But a Forbes investigation found that it’s also a place where sexual predators target and exploit vulnerable teens, in some cases leading to sex trafficking and assault.But to Ella, a 16-year-old girl from South Carolina, it was the stalking ground of the predator who would exploit, rape and sexually traffic her — a 26-year-old man who masqueraded on Wattpad as "Hannah," a teenage girl who Ella fell in love with and trusted during a time when she was bullied at school.And those videos turned into real life encounters with the men he chose,” said Ella in a witness testimony she gave for the Department of Justice, which prosecuted and convicted the four men who trafficked and abused Ella, including the one who originally contacted her on Wattpad.“Wattpad was obviously the stalking ground,” Derek Shoemake, assistant United States attorney at the Department of Justice, who was the lead prosecutor on the case, told Forbes.But substandard safety precautions, lack of age verification protocols, and an endless torrent of barely moderated sexually explicit material, rape fantasies and incest fiction have made it an appealing platform for sexual predators, who hide behind anonymous usernames while grooming and manipulating teens who spend long hours on the app."