July 4, 2025 • 35 mins
Ray Dawson is a former law enforcement officer and the founder of the Invictus Project, a nonprofit organization supporting task forces investigating online crimes against children by providing funding, training, and technology.
Zachary Neefe is a Special Agent with Homeland Security Investigations and a key member of a multiagency child exploitation task force in North Carolina focused on identifying and arresting child predators.
Learn more at The Invictus Project
Episode Description:
In this episode of Zone 7, CSI Sheryl McCollum speaks with Zachary Neefe and Ray Dawson—two frontline defenders in the fight against child exploitation. They take us inside the creation of the Invictus Task Force, a groundbreaking multiagency collaboration in North Carolina that brings together Homeland Security Investigations, local law enforcement, and nonprofit partners under one roof. Zach and Ray share chilling stories from undercover chat ops, explain why today’s predators are more brazen than ever, and break down how the digital world is a breeding ground for grooming and abuse. They also discuss how victim identification, school outreach, and good old-fashioned police work are changing lives—and why parental awareness isn’t optional anymore.
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome to Zone 7 with guests Ray Dawson and Zachary Neefe
- (2:00) Building the Invictus Task Force: Collaboration over silos
- (4:00) The “new white van”: Predators in the digital space
- (9:00) COVID’s impact on child exploitation and online abuse
- (11:00) 89.4 million images—what that number really means
- (12:30) Culture shifts and the normalization of exploitation
- (14:30) Identifying victims through school visits and student disclosures
- (17:45) Defining a rescue: Physical extraction vs. intervention
- (23:30) Victim-centered interviews with offenders
- (25:30) Tips for parents navigating kids’ online behavior
- (27:30) “There is no such thing as a part-time predator”
- (30:00) No collateral duties: Proactive vs. reactive law enforcement
- (32:00) Inside the chat rooms: How quickly predators strike
- (34:30) “Let’s stop calling them sex offenders.” — Mike Lew
Thanks for listening to another episode!
If you’re liking what you hear, go on and leave us a quick rating and review over on Apple Podcasts. It helps more folks find the show—and keeps us bringing you more stories that matter.
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook Cold Case: Pathways to Justice and the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute—a collaboration between universities, students, and professionals working to advance the study and resolution of unsolved cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
And tonight, do we have two folks that y'all need
to hear from. Tonight, We've got Ray Dawson. He's a
sworn detective with the Randolph County Sheriff's Office and he's
assigned to the Invictus Task Force. He's a digital forensic examiner, analyst,
and investigator. Y'all. He's a member of the North Carolina
(00:32):
State Bureau of Investigation Internet Crimes against Children Task Force.
He's a North Carolina Human Trafficking Demand Reduction Task Force member.
In twenty twenty one, Ray founded the Invictus Project, which
is a five oh one c three nonprofit to combat
(00:53):
domestic trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. Y'all. He's an
Army veteran. He's married. He's funny, y'all, just wait on it.
He's a pistol. And we're also joined by Zachary Neath.
He's a criminal investigator with Homeland Security. He serves fourteen
(01:16):
counties in North Carolina. He's a member of the Invictus
Child Exploitation Task Force. Special Agent Neath is a proactive
online investigator. If you are targeting children for sexual abuse,
material distribution, or travel enticement, or you are supporting anything
(01:39):
that has to do with children being targets. He is
coming after you, y'all. Please help me welcome these two
heroes to Zone seven. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Thank you for having us, Yes, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Zach tell us the story of the task force.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
The North Carolina UH Internet Crimes against Children task Force.
You know, historically it's worked really well together, but it's
been it's been siloed, right so you you typically, you know,
previously you'd see a SHARE's deputy kind of the one
man army, working out of their cubicle down in the
bottom basement, you know, with with restricted access to their
(02:22):
office due to the material that they're you know, half
in the view. As part of the investigation UH back
a couple of years ago now in this area, we
decided to initiate a large scale undercover chat operation and
as a result, we had several members of the community,
(02:44):
from school bus drivers to business owners, et cetera, show
up in you know, in a personal capacity to meet
with what they believed to be a child. Operation was
highly successful, but what we found is the community demanded action.
The community wanted law enforcement to really focus on this issue.
(03:06):
We looked at it. County commissioners got involved. Ray with
the Invictus Project got involved, and we were able to
have four counties in central North Carolina as well as
North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and my agency Homeland
Security investigations all come together. We're in a co located location,
(03:28):
and as Ray's mentioned, our sole focus is the crimes
against children crime type, but we're co located and what
that's enabled us to do is work together, collaboratively, leverage
not having jurisdictional issues with having additional resources come into
these counties, and then also just proactively go on these
(03:49):
cases where we're not strictly working our reactive cases come
in we're able to leverage having these investigative agencies coming
together to do larger scale and also help other agencies
and put on trainings.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So it's been.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
A really good thing to see and hopefully we're able
to pick up this model in other areas other parts
of the country so that they're able to get more
of this proactive crimes against children activity started.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I'm going to tell you you know, there was a
time maybe in the seventies where people worried about that
kind of creepy neighbor down the street, or the odd
coach and little league. But now parents have to worry
about five hundred thousand people a day online. Five hundred thousand.
(04:42):
I mean, Zach, I don't even know what to do
with that number. When you think I've got to protect
my child not just from the neighbor, the coach, the teacher,
a family member, but an additional five hundred thousand people
that can reach them through a video game.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, it's crazy. There's all sorts of online predators that
we encounter in our work every day. We see it
in the gaming platforms, we see it in text messages,
we see it on social media. We like to talk
about the new White Van being online environment because that's
where the kids are, right. You don't see kids necessarily
(05:21):
playing outside with the creepy guy down the street. Like
you mentioned. Concern of our task force and our concern
for our North Carolina ICIC affiliates are to go after
and proactively try to get the guys that are going
after children online by whatever means necessary to try to
(05:42):
identify them using our investigative techniques.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I think it's worth mentioning too that you know when
you talk about in the seventies, it was the creepy
guy down the road or the kind of sleazy soccer
coach and everybody kind of side eyed. Those are still
the actors, right. What's changed is that they have access
(06:06):
to our children while our children are at home in
their bedrooms on their social media devices, right, and so
typically in the past, these bad actors would have to
have some type of physical interaction with these children in
order to groom them in this process, right, And so
(06:27):
the bad actors are still out there, and what's happened
is they're in boldened because of the autonomy that they
have online and they're able to garner that access to
the children, whether it be through manifesting themselves on a
social media platform in the form of a child their
(06:50):
age to start that process, whether they're soliciting images or
their desire is to in fact do a face based meetup.
