Jake came home from school one day, enthused about a cool guy named Chas that another boy had introduced him to. Chas was “high up” in a secret society of men, Jake said; he had lots of money, a hunting license, flew planes, knew all about video games and technology, had several businesses, an expensive car and a big boat.

“Whatever a 17-year-old guy would be interested in, this guy was interested in too — magic, model railroads, remote control cars,” Jake's dad recalls.

The strange thing about this new friend, as they later learned, was his age: Chas was 42.

Jake began spending more and more time with Chas and another boy, Anton, 16, who — Jake told them — was Chas’s adopted son.

That part was strange, too — an unmarried man who had adopted a boy from a different cultural background?

“We thought OK, there’s nothing wrong with that, but weird,” Mark says.

Chas played the role of caring father, driving the boys everywhere and giving Jake an enormous amount of time and gifts including a new hard drive, a watch and expensive new phone. He even gave him the keys to his Mercedes and said he could take it to the prom (despite knowing Jake didn’t have his driver’s license yet).

Chas was “cool” in a way his father, Mark, could never be.

Jake brought home some marijuana and showed it to one of his brothers, saying Chas had half a pound of it at home for medical purposes. “He likes to smoke it and meditate. He has shisha in the house too and we can do it together.”

Jake told his siblings Chas was a key player in a secret brotherhood and thought he was special, too. He’d brought him to see some “old guys” who knew magic and told him he had an ‘aura’.

His brothers warned him to be careful. The whole thing was really strange.

Around mid May, Jake asked Greg, his older brother, for help. Chas had promised to mentor him but first the brotherhood needed to “assess” him. Jake wanted Greg to give him a hand with the questions.

“The riddles were cheap clichés, such as ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping’. I told my brother that this is one BS training,” Greg recalls. “I told him that this Chas was bad news, he sounds like a cultist.”

His sister Jenn thought it strange too.

“What kind of older man would buy a teenaged boy gifts?”

Jake shrugged off their concerns.

“Some people are just good.”

Jake was seldom home anymore and his phone calls and texts came not from his cellphone, but Chas'.

Every day, Chas picked Jake up for lunch at school, and every day after school they left together in Chas’ car.

He was gone every evening until 10 pm, Christine recalls, and he was with Chas all weekend, from the time school let out until 10 p.m. Sunday night.

Jake’s demeanour changed; he was stressed and secretive.

His family asked him about his unusual new habits, asked him to stay home more. Eventually, Christine says, she cried.

“I asked him, why Jake? What are you doing there?”

Mostly he’d say, “We aren’t doing anything wrong”.

“We cried, we worried, we asked, we begged, we yelled, everything we could – but nothing helped,” Mark recalls.

When he did answer their questions, it was always only after texting Chas first, as if he was being guided on how to answer.

In fact, Jake texted with Chas and a few other men constantly – and with his old childhood friends, not at all.

Christine saw one of the texts: in it, Chas’s ‘adopted son’ Anton spoke of his love for Jake.

In July, Jake turned 18. The Banins planned a family birthday dinner. Jake insisted his new friends Chas and Anton also come.

They agreed. It would be a good chance to meet the man, see what he was all about.

Afterwards, they all agreed, Chas had dominated the dinner.

“He had obviously done his research. Nicknames, birth dates, hobbies,” Jenn recalls.

He brought gifts he knew they’d like. He’d even been up to see the new home in the country they were planning to move to the following month. And whatever they liked, the charming Chas said he liked, too.

“He told us what we wanted to hear. Afterwards, we said ‘I guess he’s OK’.”

Still, they had a sense that something wasn’t right. Jake, always the class clown, was very quiet.

They heard about Anton’s new online clothing business, featuring teenaged boys. Jake was going to model for him; it was why he was so suddenly obsessed with going to the gym.

Chas explained that he had helped Anton create this business because Anton had had a very sad life. His grandparents brought him to Canada from overseas and then they died, leaving him an orphan.

But Anton was so brilliant, Chas said, that he didn’t need to attend school. He studied online and Chas kept an eye on him at all times, with a security camera connected to his cellphone.

Later in the evening, Chas told the boys it was time to go.

Jake and Anton headed for the door.

“Where are you going, Jake?” Jenn asked, surprised at the abrupt end of the night, at the way they all stood to leave “as a squad”.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be home,” Jake said, then added a warning. ”Remember … when I’m 18, I can do what I want.”

