Service Groups and Faith Alliance Meeting Crime
October 19, 2021
Attendees:
Detective James Allen, Apex PD Internet Crimes Against Children Danica Coleman, Apex PD Victim’s Advocate
Nicole Bernard
Officer Ragland
Cheryl Stallings
Kevin O’Brien
Nancy Hagan
Sonya Edwards
Marty Tanis
Niki Miller
Deb Vinci
Detective Allen and Danica Coleman provided overview of their roles and backgrounds. Detective Allen:
He deals with online child pornography. He has seen a marked increase in the past year with peer (juvenile) incidents due to kids being home and online searches that lead down dangerous rabbit holes. Twitter also has this issue but is not good at self-reporting, which is how he gets info from other social media platforms. He is seeing an increase in regularity of teens viewing images of younger children. Twitter undercurrent Mega…search for young girls and boys and then share or trade the images.
Kevin…How do you generate leads? Info obtained from other area agencies, from chat rooms (3 servers worldwide) and impersonate someone to get leads. Database must self-report and run algorithms that are based on words or skin exposed. SBI heads task force that leads this effort and generates subpoenas for search warrants.
Cheryl…What can be done for early intervention and prevention by Apex PD? Use the school resource officer program to contact kids and parents to encourage parents stay involved. For example, there is an App that looks like cell phone but is dangerous for children. Work with schools, churches, parents for prevention and be educated about risky Apps. Kids do not know what a loving relationship should be. They think pornography is what sex is and then they act out what they have seen. Kids have super computers in their hands. Parental awareness is key.
Myths that are prevalent:
All offenders are dirty old men. The reality is, there are just as many women involved. For example, women, or even husband & wife teams, will work together to edit and post images.
Innocent looking photos, ie swim meet photos can become erotica in the wrong hands. Be aware of what you are posting online. Maybe post a face only picture instead of the child’s whole body.
Offenders may go into a store and use their phones to record children or ladies in yoga pants. You can’t stop this. The victims are unaware that they are being recorded.
Who consumes these images? All types of people. Prosecution is likely, with exception of teen sexting Teen offenses are not something that is desirable to prosecute. Instagram is often an offender’s favorite platform to use to exchange nude pics and when faces are included in the picture, that can lead to extortion. We have victims of this in our area.
Some pornographic video collections come from Eastern Europe which limits what can be done from here. Often, parents are involved in the productions with their children. Children want to be pleasers and are easily manipulated by offenders, especially if the offender is a relative. These are very rarely abduction situations.
Nicole asked about unknown text message she received from someone trying to meet up. She responded that they had the wrong number. She received reply with pic and person asked for her name. Russian lettering. Detective Allen told her that it is common that predators use “blind contacts from harvested information”. He has investigated incidents involving telephone numbers from the Ivory Coast (50+ men posing as young females and asking for explicit images, then they extort money from the victims once the victims send the images). This is major, highly prevalent way to extort funds.
Nicole shared that victims experience trauma from these situations in two ways 1) during the production of image and 2) knowing that the image is being consumed. Getting restitution for the victim from the consumer is difficult and not currently available in NC. Shield NC worked with Rep Davis who agreed to sponsor House Bill 598 which allows the victim to receive restitution from the consumer. The bill passed unanimously in the House but is currently stuck in Committee in the Senate. Shield is currently advocating for the presentation of the bill to the Senate. If you have any interest in assisting, let Shield know. (nicole@shieldnc.org)
Danica has also assisted victims who were baited for pictures in our area. We seem to have a bigger problem with consumers versus producers in Apex.
Images are often traded versus being sold. According to Detective Allen, extortion is where the money is made. Detective Allen also said that in his experience, perpetrators produce pornographic images, not for the money, but because they just like producing the images. Then they use them for online sexual extortion.
How can we help? Detective Allen speaks to civic, church and other groups to talk to parents and kids. Have involved conversations with kids to avoid exploitation. Support House Bill 598 in order to give law enforcement another tool to help with this problem.
DON’T TAKE AND DON’T SEND PICTURES OR VIDEOS. EDUCATE YOUR CHILDREN EARLY ABOUT THE DANGERS OF SHARING EXPLICIT IMAGES!
Danica put link in chat regarding risk factors and how to combat. (https://defendinnocence.org/) Feel free to reach out to them with questions.
Danica.coleman@apexnc.org James.allen@apexnc.org