They have a unfed access to our children through their
social media devices. So the creepy guys are still out there,
we're just seeing they're embolden and by their ability to
be in the shadows, unaware of the parents' knowledge. And
(07:14):
so therefore the environment that our children are growing up
in is much much more dangerous than it was in
the seventies.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Ray, that's an excellent point. And you know something that
Zach said about the white van. He doesn't have to
drive around anymore and just see a child unattended to
or volunteer to coach a team or substitute teach. That
white van is in your child's hand.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well, that's exactly right. And what we're seeing too is
not only is the new creepy white van the cell phone,
but you know, we're not seeing these these perpetrators on
playgrounds or in shopping malls like we did when I
was growing up in the eighties and nineties, because they're
where the kids are, and we're we're a very technologically
(08:04):
advanced society, and we are dealing with young people that
have spent their entire life on some type of social
media platform, and that is their normal social behavioral patterns
is to socialize online.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And you know, Zach, parents for the most part, are
always behind. When my son first got a gaming system
where he could play this war game, I knew that,
you know, he could get online and didn't have to
have the friend sitting right next to him, but I
did not realize he was playing with his cousins that
(08:41):
are in Connecticut in Florida. I didn't understand how that
was happening. But he would come, you know, downstairs and go, oh,
you know, Samuel just said this or this was hilarious
that Josh is doing, and I'm like, how are you
talking to him? I didn't understand it. So then I
was kind of knocked out by thinking, so anybody can
(09:03):
jump in and play on this game with you. You
can connect with anybody, not just people that you know.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Like you mentioned, it seems like
parents are always one step behind with the technology, right,
and so coming out of COVID, what happened with COVID,
the world shut down and schools ended up having to
go online because of you know, because of the pure
you know, communical disease. So kids ended up with tablets
(09:31):
going home, there's chromebooks going home with them, and kids
wear a courage to go online. Not necessarily a bad thing, right.
Technology can be very good and it's enabling us to
have a conversation right now. But unfortunately, we've seen kids
that have grown up exclusively online, where their main form
of communication, their main form of interacting with one another
(09:52):
is it face to face anymore? In fact, if you
go to a school these days, oftentimes what you'll see
is kids standing around in a circle, but they're not
talking to each other. They're all on their cell phones
or all on some kind of media device talking to
one another on Snapchat. And so kids, you know, have,
for better or for worse, learned to have those friendships
and have those connections with each other and with you know,
(10:15):
with their fear groups and with their family members online.
And so you've got social media companies that have gotten
really good with enabling that communication. Unfortunately, anytime you have
that communication, you've got we call it sometimes we call
it a vulnerable flank where you don't realize that bad
(10:35):
actors can get in. They can, you know, pose as
younger people. Anybody can be anybody online, Right, That's what
Brad Paisley is saying about, you know, many years ago,
and even more so now. Uh, it's become where you
could have your digital identity and pretend to be somebody
else very easily with technology.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And you know, I think COVID for predators just exploded
their landscape. Now, Ray I read a statistic that eighty
nine point four million images of children being sexually exploited
or being traded. I mean, that's a number that is
(11:16):
just astronomical to me. How do you go about combating that?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Wow? Great question. It's kind of like, you know, how
do you eat at an elephant? You know, one bide
at a time, and you know that. And that's the
whole purpose of the Invictus Project and why we stood
up the nonprofit was because what we're seeing in this fight.
You're right, the numbers are unbelievable, and we're able to
(11:47):
have a deeper understanding of kind of how these predators
are behaving and how the victims are behaving because of
our Task Force partnership, where we have an expanded jurisdiction.
We have about fourteen investigators assigned to the Task Force
that have no collateral duties. So that's all we do
(12:07):
is hunt pedophiles, that's it. So obviously our lives are
deeply engrossed into this, so we're able to have a
deeper understanding of what's happening out there. And number one,
what we're seeing is these traded these images that are
being traded right there is a huge appetite for child
(12:29):
sex abuse material in the United States and abroad, and
so our victims, our children, are making this much easier
for these predators because they have been they live in
a culture now that they have been completely desensitized to
any type of sexual immorality, and the normalization of sexual
(12:52):
activity is well, that that type of sexual activity has
been normalized to them through their social media platforms, through television,
through TVs. When we look at what is acceptable on
a television show today versus what it was even thirty
(13:14):
and forty years ago, it's unbelievable. And so the children
are growing up like this, it's been normalized. A lot
of these images, kids are just trading between themselves, and
then once they're the online and they upload them onto
their social media platforms, they may have bad actors that
have portrayed themselves as kids their age, and therefore has
(13:36):
led to a huge volume of child sex abuse material
online and law enforcement just does not have the capabilities
to accurately and sufficiently investigate all of these all of
the crimes that are being reported now. And I would
say that the instances that are reported are just a
(13:57):
fraction of what's actually out there. So yeah, that's an
overwhelming landscape that we're viewing from a hilltop here.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And Zach I had a buddy she did crimes against children,
so they asked her to do the Internet Predator Task Force.
And she went to the local middle school and had
lunch with the children every day just to hear how
they talk, the words they're using, the slang, the you
(14:26):
know what's hot? Who do they like, what's their favorite
movie music, all that kind of thing, so that when
she got online she could sound like a middle school girl.
And I thought that was brilliant. And I will tell you,
y'all don't just talk the talk, honey. I mean, y'all
had great success. Y'all have already identified four hundred and
(14:48):
forty victims. Four hundred and forty, Zach.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
That's one of the most rewarding parts of what we're
doing as a task force. So Ray mentioned the nonprofit.
The nonprofit is one component that has basically operated in
in the nonprofit world. And then we've got the sworn
component component, So the Invictus Project that BABA one C. Three.
The organization supports our law Enforcement Task Force, our Law
(15:15):
Enforcement Task Force partnership. What we're able to do is
go into schools with our nonprofit partner and give safety presentations,
give talks that hopefully educate kids, and Mike you mentioned,
also have those interactions with kids where we're talking one
on one, part a group setting sometimes so that we
(15:37):
can be better investigators of what we're doing. I think
what your friend did and maybe still does is a
great technique. I mean, kids talk very different than adults.