Increasingly, the Banins had to ask Chas to let them see their son. Jake’s high school graduation was one of those times. Chas drove him to the event then waited in the car while Mark and Christine took photos. They asked Jake’s old friends to take a family photo for them but none were willing to help.

“They’re not my friends anymore,” Jake shrugged.

Upset to hear this, they asked Jake to come home with them for a family graduation dinner.

He refused, climbed into Chas’ car and they drove away.

Jake was no longer living at home. He told his family he’d moved in with another older man, a friend of Chas and member of the secret brotherhood. Chas had advised Jake that he needn’t tell his parents the address because he was now an adult.

By now, the entire Banin family was alarmed by Jake’s transformation and began scouring the Internet for whatever they could learn about the man and his friends.

They discovered that, contrary to what Chas had told them, Anton’s parents were actually alive and well, living a few miles away.

When confronted with the information, Chas explained that when Anton was 12, his parents had given Chas guardianship.

Mark shook his head. “I don’t buy it. What parent does that?”

Anger flared on Chas’ face. “This is private, sensitive information. If you continue to poke your nose in my business, all my lawyers will be after you,” he said, “and you will lose your son.”

In desperation, the Banins went to police but they were told there was nothing they could do. Jake was 18.

“OK, then I want to report something else,” Mark said. “This man lives with a a boy who is 17, and lies about him being adopted.”

They left the station hopeful police would investigate further.

One afternoon a few weeks later, Chas drove Jake and Anton to the Richmond Hill home.

Chas sat in the Mercedes out front while the boys quickly packed his belongings into garbage bags, carrying them out to the car.

Christine tried to break through the wall that seemed to surround her son.

“He would not look at me. I brought his toothbrush. “Do you want this? Brought him his T-shirts. Do you want to take this? I can not reach him, I cannot meet his eyes.”

Finally, Christine asked Anton to wait outside. She approached Jake. “What are you doing, Jake, please look me in the eyes, let me hug you one last time.”

“No!” Jake said. “I’m leaving.”

“Mark, please do something,” Christine cried.

“What can I do? If he wants to leave, we have to let him go.”

Jake’s phone began to buzz with incoming texts.

“I start to feel a panic attack,” Christine says. “I start screaming, I feel from the bottom of me, this panic coming, I’m scratching my neck, trying to get air.”

“Breathe, calm down,” Mark said.

Darkness enveloped her and she collapsed.

As Mark held her and Jake rushed to her with a glass of water, Chas came through the front door.

“Who’s screaming?”

“It’s a private family matter,” Mark shouted downstairs. “It’s OK. Please go.”

Chas began to climb the stairs. “You are holding an 18-year-old against his will,” he said. “Let him go immediately.”

“He is helping his mom,” Mark said.

“All this time, I felt like I was dreaming, hardly breathing,” Christine recalls. “I heard Mark say, ‘Call the ambulance, Jake’ and Chas say ‘If you don’t let Jake go, I will call police’.”

“’Please do,’” Christine said, feeling as if she were in a trance.

Then she dialed 911 herself.

“I forgot all my English. All I could say was ‘Help! Someone broke in!’.”

At that, Chas moved back towards the front door and yelled, ‘Jake, leave now!’ Jake ran out the back door, without shoes. Chas pushed past her through the front door, ordered the boys into the car and drove away.

Minutes later, police arrived.

In hospital, with her blood pressure spiking, she was examined and treated, notes and photos taken and a 30-page medical report done by the hospital. Mark, meanwhile, accompanied police to the station where he found Chas, Jake and Anton already being interviewed.

Anton’s father was there, too, and he defended Chas. “He is just like a kid himself,” he said. “It’s only a game, nothing serious”.

Jake sat with his mom, held her and promised to come home the next day. It was the last time they would be with their son.

The Banins waited at the police station until 2 a.m. watching as Anton left the interrogation room and went home with his father. It looked as if the boy had been crying.

Police next brought them into the room and told them their case would not be opened, but Chas was being charged with respect to his relationship with Anton, under laws that forbid someone in a position of trust or authority touching a person under aged 18 for sexual purpose.

Chas would be released pending the court date, they were told, and forbidden from contacting Anton or Jake, or their families.

A few days later, two detectives came to the Banins’ home to introduce themselves and let them know the first court date dealing with charges against Chas. They were facing a long process that could take up to two years, they said.

