Children have so much access to the internet, and we only know a tiny bit of what goes on. You are in the right place to learn more about keeping our kids safe. What are internet crimes against children and does every state have a taskforce? Learn this and more as we join together with Educational Specialist Michelle Busch-Upwall and Field Commander Alan Connor from the Utah Attorney General ICAC Taskforce.
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Jen: Hello and welcome to the Parents Place, a podcast put out by the Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting efforts. No matter our skills, we can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host. Jennifer Daly, the education director at the Family Place and my co-host is Sara Hendricks, a family educator at the Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us. Now, let's get started with today's episode.
Sara: This is part one of a two-part episode. This episode deals with delicate information regarding children. We advise listening in private or with headphones.
Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast. I'm your host, Jen Daly
Sara: and I'm your co-host Sara Hendricks.
Jen: Thank you so much for joining us today. As you know, April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and we are filling the month with information on how best to protect our children. Our mission is to strengthen families and protect children. And as our hopes that our podcast is doing just that, we are very fortunate to have educational specialist Michelle Busch-Upwall and field commander Alan Connor with us today from the Utah Attorney General's Office. They work with Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and they're going to help us have a better understanding on how we can educate ourselves about the dangers our children could face. Welcome Michelle and Alan, can you tell us a little bit more about yourselves?
Michelle: Hi, my name is Michelle Busch-Upwall! Well, I've been with the Attorney General's Office for going on eight years and I do educational outreach for the Utah. So I go to schools, churches, community groups and try and help educate to keep kids safe online. Previously, I worked for the unified police department in the gang unit, so I kind of did the same thing, but with gangs. So I've kind of been in this industry, the law enforcement industry, for 20 plus years.
Alan: I'm Alan Connor with the Attorney General's Office. I've been a law enforcement officer in Utah for over 20 years now. I spent the last 10 to 12 years investigating sex crimes in the last 10 years investigating internet crimes against children.
Sara: Well, welcome. I am super excited to have the two of you on our podcast. I personally feel really passionate about this topic, about child abuse prevention, and I feel like there is no such thing as too much information when it comes to this and educating parents and bringing this to them, especially when it comes to internet crimes. Because I feel like any household that has the internet that uses devices that uses apps have opened themselves up for the possibility of this happening to them. And so, we need to understand how it works and how to prevent it and how to keep our children safe. And so, I just feel like it's really important that we talk about this. So, this podcast, it's still pretty new. We just started it back in October, but we so far have reached 29 states and 11 different countries. And so, with that in mind, can you give us a general definition of what internet crimes against children are? And does every state have a task force?
Alan: So, internet crimes against children? A very basic definition would be that we're looking at crimes that are facilitated by the internet against kids. We become very specific in the internet crimes against children, task force or ICAC task force in what we deal with. There's five main criminal activities that we investigate. There's sexual exploitation of a minor, dealing harmful materials to a minor, enticing a minor, extortion, otherwise known as sextortion, and then sex trafficking facilitated by the internet. Of those this exploitation of a minor, we break down even into the differences of manufacturing these materials, distributing these materials, and possessing these materials. And in the manufacturing, we're talking about sex abuse material, where a child's being sexually abused versus exploitive material, where a child may be being closed in sexual matters to be videotaped or have pictures taken of them. So, the ICAC Task Force is a national program with federal, state and local partnerships. It's overseen by the Department of Justice in partnership with the heads of the localized task forces, and they're sixty-one of those. So, every state in the United States has their own task force or multiple thereof, depending upon the population of the state and the need of law enforcement in that area for being able to cover the number of cases coming in. Some of our members actually have contacts in foreign countries as well. So, as we have. Of cases that may impact where we have a suspect or a victim. In Utah, we may have other components of that case that reach out to England in the across the world, and we can reach out through some of our other members to contacts in other nations.