What we're finding is some of the talk online is
kind of merging because you've got Apple and Android devices
that both use autocorrect. So kids language and the past
(16:00):
may have been that shorthand where you're using that one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight nine, you know zero keyboard that text out really
short messages and everybody now has the full you know,
the full Corty keyboard on your phone and with autocorrects.
So kids language and adults language is merging a little bit.
But going into the schools, what we found has been
(16:22):
really beneficial is we've been able to educate parents, we've
been able to educate teachers and children, but we're also
getting disclosures. So you mentioned the victim ID work that
we've been able to do. Some of that victim I
D work has just come from you know, good old
fashioned police work with getting into these devices and looking
(16:44):
at who either our bad guys are talking to or
even our victims if they're you know, they're talking to
other they're victims, O, they're bad guys. And then further
in the case, but we found as we go into
a school and our nonprofit partner, you know, in conjunction
with our sworn law coursement, you know, conducts a safety presentation.
We get to the end of the presentation and oftentimes
(17:05):
we have kids that are ready to talk and ready
to mention either hands on offenses that have occurred in
the home or online offenses where they've you know, they've
been victimized or they've been talking to somebody online. So
that's been you know, aside from the educational component, it's
been very it's been very good to see. It's been
very rewarding for me as an investigator to see kids
(17:29):
being identified and getting services, getting help they need, just
based on a safety presentation that really, you know, was
effective with them and they felt like they could talk
to somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
What you're doing, I know has resulted in over seventy
five arrest But what is more impressive to me is
the eight children that y'all have rescued from immediate danger.
You know, those eight children were about to suffer at
the hands of a predator.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah. So, you know, in the nonprofit space, especially because
you know, we have a responsibility of reporting, you know,
we take our stewardship to people's resources that they freely
give to this fight. We take it very seriously. And
one of the things that we are very careful about
is we don't want to ever overinflate any type of
(18:25):
numbers or statistics or to claim credit for something that
we did not participate in or that we were not
a part of. And so when you know, I come
from the international side, I worked for many years in
the international trafficking and children space on the nonprofit side,
(18:46):
and I know that that's out there. It's very misleading,
it's very oversensationalized. And so when we started this journey,
we wanted to be very very cheerful on how we quantified.
You know, what do we say when we say we
rescued eight children in twenty twenty four, what what does
(19:08):
that mean? And so how we have chose to quantify
a rescue is that when we arrive on scene to
affect an arrest of a suspect, that suspect is in
the custody or control of the children that we that
we classify as a rescue for example. H One that
will stick with me forever, you know, because keep in
(19:31):
mind is investigators, we are viewing these images, we're viewing
these videos that were reported and the fruits of legal
process that we have served to some of these platforms,
so that we for a couple of reasons, number one,
that we are actually dealing with a crime that has
been committed, and number two, that we can positively identify
(19:54):
who our suspect is. And so as we go through this,
through this all of these videos and images, you know,
we show up to this door and it was a
what we believed to be a grandfather. It turned out
that it was in fact a grandfather that was hands
(20:17):
on offending both of his young granddaughters. I think one
was six and one was eight. And so when we
approached the house to affect the search warrant and the
arrest warrant of this suspect. As we approached the house,
the curtains separated on the front porch and there stood
(20:38):
both of those girls that were in those videos. Those
are the kind of things that will stick with you
for a lifetime and for sure, you know. So that's
how we quantify a rescue. If we were to try
to apply a number to the second third order effects
of the investigation of the kids that were set safeguarded
(21:00):
as a result of getting this bad actor off of
the street, there's no way to measure that. So we
don't even attempt to measure that. So when we say
we rescue a kid, that means that we actually removed
a child from the custody or care of the person
that was actively offending that child.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And I'll tell you something else, Zach. The seventy five
arrest nobody is going to offend one time, none of
these people. So by those seventy five arrests, I'm with Ray,
I think that's a number y'all couldn't come up with
of the number of people that you saved that never
became victims.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yes, so that's seventy five. I appreciate you bringing that up.
That's our number for twenty twenty four. We just checked
with it. Want to pull accurate stat for you. We're
at one fourteen for our numbers going in. You know,
as of the time of this interview as as far
as the Task Force inception.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I mean, y'all are freaking heroes, your freaking hero Zach
and I just got to tell you, you know, if
you live your whole life and you save one person,
then your life to me is marked as yep, that
was worth it. But y'all both know you and Ray
both know that y'all have saved many more because a
(22:21):
lot of your victims had siblings, they had neighbors, they
had friends that could have also become victims. So I
understand Ray when he says we cannot come up with
a number, but I just want people to understand it
is probably astronomical.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Well you know, and it's worth mentioning too that you know,
you bring up another good point. How do you measure
that number? Right? And so that is because of that
the difficulty in that in understanding that. What we know
through different studies that have been done throughout the years
on these child predators, the people that have interests in
(23:00):
this and for no better way to say it than
having sex with small children, what we know is about
eighty five percent of people that view child sex abuse
material have actually a hands on a fence with a
child and over their lifetime. That average is about thirteen
per perpetrator in their lifetime, and so that's a huge
(23:22):
number right there. And as a result of that, when
we conduct these investigations and we take a suspect into custody,
we use a couple of tools. Number one is our interview.
We take our interviews very seriously with these perpetrators, and
we have very much a victim centered approach in our interviewing.
We don't go in there and start beating them up
(23:44):
with phone books and throw them around walls. We set
down with these with these suspects, and believe it or not,
they almost always want to do an interview. They want
to explain what happened. And we take advantage of that
and we literally have a counseling session with these perpetrators.
And people ask us, well, why do you why do
you do that? You know, I don't know how y'all
(24:05):
do it. I just shoot them in the head. That's
what we hear all the time. And and my response
to that is this. The reason why we don't is
because we know that if that person is actively viewing
this material, there's a high likelihood that he has a
contact offense that we are unaware of as law enforcement,
(24:27):
So we have a victim centered approach in our interview.
