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The Internet has provided a real opportunity to identify and rescue victims whose abuse has been recorded and shared. There are approximately one million images of child abuse on the Internet involving about fifty thousand different victims. Interpol reports that less than 1,000 of these victims have been identified. For the last ten years, some law enforcement agencies around the world have had officers dedicated to the image analysis of these “crime-scene” photographs. Often, clues in the background of the images help investigators identify the location that the picture was taken. For example, electrical outlets, consumer products, and even types of flowers, give officers trained in such “CSI” type of investigations, the ability to, when working with colleagues in this field, identify and rescue a victim. These specific efforts are coordinated by the Interpol Specialists Group on Crimes Against Children, in Lyon, France. Canadian law enforcement agencies are amongst the best in the world in this area and have been involved in the identification and rescue of over 100 child victims from around the world, whose abuse was previously unreported.
Selflessly working with the “global team”, no matter where in the world the victim might live, is one of the main themes of the KINSA training. Once enough officers are trained in such methods and are patrolling the Internet, then they too will be involved in such rescues, some right here in Canada. In fact, this has already happened.
In 2008 officers from the Toronto Police Service and the Maine State Police led an 18 month investigation regarding a series of images of abuse posted on the Internet. The investigators believed that the pictures were taken near the border between New Brunswick and Maine. Members of the Interpol Group had also been involved, scouring their own countries’ image databases for previously undiscovered pictures in this series. None were found and the investigation had stalled. In August of 2008, a team of investigators and computer forensic analysts from the Brazilian Federal Police came to Canada for KINSA training. During training, the officers were made aware of and invited to join the Interpol Group. One of the computer analysts joined and learned about the stalled Canadian/American investigation. Using his extensive experience and the Brazilian image database, this analyst found many pictures in this series of abuse which had never been seen by the Interpol Group before. One of the pictures was the missing piece, and once the puzzle was completed, an offender in New Brunswick was identified and arrested by the R.C.M.P. The offender has to date been charged with new and historical offences involving ten child victims and is suspected of having many more.
To further understand the impact that KINSA training has, here is an email sent to KINSA from a Romanian officer after taking the KINSA training;
“I got home about 12 hours ago and everything is fine. I have to adapt to the new time hours here.
I wanted to thank you very much for everything and to say that was excellent experience for me. I hope that in the future we can be friends and more...to collaborate in this matter. Having this long time travel back to home i was thinking over and over again about child exploitation. I`m between afraid of knowing more about this and my strong desire to do something about it. For the first time I realize about the victims and I have the strong feeling that I have something to do about it. So I want to do more and better. And I know that I will got all your support to do it. Because until know I didn`t know almost nothing about it. Step by step I want to do more and more. First of all I want to know how much child exploitations is present in my country, then to gather forces to fight it and maybe get some organization to help the victims later. But for these steps I will need your help...software, advices and maybe things that I lost now from my mind.
Thank you very very much”.
Mothers Online Movement (MOM)
The KINSA Mothers Online Movement (MOM) is an organic community of mothers who take action against child exploitation. The global and borderless nature of this crime requires action from all sectors of society in all corners of the world so that we can put an end to child abuse and provide support to children who need it. Right now, across Canada and around the world, hundreds of thousands of men are on their computers, actively trading images of children being sexually abused and violated. The aim of the MOM campaign is to raise awareness about this issue and to raise money to support research at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto that is uniquely tailored to the needs of this population of children, youth and their families.
Here is a description of the research as provided by Tanya Smith RN, BNSc, MN, ACNP. Tanya is a Clinical Nurse Specialist/Nurse Practitioner with the Suspected Child Abuse & Neglect Program and has been with the program since 1995. Tanya is a certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.
There is a dearth of literature describing and examining children and youth who are victims of Internet sexual exploitation in Canada. As the Internet continues to play a major role in the lives of children and youth, sexual victimization via the Internet is becoming an increasingly important health issue. Although these victims are identified by law enforcement officers and/or child protection workers, a standardized assessment and treatment approach has not been developed to meet the needs of this patient population. Several unique issues have been identified for this population, including trauma from the sexual abuse that has been photographed and posted on the Internet, the issue that the images of the abuse will always exist (recurrent victimization), the need for psycho-education for children/youth and families regarding unhealthy sexual online relationships, and the identification of grooming and seduction by online offenders.
At present, there are no medical or mental health services that are uniquely tailored to meet the needs of this population. Furthermore, children and youth who are victims of Internet sex crimes are currently under-identified and under-served in our community. A group of clinicians from The Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Program at the Hospital for Sick Children (HSC) have recently embarked on a research project to develop an empirically based medical and psychological service model for the assessment and treatment of child and youth victims of Internet sex crimes. The main purpose of this project was to produce a standardized assessment and treatment protocol for children sexually exploited online with the goal of improving the standard of care for victims and their families.