Jen: Just hearing how many tasks force, how you're working with people around the world, it just solidifies in my brain. What a huge issue this is and one that we all need to really be aware of. And it just does my heart good knowing that there are people like you out there that are doing what you can to fight this fight against abuse of children on the internet. So, thank you so much. I appreciate that. With that being said, how big is the problem in my mind? It's a huge problem. But really, how big is the problem of child exploitation?
Alan: That's an excellent question, because it's really it's hard to be qualitative on that. My opinion, you're going to find this behavior and this these criminal acts in every neighborhood, in every community, in the United States and around the world. Now, this isn't an entirely new problem, but it's become more apparent with the digital age. The abuse of children has been going on for millennia. I mean, as we view abuse of kids, we can look through certain history books and stories coming from across the globe for multiple centuries and find records of these type of behaviors. As we hit the digital age, it became much more apparent how widespread that the problem really is.
Jen: It's pretty much just be more like you were saying, I mean, it's always been there, but now we're just a lot more aware because it's at the touch of our fingertips.
Alan: It's kind of like our news cycles. I mean, information that we would read in a newspaper 20 years ago that was a day old, if it was breaking news, or weeks or months or is now at our fingertips five minutes after it happened. If we have to wait that long! And by the time it's twenty-four hours old, it's old news and then recycled to somewhere else.
Sara: So, are there statistics specific to like how big of a problem it is, maybe across the United States or worldwide? And then second part? What age do predators begin to target children? And is there an age that's more at risk than other ages?
Alan: Let's hit on your statistics side part of the partnerships that we work with. So how we locate these cases, these criminal acts. It's kind of a threefold activity. We have proactive work that we do where officers go undercover or use undercover programs to identify persons actively seeking to abuse children or to get the content or distribute the content of children being abused that's been recorded, the picture or video. We also get referrals from the local police departments, the parents who find it, you know, just through your local dispatch where people are finding this information and then providing it on to law enforcement. Third way, as we partnership with a lot of the electronic service providers, from Google to Facebook to MocoSpace to Kick all the other apps and things like that, you name it, they're actually under constraint to work with us and monitor their own content. And so, for them, they are providing us with leads on possible activity last levels in the last year or if we talk about 2020. There is a group called NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They're a clearinghouse. They're like almost a dispatch for these tips from these electronic service providers. They received approximately twenty-one million tips last year. If I'm remembering correctly and of those think it was roughly two million of those tips came just within the United States. And so, they then divvy those out to those sixty-one tests. And of course, depending on your geography, is how many you're going to get. You know, California, Florida, Texas received much more than Utah does, but we received somewhere around two thousand referrals just from them. Last year, which was about a 50 percent increase from what we'd seen the previous year and years above that. So, there's a lot of work that gets sent our way. Your second question the age of targeted children and who is most at risk? Regrettably, it's every child, from newborn infants to kids just barely turning 18. Or just about treated over the years, seeing some very horrendous acts perpetrated on infants, toddlers, prepubescent children. And it's heartbreaking. And it seems to have become more prolific over the last couple of years to where we're seeing much more material focused on infants and toddlers and kids under the age of eight, nine, 10.
Sara: It makes me sick to my stomach because my oldest is nine. My youngest is three, so that's a lot to process.
Alan: I totally understand that it's very difficult to process, it should be. The fact that it probably makes 99 percent of us sick to our stomachs and have issues grasping that
Jen: I can tell this is going to be a and for some reason, I'm feeling very sensitive today, so I apologize if I get a little quivering in my voice. Oh, I just feel awful for kids in that they even have to deal with this kind of stuff. I just think it's so important for parents to educate themselves, and I'm grateful that we're doing this podcast. So, with these internet crimes, how often do they turn physical? So like sex trafficking or child abuse? I mean, how often does it turn to where these children are meeting these people face to face?