We want to find out you know we've got you
when when you set down in an interview. We have
your phone, We've got your social media returns from search warrants,
we have seized your computer, we have your device. As
we're going through the interview, our forensic partners or downloading
(24:49):
these devices, we're getting those updates in real time. And
for simplicity reasons, it's very simple for us. It's like,
is this your phone?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Is that a naked child?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Child?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Okay, well we got you, so in our mind we
already know that. So now what we're going to do
is we're going to leverage our rapport that we established
within that interview to be able to uncover any victims
out there that we are unaware of, because we know
statistically people that view this material are more likely than
(25:22):
not to have a contact offense, and we want to
identify as many victims as we possibly can to ensure
that they're safeguarded and they get the resources and help
that they need to recover and heal from this.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Zach, what is one thing that you would tell parents
right now they need to be aware.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Of as a parent myself. And we get approached with
that question quite a bit at these safety presentations.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
One.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know, what we found is that there's a lot
of a lot of folks in faith communities, churches, et cetera, misguided.
I think they think, well, it's not going to happen here.
What we're finding with a lot of your sextortion statistics
is it's the child that's you know, the star athlete.
Everything's going well for them, they're they're well behaved, they're
(26:09):
well adjusted, they go to church, et cetera. Uh, those
are the kids that end up getting targeted by your
sextortion bad actors, mainly teenage boys. Right now, we've seen
you know, tragic results with self harm and suicide. Uh
so I would you know, i'd dispel the notion that
it can't happen here. It can happen anywhere. But then
(26:30):
also kind of the cardinal rules for these pictures, right,
phones and bathrooms, phones and locker rooms, phones and bedrooms
do not mix.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
A lot of these images were coming across in our
investigations are are either self generated by a child in
a bedroom setting in a bathroom setting, or it's a
situation where they're being extorted or told to do something thing,
and where are they going to go that they have
privacy away from parents. They're again they're going to go
(27:04):
to a place like a bathroom, a place like a bedroom,
or even a locker room where phones aren't supposed to
be anyways, and you see these images pop up, either
unsuspecting or that are generated, and they end up on
the internet and they live forever. So just I'd caution
parents to be aware of kind of where the phones
are at, where the digital devices are at in the home,
(27:27):
and act accordingly with you know, just trying to safeguard
their kids from you know, either harming themselves or you know,
doing something that might live with them forever.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
I tell people all the time, think of when you
started your business, are you planning a wedding or whatever
event just totally overtook you. So I usually use the
wedding if I'm talking to churches or police academies, because
most people have been involved in a wedding on some level.
And you get engaged and you pick a date, and
(28:00):
then you're looking at dresses and flowers and choosing bridesmaids
and then their dresses, and you're looking at churches and
different venues, and should I be on a beach? And
then the vowels, the rings. How are we going to leave?
Or we're gonna leave on horseback or boat or a limousine.
I mean, there's all this. I mean you get into
doves and ice sculptures. Is just what song for your
(28:23):
first dance? I mean, this is all you can think
about when you're driving in the car, when you're working
in the garden, when you're at work, when you're with friends.
This is what family and friends are constantly asking you about.
I have a mantra and I have a good buddy
that runs all the merchandise for Zone seven, the Cold
Case Investigative Research Institute and the Wildlife CSI Academy. Jan
(28:49):
I'm telling y'all, she is such a gift. But I
feel like the elf and the shoemaker. I'll go to
bed and then the next morning I'll have new merchandise.
So I have a and ray. It's this. There is
no such thing as a part time predator. So you
think about your wedding all the time. They're thinking about
(29:10):
getting to your child all the time. They're thinking about
what's the newest video game? What can I buy somebody?
Where are the children at? Where are the children when
the parents aren't there? How can I get to this child?
What do I need to say to this child? What
has worked for somebody else that I've talked to in
one of these chat rooms? How can I get a picture?
How can I get the child to send me something?
(29:31):
How can I get the child to tell me where
they live? This is all they do. So whether it's
a child sex predator, a serial killer, a rapist, or
a stalker, they are full time. So Ray, you and
Zach can't investigate them or track them or hunt them
part time and think you're going to be successful. It's
(29:52):
got to be full time that you come after these predators.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Well, you know what, that's a great point because one
of the unique aspects of the task force is, and
I mentioned it earlier, but it's worth kind of drilling
down on that, is that our investigators have no collateral duties.
Across the nation, most agencies have a i CAC what
we refer to as IQAQ Internet Crimes against Children, they
(30:19):
have normally an investigator. But what we see across the board,
number one, they have nowhere near enough of them, and
they're under resource and don't have all of the equipment
that's needed because this is a technical fight. There's a
lot of expensive equipment and software that goes along with
this fight. But apart from that, they also have collateral duties.
(30:43):
So not only are they the ICAC investigator, but they're
also doing people crimes and property crimes, and that's one
of the things that sets our task force. Apart our
investigators have no collateral duties, and because of that, we
are able to shift from that reactive posture to a
proactive posture, and that's where we're taking We're literally hunting
(31:04):
these people. And law enforcement historically is always in a
reactive posture. A crime is committed, it's reported, it's investigated,
and some type of enforcement action is taken, but the
crime has already been committed, the victim has been offended.
Our approach is to shift out of that reactive posture
(31:24):
into a proactive posture where we are actively pursuing the
perpetrator in hopes to be able to either prevent them
from offending another victim or offending a victim at all,
whether it be their first victim or an additional victim
and because of that, we take on our you know,
we take our proactive approach very serious in whether it
(31:48):
be in peer to peer operations or in undercover chat operations.
And in these undercover chat operations, what we are seeing
when you talk about these predators and how they're thinking
of how how am I going to approach this child
and what behavior do I need to invoke in order
to solicit the response that I desire from the child.
(32:10):
And what we're seeing in our UC capacity is that
these predators now are so emboldened because of the large
number of kids that are online and that are this
sexualization of young kids has been normalized within their peer group,
that these predators are emboldened that. I will tell you,
(32:33):
when you jump on in a chat room and portray
yourself as a twelve or thirteen year old child, within minutes,
you're being sexually solicited. I mean, it's almost instantaneously, and
they get right to it. They do not they don't
spend a lot of time trying to warm you up,
if you will.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
If a child gets online today, they are either extremely
young because they're brand new because otherwise they would have
been on, or they're sheltered and just now have been
able to get online. Either way, you're a fresh target
because you are not skilled, you are not advanced. You
do not know what's coming at you. Like in the
(33:14):
prison system, you're fresh meat the minute you walk in
and they've never seen you before. You don't know the rules,
you don't know who's coming at you, you don't know
who to trust. They can get at you and manipulate
you faster because you're naive.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well I think they get it you and manipulate you
faster because you're a child.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Sure of course.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
To that point is that a lot of these kids,
it's very rare to find a child that's new to
being online. But not only that, what they're not new
to is they're not new to being sexually exploited. They're
not They're used to being solicited online to the point
(33:55):
that it's normalized to them.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
And we see these.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Bad actors have no problem telling you that their age.
