Now the website Snopes has exposed the everything.
NEWS: Social Media Warnings Of ’48-hour Challenge’ Go Viral
The site says the supposed ’48-hour challenge’ is alike to another widely publicized thing called the ‘Game of 72’ which also encouraged kids to disappear in 2015.
But they do not know the 2015 game was fake, according to Snopes. A 13-year-old girl who went missing for three days and then told police she’d taken on a dare through Facebook was the only evidence of the 2015 game. But experts in that case thought that she was covering for someone she had disappeared with.
In the 2015 case, Snopes says the only evidence a challenge happened was warnings bouncing around among parents on social media sites.
And according to the site, the same thing is happening again. Multiple media outlets reported on the “48-Hour Challenge” which is quite similar to the “Game of 72,” but it once again seems to not be an actual trend people are doing.
A game encouraging kids to disappear that was widely reported by media in the UK appears to be false.
Named the ’48-hour challenge,’ the believed to be prank encouraged kids to hide from their parents and relatives for as long as possible. Every mention the ‘missing’ person received on a social media platform was add more point in the alleged game.
According to Snopes, Everything started with an UK website giving an unnamed parent who mentioned one example of the game – but no other media has any other examples of the kids actually played the game: “References to the challenge were made primarily by social media users and news sites, and we were again unable to find any examples of teen participation on the platforms via which they purportedly “dared” each other to disappear.”
In court on Wednesday, a California teen described the relentless assaults inflicted on his 8-year-old …
NEWS: 8-Year-Old’s Big Brother Details the Horrific Abuse He Suffered from Mom’s Boyfriend Before His Death
In court on Wednesday, a California teen described the relentless assaults inflicted on his 8-year-old brother that lasted for months until, at last, the little boy was dead.
Los Angeles County prosecutors argued Gabriel Fernandez was the victim of an eight-month-long campaign of terror by his mother and her boyfriend, who were “conspiring together to deceive everyone in order to torture [him] to death,” after he moved in with them in 2012, NBC Los Angeles reports.
On Wednesday, according to local TV stations CBS Los Angeles and KABC, Gabriel’s 16-year-old brother, Ezequiel, testified in horrific detail about the abuse the boy suffered at the hands of Isauro Aguirre.
Aguirre, 37, is on trial in L.A. Superior Court for the murder of Gabriel’s May 2013 death.
Gabriel’s 34-year-old mother, Pearl Fernandez, was also charged with murder in the boy’s death. Her trial is on pending.
Both have pleaded not guilty and face a possible death sentence if convicted.
Gabriel Fernandez
According to news reports, the evidence and testimony in Aguirre’s trial has left both court observers and jurors stunned — sometimes gasping or sobbing at what they learned.
Aguirre’s attorney John Alan said in court this week his client is “guilty of murder” and does not deny the “unspeakable” abuse but that he should not face the special circumstance allegation of torture, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Alan said Aguirre became enraged before the boy’s final beating but “never intended for Gabriel to die.”
According to Ezequiel’s testimony, Gabriel was beaten daily and was forced to eat cat feces and cat litter.
When paramedics were called to his home on May 22, 2013, he was found naked, with a cracked skull, several shattered ribs, severe burns and BB pellets around his body, according to the L.A. Times.
He was declared brain-dead and taken off life support two days later.
Gabriel’s death prompted criminal charges against some of the social workers who were involved in the boy’s care after they were allegedly negligent.
All of the accused social workers have reportedly pleaded not guilty.
A subsequent L.A. Times investigation found that, according to court documents, multiple L.A. sheriff’s deputies were also fined following Gabriel’s death. The paper reported earlier this year that “deputies visited Gabriel’s home multiple times … [but] found no signs of abuse and did not file paperwork that would have led specially trained detectives to do more investigating.”
Isauro Aguirre in court in 2013
Ezequiel told the jury this week that his brother suffered regular beatings, allegedly at the hands of Aguirre and his mother, and was gagged and bound without food or water for hours in a small, locked cabinet he called the “box.”
The couple would allegedly laugh during the beatings, he testified.
Ezequiel said that Aguirre would pick up his brother by the neck and drop him to the floor when he passed out, would pepper-spray him in the face, make him eat cat litter and feces, use a belt buckle with a metal hanger to beat his naked body and shoot him in the face, chest, legs and groin with a BB gun.
Ezequiel said that on one occasion, Aguirre hit Gabriel’s head so hard on a wall that it left a mark.
He also testified that Aguirre and his mother would allegedly force Gabriel to eat rotten food — and when he threw it up, they would force him to consume his own vomit.
“My mom and her boyfriend made Gabriel eat spoiled stuff or expired stuff,” he testified. “One thing I remember is expired spinach. He threw it up, and they made him eat it off the table.”
When asked if Aguirre made him eat his vomit, Ezequiel responded, “Yes.”
The teen, who was 12 years old when Gabriel died, said his mother and her boyfriend had allegedly threatened to beat him up if he alerted people to Gabriel’s abuse and told him to lie to social workers if they asked about how Gabriel received his injuries.
He told the jury that his mother and Aguirre allegedly focused their wrath on Gabriel and didn’t abuse him, his brother or sister.
Prosecutors said at the start of Aguirre’s trial that he was motivated, in part, by a belief that Gabriel was gay.
Gabriel Fernandez
“This wasn’t about drugs. This wasn’t about mental health issues,” L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami told the jury on Monday. Aguirre was abusive “because he didn’t like him … he believed Gabriel was gay, and to him that was a bad thing … he did it out of hatred of a little boy,” Hatami said.
Gabriel’s 14-year-old sister, Virginia, also testified this week at Aguirre’s trial, according to KABC.
She said she regularly witnessed the beatings and that her brother was forced to wear pink leggings and a pink shirt to school.
On the night of Gabriel’s death, she told the jury, Aguirre “knocked the air out of him and he fell over, and he didn’t get back up.”
“So they picked him up, they threw him in the shower and they kept yelling at him to wake up,” she testified. “And when he didn’t wake up, my mother decided to call the police. And she told me to grab a rag, and we cleaned most of the blood that was on the floor.”
According to CBS News, Aguirre’s trial is expected to last from six to eight weeks.