Alan: Yeah, that's it's a, it's an interesting question, and I would almost equate it to the question of the chicken and the eggs, which one comes first because the material that we're looking at, if we're if we're talking just about the sex exploitation, where we're talking about pictures and videos of children being sexually abused or just being exploited as pictures of them taken in manners that they ought not be all that was created physically before it was then moved to the internet or to print and picture. And so, in some ways, that physical abuse comes before we even hit the internet. Now the internet then blows it out worldwide, and then it becomes the supply or demand of that material and then the viewing of possessing the fantasizing about what you are seeing online in these pictures and videos then increases the risk of more physical abuse. And just having those pictures and those videos and using it and you're fantasizing about it and it's propagating your sexual desires, then creates more of a demand for more of that material, which then propagates new material being created through the abuse and exploitation of children. So, it becomes a loop that is constantly recreating itself.
Sara: Yeah, I can definitely see what you're saying and the chicken before the egg like obviously that material. There were children that were being abused and then the consumer. Eventually, it's not enough, and it leads to acting on the things that they're consuming. Can we also think of this in maybe a different direction when it comes to maybe older children who get approached online through apps? How often does that just getting approached, being asked for inappropriate pictures or being sent those inappropriate pictures? Do you know, does that transition into physical abuse? Does that make sense what I'm trying to ask?
Alan: Yeah, that that totally makes sense! And it does! You know, I spoke about the fact that law enforcement will engage in undercover activities, taking out people who are looking for children. And if you think back 20 years ago to catch a predator was a TV show where they were doing precisely that and that was broadcast for quite a while. It's not unknown that we seek these people with these behaviors. But the fact is enough people are able to get online and find children. And I'm talking anywhere from we've got reports from parents of seven-year old’s through age 17 who have engaged in these behaviors and been located by people who want to have a sexual relationship with these kids, and so it's across any and all of the apps, especially ones targeted to kids. If you target an app or a game for kids, that becomes a target rich environment for a predator. If you say, Hey, this is for kids under 13, if I'm interested in kids under 13, that's where I'm going to go and what I'm going to pretend to be. I mean, we go out on these cases on a regular basis, and we're seeing more and more of them, as parents have become a little more active in monitoring their kids. I don't know what is that totally answered your question or it's a difficult concept to fully grasp. I mean, even after 10 years of doing this, you're constantly seeing new angles, not overly surprising anymore. But you're like, Well, that's a new one.
Sara: Yeah, for sure. I think that gives us a good idea. So, you kind of answered this a little bit in the beginning when you talked about how this is in every community and every neighborhood around the world. But I honestly feel like in general, parents know that this is a problem, but don't necessarily connect it to how close to home it actually hits. When we hear these kinds of stories, we think, “Oh, well, that happens outside of the community I live in”, you know, and don't want to even fathom that it could be the house next door that it's happening in. You know what I mean? And so can you maybe give us an idea of how close to home this problem hits?
Alan: I can. And even as investigators with the concept of my neighborhood is safe is something that even we hold, we try to hold dear. And because we all want to believe I'm safe in my home, I am safe in my neighborhood. And because when you don't feel safe, it becomes a very much a traumatic mental stimulus. But I can tell you, even as officers, we end up losing that because I can say over the last 10 years, I can't even count on two hands and both feet, how many times we've been in our own neighborhoods as investigators. Two houses down from me, we investigated. Around the block, two or three times from one investigator currently. But I could just go through a list of names of investigators where we've gone to their neighborhoods, to their next-door neighbor or the neighbor, three or four houses down. And when it happens, it boggles your mind. You're just like, I can't believe that this is in my neighborhood. And it is. I have not yet seen a neighborhood in the Salt Lake area on the Wasatch front or in the state of Utah. There's not a corner that we haven't been to in the last 10 years or had an investigation that we sent out to one of our local affiliates to look at. You know and kicking to back to how often we see crimes occurring against children and this is old data. When I first started doing this, we talked about one in four girls would be sexually abused by the time they turn 18. And one in six boys the same thing by the time they turn 18. So, the prevalence and if you are in and I don't recommend doing this very often, if you're in a movie theater or you're at the mall or in the supermarket and you count four kids, go by or six kids go by. If you were in tune to that data that you realize one of those six will be abused before they turn 18. And that can become a very mentally challenging hurdle to start jumping over.