Hey you're twelve years old, I'm fifty four. Are you
okay with that? I mean we're seeing that in these
chats that we have. So the truth is scarier than
our you know, fictional imagination, believe it or not. And
that's why parents have to be involved in the online
(34:21):
presence of their children without a doubt.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Well, I cannot thank both of you enough for coming.
Your work is I mean, it's just heroic. That's that's
the only word that comes to my mind, because I
don't know what's above heroic, but that's the work you're doing.
And I just appreciate both of you. I know it
is difficult work. It is I think one of the
(34:47):
worst jobs in law enforcement, but it's the most critical
in some aspects. So I just appreciate you both so much.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
We really appreciate you having us.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, thank you for having us. We enjoyed it, y'all.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote. Let's stop calling them sex offenders,
as if any of their crimes have anything to do
with sex. Perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer was a food offender, Mike Lou,
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is Zone seven.
And tonight, do we have two folks that y'all need
to hear from. Tonight, We've got Ray Dawson. He's a
sworn detective with the Randolph County Sheriff's Office and he's
assigned to the Invictus Task Force. He's a digital forensic examiner, analyst,
and investigator. Y'all. He's a member of the North Carolina
(00:32):
State Bureau of Investigation Internet Crimes against Children Task Force.
He's a North Carolina Human Trafficking Demand Reduction Task Force member.
In twenty twenty one, Ray founded the Invictus Project, which
is a five oh one c three nonprofit to combat
(00:53):
domestic trafficking and sexual exploitation of children. Y'all. He's an
Army veteran. He's married. He's funny, y'all, just wait on it.
He's a pistol. And we're also joined by Zachary Neath.
He's a criminal investigator with Homeland Security. He serves fourteen
(01:16):
counties in North Carolina. He's a member of the Invictus
Child Exploitation Task Force. Special Agent Neath is a proactive
online investigator. If you are targeting children for sexual abuse,
material distribution, or travel enticement, or you are supporting anything
(01:39):
that has to do with children being targets. He is
coming after you, y'all. Please help me welcome these two
heroes to Zone seven. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Thank you for having us, Yes, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Zach tell us the story of the task force.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
The North Carolina UH Internet Crimes against Children task Force.
You know, historically it's worked really well together, but it's
been it's been siloed, right so you you typically, you know,
previously you'd see a SHARE's deputy kind of the one
man army, working out of their cubicle down in the
bottom basement, you know, with with restricted access to their
(02:22):
office due to the material that they're you know, half
in the view. As part of the investigation UH back
a couple of years ago now in this area, we
decided to initiate a large scale undercover chat operation and
as a result, we had several members of the community,
(02:44):
from school bus drivers to business owners, et cetera, show
up in you know, in a personal capacity to meet
with what they believed to be a child. Operation was
highly successful, but what we found is the community demanded action.
The community wanted law enforcement to really focus on this issue.
(03:06):
We looked at it. County commissioners got involved. Ray with
the Invictus Project got involved, and we were able to
have four counties in central North Carolina as well as
North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and my agency Homeland
Security investigations all come together. We're in a co located location,
(03:28):
and as Ray's mentioned, our sole focus is the crimes
against children crime type, but we're co located and what
that's enabled us to do is work together, collaboratively, leverage
not having jurisdictional issues with having additional resources come into
these counties, and then also just proactively go on these
(03:49):
cases where we're not strictly working our reactive cases come
in we're able to leverage having these investigative agencies coming
together to do larger scale and also help other agencies
and put on trainings.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So it's been.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
A really good thing to see and hopefully we're able
to pick up this model in other areas other parts
of the country so that they're able to get more
of this proactive crimes against children activity started.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I'm going to tell you you know, there was a
time maybe in the seventies where people worried about that
kind of creepy neighbor down the street, or the odd
coach and little league. But now parents have to worry
about five hundred thousand people a day online. Five hundred thousand.
(04:42):
I mean, Zach, I don't even know what to do
with that number. When you think I've got to protect
my child not just from the neighbor, the coach, the teacher,
a family member, but an additional five hundred thousand people
that can reach them through a video game.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, it's crazy. There's all sorts of online predators that
we encounter in our work every day. We see it
in the gaming platforms, we see it in text messages,
we see it on social media. We like to talk
about the new White Van being online environment because that's
where the kids are, right. You don't see kids necessarily
(05:21):
playing outside with the creepy guy down the street. Like
you mentioned. Concern of our task force and our concern
for our North Carolina ICIC affiliates are to go after
and proactively try to get the guys that are going
after children online by whatever means necessary to try to
(05:42):
identify them using our investigative techniques.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I think it's worth mentioning too that you know when
you talk about in the seventies, it was the creepy
guy down the road or the kind of sleazy soccer
coach and everybody kind of side eyed. Those are still
the actors, right. What's changed is that they have access
(06:06):
to our children while our children are at home in
their bedrooms on their social media devices, right, and so
typically in the past, these bad actors would have to
have some type of physical interaction with these children in
order to groom them in this process, right, And so
(06:27):
the bad actors are still out there, and what's happened
is they're in boldened because of the autonomy that they
have online and they're able to garner that access to
the children, whether it be through manifesting themselves on a
social media platform in the form of a child their
(06:50):
age to start that process, whether they're soliciting images or
their desire is to in fact do a face based meetup.
