoples and ideas. On Sunday, no idea could be more urgent than the notion that a child's safety and a parent's peace of mind are cultural artifacts worth preserving.
There is also a quiet poetry in hosting this event at the Ent Center. The venue sits on the edge of the UCCS campus, a place where thousands of students gather daily to learn, connect, argue, and fall in love. Just blocks away in the same digital ecosystem that hums through their backpacks, children who are barely old enough to read are navigating worlds that did not exist when their parents were their age. The predators are already there. The platforms are beginning to take responsibility, which is why TikTok and Roblox are sending representatives. The police are already investigating, which is why the ICAC unit will be in the room. The advocates are already preparing, which is why TESSA will be there. On Sunday, the only missing piece is the one that matters most: the parents.
If you go, expect a relaxed, open-door format rather than a rigid panel of lectures behind a table. Expect to see detectives in plain clothes, not uniforms, walking parents through the signs they see every day. Expect representatives from TikTok and Roblox to explain the safety controls that actually exist inside their platforms, the ones hidden behind settings menus most parents have never opened. Expect TESSA advocates to draw the line between online grooming and the patterns of coercive control they have studied for decades. Expect questions. Expect to feel uncomfortable. That discomfort, organizers hope, is the beginning of vigilance.
There was a time, not long ago, when parents worried about their children wandering too far from the house into the woods or the streets. The front door was a physical barrier. Sunday's event is built on the recognition that the front door has moved. It is now a screen you carry in your pocket and hand to your child at dinner. Digital Realities is an invitation to learn how that door works, who is knocking on it, and what you can say when someone knocks back.
Admission is free, refreshments will be served, and no registration appears to be required. The event runs from 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the Ent Center for the Arts, 5225 North Nevada Avenue, on the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus. The door is open. The least you can do is walk through it.