Jen: I just had a question just popped into my brain. So, I want to ask, do you know, like how many perpetrators are actively? Is there a number of that out there? I mean, I'm sure we don't know all of them.
Alan: I don't even have a percentage for you of what percent of the population is a perpetrator for this. I can't say that we had 30 cases, 40 cases. Just this last within the 14-day cycle that rolled in to where more likely than not. Those are 40 different people that are at least being identified as having a propensity or an interest in this, whether it raises to a criminal level or not, that remains to be seen. But that's just here in the state of Utah in the last two weeks.
Jen: Wow. So, can you tell us what day-to-day work looks like for you?
Alan: It's overwhelming. You know, with the number of cases that come in and part of my responsibilities is I review the majority of the cases that affect the Salt Lake, Tooele, Summit, Wasatch County, one of my co-workers, handles the cases throughout the rest of the state because unfortunately, it's about a 50-50 there, although it's slightly shifting in where our workload is handled. And of course, that's based on population load. So, our investigators are always busy and have a backlog, and we, me and my other co-worker, we actually triage the cases coming in on what is the most pertinent, which ones in our opinions, the highest propensity for successfully identifying the perpetrator where kids are in danger. But due to the amount of work that everyone can do, there are. There are cases that could be investigated, but they don't get investigated because we just don't have the time and the personnel to get it all done.
Jen: Another question I guess it just popped into my brain is, as you said, it was overwhelming. So how do you and the other people on this task force take care of yourselves? I mean, this has got to be really overwhelming emotionally, and I'm sure it gets to the physical point as well. So, I just want to make sure you guys have a way to take care of yourselves.
Alan: Thank you. You know that I'm glad you bring that. Over the years, I've watched officers become emotionally fatigued to the point where they can no longer do this line of work. I mean, a lot of times they've been able to move back into other parts of law enforcement and finish up their careers and be successful. There's numbers of law enforcement officers that bulk, I won't say, outright refuse but very hesitant to get into doing this. And I've seen some guys that after two or three months, they said,” Look, I can't” just because the emotional trauma that it does perpetrate on those people who start going down this road of looking into these types of crimes. Luckily, a number of years ago. And I'll give props to our former commander, Jeff Barnesworth, before we started looking into an officer wellness program. We've been evolving that over a number of years and the current commander, Alan White, has continued to push this forward as being one of the higher priorities administratively for the people investigating the internet crimes against children being abused. And it ranges from actually seeing a therapist on a regular basis to just being understanding and promoting family health, physical health and a number of things that go with that because it does take a toll.
Jen: Thanks for sharing
Sara: At the Family Place, we really value self-care, so I'm glad to hear that you guys have things that you do to help work through that because I know I mean, what we do isn't nearly in depth what you do. We do some child abuse prevention and we sit through a lot of hard trainings. We do podcasts like this that can be overwhelming and hard to listen to. And even those things, you kind of have some secondary trauma that you're experiencing. And I find myself asking myself sometimes, like, why am I willing to put myself through this? I could just be at home with my three little girls, and the world is just kittens and rainbows and like, totally ignore that this kind of stuff happens outside of my home, you know? And so I I've found that I really need to have a strong “why”, a strong reason that I can hold on to and go back to remind myself that this is why I'm willing to put myself in this position and ultimately bring light in the darkness, where there are children who don't have that light and they need people who are willing and strong enough to withstand these things, to bring them light because they don't have any. And so, I just want to give a heartfelt thank you to the two of you that you're willing to put yourself in these really hard positions and keep pushing through because those children need you. So, thank you very much for all that you do. I feel like we've been talking about a really heavy topic, and so can we maybe transition into sharing like a successful rescue mission that. You've experienced or been involved in.