They have a unfed access to our children through their
social media devices. So the creepy guys are still out there,
we're just seeing they're embolden and by their ability to
be in the shadows, unaware of the parents' knowledge. And
(07:14):
so therefore the environment that our children are growing up
in is much much more dangerous than it was in
the seventies.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Ray, that's an excellent point. And you know something that
Zach said about the white van. He doesn't have to
drive around anymore and just see a child unattended to
or volunteer to coach a team or substitute teach. That
white van is in your child's hand.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well, that's exactly right. And what we're seeing too is
not only is the new creepy white van the cell phone,
but you know, we're not seeing these these perpetrators on
playgrounds or in shopping malls like we did when I
was growing up in the eighties and nineties, because they're
where the kids are, and we're we're a very technologically
(08:04):
advanced society, and we are dealing with young people that
have spent their entire life on some type of social
media platform, and that is their normal social behavioral patterns
is to socialize online.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And you know, Zach, parents for the most part, are
always behind. When my son first got a gaming system
where he could play this war game, I knew that,
you know, he could get online and didn't have to
have the friend sitting right next to him, but I
did not realize he was playing with his cousins that
(08:41):
are in Connecticut in Florida. I didn't understand how that
was happening. But he would come, you know, downstairs and go, oh,
you know, Samuel just said this or this was hilarious
that Josh is doing, and I'm like, how are you
talking to him? I didn't understand it. So then I
was kind of knocked out by thinking, so anybody can
(09:03):
jump in and play on this game with you. You
can connect with anybody, not just people that you know.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Like you mentioned, it seems like
parents are always one step behind with the technology, right,
and so coming out of COVID, what happened with COVID,
the world shut down and schools ended up having to
go online because of you know, because of the pure
you know, communical disease. So kids ended up with tablets
(09:31):
going home, there's chromebooks going home with them, and kids
wear a courage to go online. Not necessarily a bad thing, right.
Technology can be very good and it's enabling us to
have a conversation right now. But unfortunately, we've seen kids
that have grown up exclusively online, where their main form
of communication, their main form of interacting with one another
(09:52):
is it face to face anymore? In fact, if you
go to a school these days, oftentimes what you'll see
is kids standing around in a circle, but they're not
talking to each other. They're all on their cell phones
or all on some kind of media device talking to
one another on Snapchat. And so kids, you know, have,
for better or for worse, learned to have those friendships
and have those connections with each other and with you know,
(10:15):
with their fear groups and with their family members online.
And so you've got social media companies that have gotten
really good with enabling that communication. Unfortunately, anytime you have
that communication, you've got we call it sometimes we call
it a vulnerable flank where you don't realize that bad
(10:35):
actors can get in. They can, you know, pose as
younger people. Anybody can be anybody online, Right, That's what
Brad Paisley is saying about, you know, many years ago,
and even more so now. Uh, it's become where you
could have your digital identity and pretend to be somebody
else very easily with technology.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And you know, I think COVID for predators just exploded
their landscape. Now, Ray I read a statistic that eighty
nine point four million images of children being sexually exploited
or being traded. I mean, that's a number that is
(11:16):
just astronomical to me. How do you go about combating that?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Wow? Great question. It's kind of like, you know, how
do you eat at an elephant? You know, one bide
at a time, and you know that. And that's the
whole purpose of the Invictus Project and why we stood
up the nonprofit was because what we're seeing in this fight.
You're right, the numbers are unbelievable, and we're able to
(11:47):
have a deeper understanding of kind of how these predators
are behaving and how the victims are behaving because of
our Task Force partnership, where we have an expanded jurisdiction.
We have about fourteen investigators assigned to the Task Force
that have no collateral duties. So that's all we do
(12:07):
is hunt pedophiles, that's it. So obviously our lives are
deeply engrossed into this, so we're able to have a
deeper understanding of what's happening out there. And number one,
what we're seeing is these traded these images that are
being traded right there is a huge appetite for child
(12:29):
sex abuse material in the United States and abroad, and
so our victims, our children, are making this much easier
for these predators because they have been they live in
a culture now that they have been completely desensitized to
any type of sexual immorality, and the normalization of sexual
(12:52):
activity is well, that that type of sexual activity has
been normalized to them through their social media platforms, through television,
through TVs. When we look at what is acceptable on
a television show today versus what it was even thirty
(13:14):
and forty years ago, it's unbelievable. And so the children
are growing up like this, it's been normalized. A lot
of these images, kids are just trading between themselves, and
then once they're the online and they upload them onto
their social media platforms, they may have bad actors that
have portrayed themselves as kids their age, and therefore has
(13:36):
led to a huge volume of child sex abuse material
online and law enforcement just does not have the capabilities
to accurately and sufficiently investigate all of these all of
the crimes that are being reported now. And I would
say that the instances that are reported are just a
(13:57):
fraction of what's actually out there. So yeah, that's an
overwhelming landscape that we're viewing from a hilltop here.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And Zach I had a buddy she did crimes against children,
so they asked her to do the Internet Predator Task Force.
And she went to the local middle school and had
lunch with the children every day just to hear how
they talk, the words they're using, the slang, the you
(14:26):
know what's hot? Who do they like, what's their favorite
movie music, all that kind of thing, so that when
she got online she could sound like a middle school girl.
And I thought that was brilliant. And I will tell you,
y'all don't just talk the talk, honey. I mean, y'all
had great success. Y'all have already identified four hundred and
(14:48):
forty victims. Four hundred and forty, Zach.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
That's one of the most rewarding parts of what we're
doing as a task force. So Ray mentioned the nonprofit.
The nonprofit is one component that has basically operated in
in the nonprofit world. And then we've got the sworn
component component, So the Invictus Project that BABA one C. Three.
The organization supports our law Enforcement Task Force, our Law
(15:15):
Enforcement Task Force partnership. What we're able to do is
go into schools with our nonprofit partner and give safety presentations,
give talks that hopefully educate kids, and Mike you mentioned,
also have those interactions with kids where we're talking one
on one, part a group setting sometimes so that we
(15:37):
can be better investigators of what we're doing. I think
what your friend did and maybe still does is a
great technique. I mean, kids talk very different than adults.
What we're finding is some of the talk online is
kind of merging because you've got Apple and Android devices
that both use autocorrect. So kids language and the past
(16:00):
may have been that shorthand where you're using that one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight nine, you know zero keyboard that text out really
short messages and everybody now has the full you know,
the full Corty keyboard on your phone and with autocorrects.
So kids language and adults language is merging a little bit.
But going into the schools, what we found has been
(16:22):
really beneficial is we've been able to educate parents, we've
been able to educate teachers and children, but we're also
getting disclosures. So you mentioned the victim ID work that
we've been able to do. Some of that victim I
D work has just come from you know, good old
fashioned police work with getting into these devices and looking
(16:44):
at who either our bad guys are talking to or
even our victims if they're you know, they're talking to
other they're victims, O, they're bad guys. And then further
in the case, but we found as we go into
a school and our nonprofit partner, you know, in conjunction
with our sworn law coursement, you know, conducts a safety presentation.
