Girl kidnapped and tortured by internet groomer who live-streamed abuse

When she was just 13, a girl left her family home to meet someone she believed was a trusted friend, but instead unknowingly walked into one of the most disturbing child abduction cases in internet history.

In the early 2000s, whilst online spaces remained largely unregulated, Alicia Kozakiewicz became virtual friends with someone she had encountered on the internet, who claimed to be her same age. That person subsequently revealed they were actually 31 , and introduced Alicia to another acquaintance of theirs.

Over months of daily chats, common interests, and emotional connection, Alicia and her new online companion had formed a strong friendship.

On New Year’s Day in 2002, Alicia informed her parents she was feeling poorly and went to her bedroom to rest. She was, in reality, slipping out to meet her online friend face-to-face.

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Alicia endured four days of live streamed abuse

“He was the one I walked out to see on New Year’s Day and who kidnapped me in his car,” Alicia later wrote in a first person piece for the BBC, reports the Mirror US.

Immediately after the two met, the situation became violent. “He was grabbing my hand so tightly that I thought it was broken,” she recalled, adding that he shouted orders for her to be quiet, and that he would “put her in the trunk” if she didn’t obey.

As they drove away from her hometown of Pittsburgh, Alicia remembers hoping the car would stop soon “I thought, ‘Maybe he’ll just drive around the block. Maybe he’ll just drive to the next neighbourhood.”

When they arrived at a toll booth, she glimpsed a chance. She recalled: “But the man in the toll booth didn’t see me or think there was anything wrong, and the car sped on. There are no words to explain the fear and terror of thinking this person could pull over and kill me at any moment.”

Five hours later, Alicia ended up in the neighbouring state of Virginia, where she was hauled inside a property and down into a basement.

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Alicia’s missing person’s poster

“He pulled me out of the car and dragged me into this house,” which she said was filled with equipment that her “13-year-old mind just couldn’t comprehend.”

He then told her: “This is going to be really hard for you. It’s OK, cry.”

From that point, Alicia was placed in a dog collar, sexually assaulted and chained to the floor next to the bed. “I was raped and beaten and tortured in that house for four days,” she wrote.

“Sometimes people say, ‘You’re so lucky, that’s not that long,’” she said, adding: “You cannot define pain by time… it’s your experience and your pain that defines it.”

From that moment, as her abuser perpetrated the assault and even live streamed it online, she claims, “I had no control over my fate. When I did fight him I ended up with a broken nose.”

She feared that after everything he had inflicted, “why would murder be something that he couldn’t do?”.

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Alicia has since then become an advocate for children’s safety(Image: itsaliciakozak/Instagram)

On the fourth day, her fears escalated. “‘I’m beginning to like you too much. Tonight we’re going to go for a ride,’ he said. I knew in that moment there was nothing I could do,” she wrote.

He provided her with food for the first time in days before departing for work. At that point, she remained hopeful her parents would locate her, but gradually, that hope diminished and she “started to accept my own death.”

Just hours later, she was alarmed by forceful banging on the door downstairs. Fearing this might represent another danger to her life, she concealed herself beneath the bed and remained completely silent.

“I must have made some noise,” she recalled, describing how she heard a man announce “movement over there!”

A man then commanded her to emerge from her hiding place and surrender. Alicia was discovered with a heavy chain fastened to a collar round her neck, and naked.

“I was staring down the barrel of a gun,” she wrote. “I thought, ‘This is when I’m going to die. This is it.’”.

She then spotted the man’s uniform – which bore the letters FBI on it – and could finally breathe easy. “They set me free,” she wrote.

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Alicia was only 13 when she was abducted and tortured(Image: Getty)

“They gave me a second chance at life. These men and women, they are my angels.”

Her rescue had been facilitated after an online viewer of the live broadcast of her abuse recognised her from missing person posters. They subsequently alerted authorities and investigators were able to trace her whereabouts.

Kidnapper Scott Tyree was arrested and later sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison for the abduction, sexual exploitation, and production of explicit images of a minor. He has now completed his sentence and has been released, though he has faced additional legal action for violating parole.

Today, Alicia has become a prominent campaigner for child protection, online safety awareness, and missing youngsters. She established the Alicia Project and helped create Alicia’s Law, which ensures dedicated funding for Internet Crimes Against Children task forces.