Alan: I'd be glad to share about a couple of our successes! And our successes come from partnering, I mean, you've got your Michelle and I who are representing the Utah High-Tech Task Force and that consists of almost 40 agencies across the state with, I think we're pushing a hundred affiliates. Officers who are engaged in this activity, whether it be full time or part time. And so, I mean, it's kudos to them that we are actually seeing the successes that we do. I'll talk about a couple of our successes we've had over the last year because these cases are either they've been adjudicated or they're far enough along in the process that discussing some of the details, even though we're going to leave out names of people involved wouldn't cause issues with these cases. One of them and we talked about truly heart wrenching, was a toddler, 18 months, a few years old, who was being sexually abused by a family member. And then that abuse was being recorded and shared with a person in another state. We became aware of this via one of the electronic service providers out there that was being used to transmit this information and what was going on, and they made us aware and we were able to follow up and get a hold of the local agency. We identified where this material was coming from. We traveled to that region of the state, which is more of a rural region and working with those officers there. We searched the residence. We identified the family member, the child. We got DCFS involved. Ultimately, the child was removed from the home. She's been adopted by another family and is thriving because not only was she being sexually abused, but she was malnourished and just developmentally behind. The person that this material was being shared with out of state. We coordinated with agencies in that state and within a day or two of us hitting the residents here in Utah. They were at that residence, identified the suspect there, identified that he had hands on victims and we were able to successfully move through that case. And we know of at least two kids that were impacted by this that now have a chance to get the therapy and help they need to live the most productive life that they'll be able to do because even the trauma at such a young age tends to impact throughout a person's life. That's one example. We had another case that involved the family member traveling with an extended family but traveling with the family on multiple occasions out of state. And while the parents were distracted, volunteered to watch a five-year-old girl and took that short opportunity to abuse that child. And again, it's our partnership with some of the service providers that provide this with those initial details that allowed us to move forward on that investigation. We identify the child. We get assistance from child services and victim resources to be able to help that child moving forward, get some of the treatment and therapy they'll need to overcome the trauma in their own lives and the stories of these successes. And it's kudos to our investigators. That is currently one of the things we're really pushing for a focus on is identifying the victims in our own communities. And there's a number of studies out there that show the propensity for people who say they are just viewing this material. And unfortunately, studies are can be across the board where it's as low as one or two of them having hands on victims, which is bad enough from the numbers we've seen, but as high as eight to nine, having hands on victims from what we see, it's definitely on the higher side than on the lower.
Sara: Well, I, for one, definitely appreciate all the work that you do. It brings me peace of mind to know that there are people out there that know how to find this information and identify those children. For you to say that, that is your focus to find the children in our communities close to home that we're connected to. That's important to me because I think oftentimes we just think that this is a worldwide problem, and we need more, I don't know, border control or, you know, different things, but it's so, so big, but you guys are really zeroed in directly to our community and that brings me comfort that you guys do that. So, I feel like this is a good stopping place for our listeners to just give them a breather and come back next week to hear the rest of this episode, where we focus more on parents and what parents can do to help protect children. Parents, if you have any questions or concerns, you can email us at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can find us on Facebook. Sara Hendricks Dash the Family Place or Jen Daly dash the Family Place. Please join us next week, when educational specialist Michelle Busch Wall will help us navigate tools and resources to help our kids stay safe on the internet.
Thanks again for listening. The Family Places a non-profit organization in Logan, Utah, with a mission to strengthen families and protect children. We call ourselves starfish throwers. If you're unsure what that means, refer back to our introduction episode where we explain it. The good news is you can be a starfish thrower too by subscribing to the Parents Place podcast and liking your social media pages. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with others and help us get our message out to more people. Also, be sure to check the show notes for links to information referenced in this episode. That's all for now, but we'll catch you again next time on the Parents Place.
Subject Resources:
ICAC Website: https://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/initiatives/icac/ Contact Utah's ICAC taskforce: utahicac@agutah.gov
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