We get to the end of the presentation and oftentimes
(17:05):
we have kids that are ready to talk and ready
to mention either hands on offenses that have occurred in
the home or online offenses where they've you know, they've
been victimized or they've been talking to somebody online. So
that's been you know, aside from the educational component, it's
been very it's been very good to see. It's been
very rewarding for me as an investigator to see kids
(17:29):
being identified and getting services, getting help they need, just
based on a safety presentation that really, you know, was
effective with them and they felt like they could talk
to somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
What you're doing, I know has resulted in over seventy
five arrest But what is more impressive to me is
the eight children that y'all have rescued from immediate danger.
You know, those eight children were about to suffer at
the hands of a predator.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah. So, you know, in the nonprofit space, especially because
you know, we have a responsibility of reporting, you know,
we take our stewardship to people's resources that they freely
give to this fight. We take it very seriously. And
one of the things that we are very careful about
is we don't want to ever overinflate any type of
(18:25):
numbers or statistics or to claim credit for something that
we did not participate in or that we were not
a part of. And so when you know, I come
from the international side, I worked for many years in
the international trafficking and children space on the nonprofit side,
(18:46):
and I know that that's out there. It's very misleading,
it's very oversensationalized. And so when we started this journey,
we wanted to be very very cheerful on how we quantified.
You know, what do we say when we say we
rescued eight children in twenty twenty four, what what does
(19:08):
that mean? And so how we have chose to quantify
a rescue is that when we arrive on scene to
affect an arrest of a suspect, that suspect is in
the custody or control of the children that we that
we classify as a rescue for example. H One that
will stick with me forever, you know, because keep in
(19:31):
mind is investigators, we are viewing these images, we're viewing
these videos that were reported and the fruits of legal
process that we have served to some of these platforms,
so that we for a couple of reasons, number one,
that we are actually dealing with a crime that has
been committed, and number two, that we can positively identify
(19:54):
who our suspect is. And so as we go through this,
through this all of these videos and images, you know,
we show up to this door and it was a
what we believed to be a grandfather. It turned out
that it was in fact a grandfather that was hands
(20:17):
on offending both of his young granddaughters. I think one
was six and one was eight. And so when we
approached the house to affect the search warrant and the
arrest warrant of this suspect. As we approached the house,
the curtains separated on the front porch and there stood
(20:38):
both of those girls that were in those videos. Those
are the kind of things that will stick with you
for a lifetime and for sure, you know. So that's
how we quantify a rescue. If we were to try
to apply a number to the second third order effects
of the investigation of the kids that were set safeguarded
(21:00):
as a result of getting this bad actor off of
the street, there's no way to measure that. So we
don't even attempt to measure that. So when we say
we rescue a kid, that means that we actually removed
a child from the custody or care of the person
that was actively offending that child.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
And I'll tell you something else, Zach. The seventy five
arrest nobody is going to offend one time, none of
these people. So by those seventy five arrests, I'm with Ray,
I think that's a number y'all couldn't come up with
of the number of people that you saved that never
became victims.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yes, so that's seventy five. I appreciate you bringing that up.
That's our number for twenty twenty four. We just checked
with it. Want to pull accurate stat for you. We're
at one fourteen for our numbers going in. You know,
as of the time of this interview as as far
as the Task Force inception.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I mean, y'all are freaking heroes, your freaking hero Zach
and I just got to tell you, you know, if
you live your whole life and you save one person,
then your life to me is marked as yep, that
was worth it. But y'all both know you and Ray
both know that y'all have saved many more because a
(22:21):
lot of your victims had siblings, they had neighbors, they
had friends that could have also become victims. So I
understand Ray when he says we cannot come up with
a number, but I just want people to understand it
is probably astronomical.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Well you know, and it's worth mentioning too that you know,
you bring up another good point. How do you measure
that number? Right? And so that is because of that
the difficulty in that in understanding that. What we know
through different studies that have been done throughout the years
on these child predators, the people that have interests in
(23:00):
this and for no better way to say it than
having sex with small children, what we know is about
eighty five percent of people that view child sex abuse
material have actually a hands on a fence with a
child and over their lifetime. That average is about thirteen
per perpetrator in their lifetime, and so that's a huge
(23:22):
number right there. And as a result of that, when
we conduct these investigations and we take a suspect into custody,
we use a couple of tools. Number one is our interview.
We take our interviews very seriously with these perpetrators, and
we have very much a victim centered approach in our interviewing.
We don't go in there and start beating them up
(23:44):
with phone books and throw them around walls. We set
down with these with these suspects, and believe it or not,
they almost always want to do an interview. They want
to explain what happened. And we take advantage of that
and we literally have a counseling session with these perpetrators.
And people ask us, well, why do you why do
you do that? You know, I don't know how y'all
(24:05):
do it. I just shoot them in the head. That's
what we hear all the time. And and my response
to that is this. The reason why we don't is
because we know that if that person is actively viewing
this material, there's a high likelihood that he has a
contact offense that we are unaware of as law enforcement,
(24:27):
So we have a victim centered approach in our interview.
We want to find out you know we've got you
when when you set down in an interview. We have
your phone, We've got your social media returns from search warrants,
we have seized your computer, we have your device. As
we're going through the interview, our forensic partners or downloading
(24:49):
these devices, we're getting those updates in real time. And
for simplicity reasons, it's very simple for us. It's like,
is this your phone?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Is that a naked child?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Child?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Okay, well we got you, so in our mind we
already know that. So now what we're going to do
is we're going to leverage our rapport that we established
within that interview to be able to uncover any victims
out there that we are unaware of, because we know
statistically people that view this material are more likely than
(25:22):
not to have a contact offense, and we want to
identify as many victims as we possibly can to ensure
that they're safeguarded and they get the resources and help
that they need to recover and heal from this.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Zach, what is one thing that you would tell parents
right now they need to be aware.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Of as a parent myself. And we get approached with
that question quite a bit at these safety presentations.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
One.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know, what we found is that there's a lot
of a lot of folks in faith communities, churches, et cetera, misguided.
I think they think, well, it's not going to happen here.
What we're finding with a lot of your sextortion statistics
is it's the child that's you know, the star athlete.
