Parents around the world are in an uproar after an 8-year-old social media star revealed she is dating a 13-year-old fellow influencer.
The scandal has many parents unfollowing their children from the social media influencers’ accounts.
Under California law it is legal for an adult to have consensual sex with a minor if the offender is within 10 years of the age of the child.
Milana Makhanets and her beau, Pasha Pai, are both minors who live in Russia and the Ukraine.
Milana has over half a million followers on Instagram and almost 7 million followers on the video-sharing mobile app Likee, a Tik-Tok-style platform popular with kids in Russia and Ukraine.
Pasha Pai has over 53,000 followers on Instagram, which features a photo of him posing with his girlfriend and her mother, Darya Makhanets, who runs Milana’s social media accounts.
In another photo, he wears what appears to be a cheerleading outfit complete with a black pleated miniskirt.
The intimate photos of the children together are disturbing for American parents who aren’t used to such open sexuality among underage children.
In one now-deleted post, Pasha shared a photo of the two shackled together while the little girl brushes her teeth in her underwear. In another post, the two appear to be in bed together.
Other inappropriate photos show the pair kissing, the girl sitting on the teenager’s lap wearing thigh high boots, and the two looking at a phone in bed.
Those photos have since been deleted following the uproar on social media.
A report from RT noted that a lawyer named Anna Malyar, claimed that Milana’s “mother made a seductive woman out of an eight-year-old girl for perverts.”
Ukrainian journalists and politicians are among those calling for the police to investigate.
After fierce backlash on social media, the girl’s progressive mother wrote on her personal account “this is their life, and they will figure it out on their own.”
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