To date the majority of the research on victims of Internet exploitation is based on large U.S. based normative samples. The current research project will provide an examination of a high risk clinical Canadian sample. This sample includes 25 youth victims of Internet exploitation seen for assessment and treatment in the SCAN program at HSC. The purpose of the study will describe the population, and will include a description of the referral, offender and victim characteristics of these Internet sexual exploitation cases. This study will also provide a description of the factors that make this population of children and youth unique and why traditional assessment and therapeutic treatment methods for sexual abuse may not be the optimal way to address this patient population. This study will also describe the assessment and treatment themes identified across cases. This is particularly important to help understand and identify the common vulnerabilities and risk factors for this population. The efficacy of the assessment and treatment model developed by the SCAN program will be evaluated over time, with the goal of refining the model as information is gathered about the unique needs of this population. In the long term, a theoretically grounded, empirically-supported and manualized protocol will be developed based on the assessment and treatment model generated.
Working with the amazing frontline individuals in law enforcement, children’s services and healthcare, MOM has the opportunity to have an incredible impact. The needs of children and youth sexually exploited on the Internet are unique. Producing a standardized assessment and treatment program for children sexually exploited online will greatly improve the standard of care and recovery for individual victims and their families.
KINSA Think Tank and White Paper
“Investigating Internet Child Exploitation Poses Complex Challenges”
In late 2008, KINSA hosted a discussion group consisting of those with front line experience in a variety of fields highly relevant to the fight against Internet child exploitation. The group came together in Geneva to collaboratively identify priority responses by law enforcement to the proliferation of Internet child exploitation. The central theme animating the discussion was – where do we need to be in two years and how do we get there.
Members of the discussion group brought to the table investigative expertise at both the national and international level. They also brought technology and intelligence expertise. The members of the discussion group came from Europe, North America, Africa and South America. Both the law enforcement sector and the private sector were represented. The discussion group was deliberately structured to ensure it brought forward the perspective of front line workers in this important and emerging field.
Internet child exploitation poses complex challenges for law enforcement primarily because of three key attributes of the phenomenon. First, Internet based offending can quite easily and cheaply be trans-jurisdictional and multi-jurisdictional in scope. On the other hand, law enforcement agencies are in many respects jurisdictionally limited. The result is an inherent disequilibrium between the capacity of offenders to offend, and the capacity of law enforcement to respond.
Second, Internet technology advances with great speed, and those advances are delivered to the market and taken up by Internet service consumers with similarly great speed. Accordingly, the technological dimensions of Internet child abuse are constantly and rapidly changing. The pace of technological change and widespread market adaptation to change typically far outstrips the capacity of legislators to pass necessary new laws, and often outstrips the capacity of law enforcement to retrain and re-equip. The result is that often law enforcement is fighting this year’s battles with last year’s tools and training.
Third, Internet technology has facilitated the rapid proliferation of electronic communities whose members have no shared geography. In most social contexts this unifying power of the Internet is highly desirable. However the community building capacities that Internet technology provides have been exploited by those with a sexual interest in children. Relieved of the isolation and secrecy that goes with having such obviously anti-social interests, those with a sexual interest in children have used the Internet to create strong webs of mutual support and encouragement in the further proliferation of child sexual exploitation. In a word, Internet technology has meant empowerment for those interested in sexually exploiting children. Open source data around the volume of demonstrated interest in Internet child exploitation has also raised deeply troubling concerns about the extent of adult interest in child sexual exploitation. In other words, law enforcement is coping not only with the widespread empowerment of the Internet child exploitation community, but also with alarming indications about the size of that community.
At the end of weeks of preparation, culminating in two days of intensive discussions, the diverse but accomplished group reached a gratifyingly broad consensus on priorities in the fight against Internet child exploitation. This compendium of distilled wisdom from the front lines of the fight against Internet child exploitation will be of assistance to policy analysts, legislators, and executive decision makers in law enforcement, government, and the private sector.
Advocacy
KINSA believes that legislative change is a key component in the fight to eradicate cybercrime. KINSA’s advocacy program actively promotes positive change in legislation and industry. KINSA experts have addressed topics relevant to online child exploitation including law enforcement issues, technology, prosecutions, sentencing, victim support, offender management and treatment. KINSA has successfully helped change legislation to better protect youth from adult sexual predators by increasing Canada’s age of consent from 14 to 16 years of age, enact mandatory minimum sentencing for child pornography offenders, encouraging people to report child pornography to the proper authorities and the declaration of Safer Internet Day to raise awareness.
Finally, I believe that the consequence of our work can be summed up in the words of a little girl who has been rescued. Her mother sent us a letter of thanks which included a prayer that her daughter says every night;
“There was a little girl And she was being hurt terribly And there were pictures of her being hurt And there was a man who saw the pictures – a policeman And he said “that child is being hurt. I have to save her” He didn’t live in the same town He didn’t live in the same state He didn’t even live in the same country He didn’t know where she was or how to find her But he didn’t let that stop him He looked and looked and wouldn’t stop looking And he got other police to help And they kept searching and wouldn’t stop Until they finally found her and rescued her And someday they’ll get a call saying the president wants to see them Mommy you should let them not to be worried or scared when that happens They won’t be in any trouble The president will just want to tell them “it’s me the little girl you rescued I’m grown up and I want to thank you properly”
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