Everything's going well for them, they're they're well behaved, they're
(26:09):
well adjusted, they go to church, et cetera. Uh, those
are the kids that end up getting targeted by your
sextortion bad actors, mainly teenage boys. Right now, we've seen
you know, tragic results with self harm and suicide. Uh
so I would you know, i'd dispel the notion that
it can't happen here. It can happen anywhere. But then
(26:30):
also kind of the cardinal rules for these pictures, right,
phones and bathrooms, phones and locker rooms, phones and bedrooms
do not mix.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
A lot of these images were coming across in our
investigations are are either self generated by a child in
a bedroom setting in a bathroom setting, or it's a
situation where they're being extorted or told to do something thing,
and where are they going to go that they have
privacy away from parents. They're again they're going to go
(27:04):
to a place like a bathroom, a place like a bedroom,
or even a locker room where phones aren't supposed to
be anyways, and you see these images pop up, either
unsuspecting or that are generated, and they end up on
the internet and they live forever. So just I'd caution
parents to be aware of kind of where the phones
are at, where the digital devices are at in the home,
(27:27):
and act accordingly with you know, just trying to safeguard
their kids from you know, either harming themselves or you know,
doing something that might live with them forever.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
I tell people all the time, think of when you
started your business, are you planning a wedding or whatever
event just totally overtook you. So I usually use the
wedding if I'm talking to churches or police academies, because
most people have been involved in a wedding on some level.
And you get engaged and you pick a date, and
(28:00):
then you're looking at dresses and flowers and choosing bridesmaids
and then their dresses, and you're looking at churches and
different venues, and should I be on a beach? And
then the vowels, the rings. How are we going to leave?
Or we're gonna leave on horseback or boat or a limousine.
I mean, there's all this. I mean you get into
doves and ice sculptures. Is just what song for your
(28:23):
first dance? I mean, this is all you can think
about when you're driving in the car, when you're working
in the garden, when you're at work, when you're with friends.
This is what family and friends are constantly asking you about.
I have a mantra and I have a good buddy
that runs all the merchandise for Zone seven, the Cold
Case Investigative Research Institute and the Wildlife CSI Academy. Jan
(28:49):
I'm telling y'all, she is such a gift. But I
feel like the elf and the shoemaker. I'll go to
bed and then the next morning I'll have new merchandise.
So I have a and ray. It's this. There is
no such thing as a part time predator. So you
think about your wedding all the time. They're thinking about
(29:10):
getting to your child all the time. They're thinking about
what's the newest video game? What can I buy somebody?
Where are the children at? Where are the children when
the parents aren't there? How can I get to this child?
What do I need to say to this child? What
has worked for somebody else that I've talked to in
one of these chat rooms? How can I get a picture?
How can I get the child to send me something?
(29:31):
How can I get the child to tell me where
they live? This is all they do. So whether it's
a child sex predator, a serial killer, a rapist, or
a stalker, they are full time. So Ray, you and
Zach can't investigate them or track them or hunt them
part time and think you're going to be successful. It's
(29:52):
got to be full time that you come after these predators.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Well, you know what, that's a great point because one
of the unique aspects of the task force is, and
I mentioned it earlier, but it's worth kind of drilling
down on that, is that our investigators have no collateral duties.
Across the nation, most agencies have a i CAC what
we refer to as IQAQ Internet Crimes against Children, they
(30:19):
have normally an investigator. But what we see across the board,
number one, they have nowhere near enough of them, and
they're under resource and don't have all of the equipment
that's needed because this is a technical fight. There's a
lot of expensive equipment and software that goes along with
this fight. But apart from that, they also have collateral duties.
(30:43):
So not only are they the ICAC investigator, but they're
also doing people crimes and property crimes, and that's one
of the things that sets our task force. Apart our
investigators have no collateral duties, and because of that, we
are able to shift from that reactive posture to a
proactive posture, and that's where we're taking We're literally hunting
(31:04):
these people. And law enforcement historically is always in a
reactive posture. A crime is committed, it's reported, it's investigated,
and some type of enforcement action is taken, but the
crime has already been committed, the victim has been offended.
Our approach is to shift out of that reactive posture
(31:24):
into a proactive posture where we are actively pursuing the
perpetrator in hopes to be able to either prevent them
from offending another victim or offending a victim at all,
whether it be their first victim or an additional victim
and because of that, we take on our you know,
we take our proactive approach very serious in whether it
(31:48):
be in peer to peer operations or in undercover chat operations.
And in these undercover chat operations, what we are seeing
when you talk about these predators and how they're thinking
of how how am I going to approach this child
and what behavior do I need to invoke in order
to solicit the response that I desire from the child.
(32:10):
And what we're seeing in our UC capacity is that
these predators now are so emboldened because of the large
number of kids that are online and that are this
sexualization of young kids has been normalized within their peer group,
that these predators are emboldened that. I will tell you,
(32:33):
when you jump on in a chat room and portray
yourself as a twelve or thirteen year old child, within minutes,
you're being sexually solicited. I mean, it's almost instantaneously, and
they get right to it. They do not they don't
spend a lot of time trying to warm you up,
if you will.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
If a child gets online today, they are either extremely
young because they're brand new because otherwise they would have
been on, or they're sheltered and just now have been
able to get online. Either way, you're a fresh target
because you are not skilled, you are not advanced. You
do not know what's coming at you. Like in the
(33:14):
prison system, you're fresh meat the minute you walk in
and they've never seen you before. You don't know the rules,
you don't know who's coming at you, you don't know
who to trust. They can get at you and manipulate
you faster because you're naive.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well I think they get it you and manipulate you
faster because you're a child.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Sure of course.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
To that point is that a lot of these kids,
it's very rare to find a child that's new to
being online. But not only that, what they're not new
to is they're not new to being sexually exploited. They're
not They're used to being solicited online to the point
(33:55):
that it's normalized to them.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
And we see these.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Bad actors have no problem telling you that their age.
Hey you're twelve years old, I'm fifty four. Are you
okay with that? I mean we're seeing that in these
chats that we have. So the truth is scarier than
our you know, fictional imagination, believe it or not. And
that's why parents have to be involved in the online
(34:21):
presence of their children without a doubt.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Well, I cannot thank both of you enough for coming.
Your work is I mean, it's just heroic. That's that's
the only word that comes to my mind, because I
don't know what's above heroic, but that's the work you're doing.
And I just appreciate both of you. I know it
is difficult work. It is I think one of the
(34:47):
worst jobs in law enforcement, but it's the most critical
in some aspects. So I just appreciate you both so much.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
We really appreciate you having us.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, thank you for having us. We enjoyed it, y'all.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote. Let's stop calling them sex offenders,
as if any of their crimes have anything to do
with sex. Perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer was a food offender, Mike Lou,
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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