Hodgenville Police Chief James Richardson said weekly cases of online child sexual abuse show up for investigation.
The chief knows talking about online child sexual abuse is tough, but he wants families to do it anyway. At the small department, he investigates those troubling cases.
Twelve phones, stacked together, are a mound of digital crime scenes sitting on his desk. Many of them are sextortion cases, where someone’s nude photos are used to blackmail them into giving money or more pics to an online predator.
He said some kids have been involved in international investigations and some kids were selling other kids nudes that they got off the internet.
Social worker Brionna Taylor-Garrett works at the department and said encourage families to have discussions about the issue as early as age ten. In Hodgenville, they have seen cases where fourth and fifth graders were duped into giving out nude photos. She said you can’t delete them and they can easily be shared without your knowledge. So it’s just important to have that conversation just straight-and-to-the-point without sugarcoating it.
She also wanted victims to know that they are not the ones in trouble. She said they are looking to find that perpetrator, that is usually an adult, that shouldn’t be having these conversations with kids or photos of children.
This type of online sexual abuse against children can affect their mood dramatically. Taylor-Garrett urges families to look for warning signs like suddenly deleting social media, giving away personal items, or isolating from friends and family.
Other organizations like the Internet Crimes Against Children task force and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have help too. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a tool for helping take personal photos down.
Source: WHAS11
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