Dating’s Dangerous Secrets: Girl, 18, tells BBC Three documentary how her Tinder date raped her

A teenager revealed how she was sexually assaulted by a Tinder date who filmed her  during the attack, then used the footage to blackmail her into meeting up with him for a second time. 

The British victim, who was identified using the fake name Sasha, spoke on BBC Three’s Dating’s Dangerous Secrets about how she was attacked by the same man on two separate occasions when she was just 17. 

She met her attacker on Tinder in September 2020. She said it was ‘easy’ to join Tinder despite not meeting the app’s minimum age requirement of 18 and simply ‘put her age as one year older’. 

She added: ‘I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a Tinder account. I think everybody my age had an account or had had one previously.’

Tinder told the BBC that the company ‘works diligently to ban and block underage users’.  

After speaking online for a few days, Sasha and the man agreed to meet. They went for a drive before going back to his place, where they began ‘hooking up’.

She continued: ‘He was respectful of what I liked until the point when I needed it to stop. I needed it to stop and I needed a break. I asked him to stop and he said ‘no’. 

‘It was quite a scary experience. He growled ‘no’ at me. I was pinned down for a bit, I couldn’t get myself out of the situation physically. I was screaming for quite a long time.’ 

At that point, he took out his phone and began filming Sasha. It is illegal to film anyone under the age of 18 involved in a sex act. 

‘I realised he was filming me,’ Sasha continued. ‘I didn’t consent to the filming either. I did eventually get him off me. He wanted to carry on. 

Journalist Linda Adey, pictured, spoke to women who had been assaulted by men they met on online dating apps

‘At this point I was in this situation where I was scared about what would happen if I said ‘no’ because I’d already said it once and it didn’t work.

‘Then he became more demanding and he was instructing me to look at the camera and things like that.’

She said the fact that he had filmed the assault made it more difficult because she feared that, were she to report it, the camera ‘would perceive’ that she was ‘into’ what was happening.  

The Tinder date later sent Sasha the video and asked her to meet up again. She felt she was being blackmailed and had no choice but to see him again.  

‘I was worried about what would happen if I said ‘no’ to meeting with him again,’ she added. Sasha was raped for a second time.

The man then blocked Sasha, which automatically caused their online conversation to be deleted. 

Sasha explained: ‘He blocked me which meant that if I wanted to report him or even block him from adding me back again in future, I actually couldn’t access his profile to do so. It completely disappears. There’s no backlog of people you previously matched with.’

Tinder told the BBC unmatching is an important feature that helps protect the safety and privacy of its users. 

Sasha did not report the user to Tinder or to the police, partly because there was no way to access those conversations.  

She added: ‘I think it’s one of my biggest regrets that this could have potentially led to the same thing happening to someone else.’ 

A poll commissioned by the BBC found nearly two thirds of users have felt uncomfortable while on a date with someone they met on an app, with almost 4 in 10 respondents experiencing stalking, either online or offline, afterwards

Four months after the incident Tinder updated the app so it is now possible to report a user even after they have unmatched you. 

In a press release from December 2020, Tinder said: ‘We have heard that some of our members believe they cannot report someone who has unmatched them. We are now making it easier to report someone in-app who has used the unmatched feature.’

However as an individual you still cannot access your conversations once you’ve been unmatched. This means if Sasha wanted to report the assault to the police, the police would then have to request a copy of the conversation history. 

Match Group, which owns Tinder, says it uses ‘every tool possible to keep bad actors of its services and continues to invest in technology to keep users safe’. 

A poll commissioned by the BBC found nearly two thirds of users have felt uncomfortable while on a date with someone they met on an app, with almost 4 in 10 respondents experiencing stalking, either online or offline, afterwards. 

The poll commissioned for the BBC surveyed 2,070 men and women, aged 18 to 35 years old, on their dating habits and use of dating apps.

BBC Three’s, Dating’s Dangerous Secrets, investigated the safety of the most popular dating apps in Britain.  

The documentary is available to watch on iPlayer.