Utah mom finds her kids’ pictures on porn websites

Salt Lake City — A Riverton mom made a shocking discovery — pictures of her children on websites connected to porn.

Brittany Champagne was on Instagram Wednesday night when she came across her 8-year-old daughter’s picture on somebody else’s profile.

“I clicked on there and I found a girl claiming to be 11-years-old as my daughter, and she’s a bisexual cheerleader and her whole page is about gay pride,” Champagne said.

This was clearly a fake account, so Champagne did some digging and made more disturbing discoveries — pictures of Champagne herself and her 9-month-old son.

And that wasn’t the worst of it.

The anonymous Internet user had “hash-tagged porn sites onto my kids’ photos,” Champagne said. “My kids are all over at least 11 porn sites that I’ve found today.”

All the pictures she found came from her Facebook page which was set to be visible to friends only. The pictures themselves weren’t doctored — just attached to extremely graphic content.

“I can’t imagine how my kids would feel,” said Champagne. “I feel beyond violated, so I don’t even know what they would feel.”

She reported this to Unified Police. Now, she’s trying to undo as much of the damage as she can.

“I can’t even tell you how long I’ve been awake since last night and today just trying to take down every photo I find,” said Champagne. “They’ve gone to so many places.”

Taking down the pictures seems like an almost impossible task — and one that’s made her re-think what she posts.

“As far as looking at anybody’s photos, you’re not going to be able to see mine,” Champagne said. “I just won’t have them up.”

Unified Police Lt. Justin Hoyal told 2News it appears there’s not much investigators can do in this case as there was no actual crime committed.

Hoyal said this is a good reminder for everyone to be careful and realize that once pictures are posted online, anyone can potentially get at them.

It’s a lesson Champagne has learned the hard way.

“I seriously feel like the worst mom having have put these on there and seeing what happened,” she said. “I didn’t feel that posting family photos could turn into something like that.”