Your child will tell a chatbot they are being sextorted at 1.45am before they will tell you
Ruth Sparkes built Quinly because she understood a truth most adults find uncomfortable: children hide things from us because they love us. Now she is fighting to stop the government banning the tool that is already catching children when nothing else is there.
By Wistl · · Founder Focus
At 1.45am, a child somewhere in the UK opened an anonymous chatbot on their phone. We do not know their name. We never will. That, Ruth Sparkes says, is the point. They typed into it something they could not bring themselves to say to their parents, their teachers, or their friends. They used Quinly, the safeguarding tool she built. By morning they had been signposted to their school's designated safeguarding lead, to Childline, and to Papyrus. The conversation log was deleted the moment the session ended. No adult will ever read what they wrote. No one will know who they are. Quinly does not