“You will be surprised how much will come to surface and be revealed about Chas. He did a classical grooming.”

It was the first time they’d heard the term, referring to a predator’s forming a relationship with a minor. They later contacted a human traffic caseworker with York Region who agreed it appeared to be “textbook grooming”.

The police officers told the couple the criminal case against Chas would involve Anton, who was underage, but because of Jake’s grooming, Chas would also be prohibited from contacting Jake or his family.

Throughout those troubling months, Jake’s brothers and sister struggled to understand. They had been proud of their close family connection, but Jake had cut off all ties with them, too.

Jake had always put family above all, Jenn says. At one point in time, he wanted a tattoo of his family and he wore a necklace his brother bought gave him with pride.

He now wore a necklace with the symbol of an obscure ancient religion, one that Chas espoused.

His long-time childhood friends, now abandoned, were also confused.

“It seemed like Jake fell off the face of the earth,” said Denise, mother of Spencer, Jake’s best friend since Kindergarten.

The boys grew up together, joined each other’s families on holidays and enjoyed countless, marathon video game sessions, sleepovers and girl-chasing escapades on ski trips to Mount Tremblant and Vermont.

“Jake was such a great storyteller. We loved having him around,” Denise recalls.

The last time was a ski weekend in the winter of 2015. Then, in the spring, Jake told Spencer about a guy he’d met who was in a secret society. He thought that was cool.

“After that, Jake just disappeared from our life,” Denise says.

In July, Spencer tried texting his old buddy. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Who is this?” came the reply.

“It’s Spencer!” he texted back – but there was no further response.

Spencer doesn’t know what happened to his friend; he figures someone else has his cellphone now.

“As a parent, this is devastating to me,” Denise says. “To hear their child is gone out of their life completely… It has stopped my heart.”

At some point during the summer, both Jake and Anton, who had been as active as any teen on social media, suddenly stopped posting on Twitter and Facebook. Photos that showed them with Chas were erased.

Then the charges against Chas were mysteriously dropped.

The Banins kept digging and discovered Chas’s online proclivity for teenaged boys; he frequently “friended” and shared boy-band videos, male teenaged magicians and male teen fashion lines.

At the same time, his name appeared on websites as a volunteer with boy youth groups and in an official capacity with a fraternal order.

His LinkedIn account attempted several times to connect with a “boy-love” blogger and Anton’s fashion website – registered under Chas’s name – revealed even more disturbing information. Those who ‘liked’ the pictures linked back to photos of male nudes and gay porn.

Among his online business ventures they found a film production company, markedly similar to that for the teen boy fashion site, that says it is seeking stories about love.

“This is weird. This is strange. This is suspicious,” says Mark. “How much more weird does it need to be before they start to investigate?”

“I feel so helpless, hopeless,” Christine says. “I don’t know what to do, who to see, I’m so confused. Why does nobody want to deal with this? Tell me. Why?”

Last week, the Banins met with the mother of the first boy who introduced Chas to their son. An immigrant also, she says she is not comfortable with her 18-year-old son’s relationship with a man, but can’t stop it.

Chas is mentoring her son, she says, helping him with business skills and “every Saturday, he does Reiki on him.”

She has been warned that if she criticizes Chas, she will lose contact with her son.

“So I told him, it’s your life, if you want to screw it up, go ahead.”

The Banins spoke with Anton’s father again. An immigrant to Canada, too, he told them he gave up his son because he was not able to financially provide the same lifestyle Chas can provide.

He has learned not to criticize Chas. “The one rule in the company is you don’t disrespect Chas….That is punished."

The Banins say they feel as if they have hit a wall. Their son is an adult, free to do as he pleases, but they still believe their story should be told, if for no other reason than to warn parents to trust their instincts.

They understand that from the outside, theirs may appear to be a family that doesn’t like their son’s sexual orientation, but they know this is something else, altogether. Their son, they say, was targeted, and they worry that other young men are being targeted, too. Chas continues to be active in the community, arranging local groups to meet over shared hobbies and interests.

“It’s not within our power to fight Chas,” says Mark. “This is a sophisticated guy. You can tell he has spent a lifetime of learning psychology, how to influence people.”

Christine feels broken, her mental health damaged by the loss of her son.

“I love Canada. I brought my children here because I love this country. But now,” she adds, fighting back tears, “what has Canada done to my family?”