Four men from Kitchener and Cambridge have been arrested as part of a child exploitation investigation dubbed Project Derby, according to OPP and Waterloo Regional Police.
OPP Detective Staff Sgt. Ryan McDermott said a team of six officers spent three days on the investigation.
“Our officers communicated online with 36 individuals where the individuals were aware that the person was underage,” he said Wednesday.
The OPP says the officers focus was on online chatrooms and social media applications designed for children.
“While these conversations did include inappropriate sexual conduct, some did not progress to the threshold of committing a criminal offence,” McDermott explained.
He said four offenders were identified during the investigation.
“Three of the individuals were arrested when they arrived at a set location to meet a child for a sexual purpose,” McDermott said.
Police said that one of the offenders drove from another jurisdiction to meet with a child.
McDermott said that with people spending more time online during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cybertip.ca has seen an 88 per cent increase in reported offences.
“As children are spending more time online during the covid-19 pandemic, so too, are the predators attempting to exploit them,” he said.
“The value of taking a proactive approach, such as the Project Derby, is to reduce and prevent victimization by intercepting the offenders before they can prey on vulnerable youth child sex workers,” McDermott said.
He said that there are plans to hold similar sting operations in the future.
Though this is the first investigation of this kind of Waterloo Regional Police service, it will not be our last,” McDermott said.
Jason John MacLaughlin, 46, Roger Yvan Bellaire, 50, and Christopher M. Funston, 48, all of Kitchener, and Jonathan Charles Upsdell, 30, of Cambridge, have been charged with luring a person under 16.
In addition, MacLaughlin has also been charged with invitation to sexual touching, making child pornography and uttering threats while Funston is also facing charges of making sexually explicit material available to a child and agreeing or arranging to commit a sexual offence against a child