Child porn threats evolve, as victims get younger and younger

CALGARY- Every single day in Alberta, thousands of people try to access child pornography online.

As if that weren’t disturbing enough, threats continue to evolve as quickly as the technology that helps predators access the images—and victims are becoming younger and younger.

“A very disturbing trend is the age of the children in the images and videos has been decreasing,” explains Det. Justin Brookes with the Southern Alberta Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) team. “We’re seeing infants, toddlers.”

Investigators work to get predators off the street, and rescue the children being victimized.

“The driving factor is to find out, is that person manufacturing any of those images themselves?”

They do it by posing as children, or other men wanting to trade pornographic images.

“I fired up a chat site, and it took not even three minutes before someone hit me up on my profile who told me they were travelling coming to Calgary, and that he likes small breasted girls,” says Det. Dean Jacobs from ICE. “I just told him I was a 14-year-old girl from Canada.”

The goal is to then lure the perpetrators to meet them, then arrest them. Investigators warn that parents also need to pay close attention to their children, especially if they’re online.

“I think parents should get their kid’s phones and periodically check it, and look at what sites they’re going to, what pictures they have in their folders.”