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A man who obsessively groomed a 14-year-old girl he met through the online gaming platform Roblox has been jailed for 28 months.
Carlo Tritta, now 19, kept indecent images of the girl and travelled hundreds of miles from his home in Eastleigh, Hampshire in order to turn up, uninvited, at her home in Manchester.
Police said the case shines light on the online dangers to children, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said tech companies need to prioritise safety.
DC Jodi Bartlett, who investigated the case, said: “Tritta’s behaviour lays bare the terrifying realities of how criminals use the online world to target and harm vulnerable people. Do you truly know who you, or your child, is speaking to online?
“The victim in this case was just 14 years old. She and her mother were subjected to a campaign of fear and abuse at the hands of obsessive and predatory Tritta.”
In a victim impact statement heard at Manchester Minshull Street crown court on Thursday, the girl said she “felt trapped and upset” and was “scared of going downstairs at night” because she thought the defendant would be there.
The victim’s mother told the court they were “constantly on edge” at their home, which “no longer feels like a safe space”, and had considered moving.
The sentencing hearing heard Tritta engaged in “highly sexualised” conversations with his victim and shared intimate images and videos. He initially made contact with the girl on Roblox in 2024 before he moved their online conversations to Discord, WhatsApp and Snapchat.
Police were alerted last August when the mother discovered the messages and images. Tritta was arrested and interviewed but breached his bail conditions when he travelled to the girl’s home in Manchester in an attempt to get her to drop the case.
The prosecutor Rachael Yarwood said Tritta walked in through the back door of the property and confronted the complainant, despite her asking him to leave. She said: “He also sent her letters, attempted to contact her by phone and made attempts to frustrate the criminal investigation.”
Tritta went on to admit to perverting the course of justice and was sentenced last December to a 12-month custodial sentence, suspended for two years. Just three days later, he returned to the complainant’s home and sought to confront her as he entered the property and damaged a video camera. He was arrested again.
Tritta pleaded guilty to making indecent images, including 25 in the most serious classification of category A, sexual communication with a child and causing a child to watch a sexual act, all committed between January and August 2025. He also admitted witness intimidation and criminal damage.
Edward Steele, defending, said Tritta was “essentially fixated” with his victim “partly as a function of his neurodiverse condition”. The court heard the defendant has Asperger syndrome with a mixed anxiety and depressive disorder that “may have compromised his understanding of what he was doing”.
The recorder Ciaran Rankin ruled Tritta’s pattern of behaviour over a period of time must be reflected by an immediate custodial term.
He also noted the author of a pre-sentence report regarded Tritta as a high risk of causing harm to children and that the witness intimidation offences were committed just days after a court order had been imposed.
The NSPCC said the case highlighted the dangers young people face when they use platforms such as Roblox. A spokesperson said: “The onus of online safety should not be on parents and children. Tech companies must ensure the safety of young people is at the forefront of their platforms from day one of the design process.”
A spokesperson for Roblox said: “We are deeply saddened to hear of this troubling case. Since January, Roblox has required all users to go through age checks in order to communicate on our platform, with the system designed to limit communications to people of similar ages and those they already know. Our policies firmly prohibit any kind of child exploitation and we have extensive safety systems in place to help prevent user-to-user image sharing and limit chat for younger users.
“While no system is perfect, we continue to evolve and strengthen our protections every day. For example, last year we added advanced AI systems designed to detect and prevent grooming.”
