A presentation during this week’s Kingston Police Services Board meeting painted a grim portrait of the level of online sexual exploitation happening within the city.
Detective constables Paul Robb and Derek Frawley spoke in front of the board during the presentation, which showed that the number of these types of offences has risen each year since 2018.
“This is the Dateline To Catch A Predator type stuff — so people who engage youth online talk to children on social media and gaming platforms, a variety of platforms, talk to kids and trying to get them to commit sexual offences,” Det. Const. Robb said.
In 2018, Kingston Police received tips involving 10 cases of sexual exploitation or child pornography from the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre. That number ballooned to 60 for 2021. In 2022 up until Aug. 12, there have already been 46 cases.
“We participate in a victim identification program that’s ultimately run by the RCMP, where we try to identify children in images and videos and we share that information across the globe, really, so that we can track these series of media and do our best to put a stop to it, or at least identify the people sharing it,” Det. Const. Robb said.
Total investigations have gone down slowly over the past three years.
According to the presentation, there were 99 investigations in 2020, 70 in 2021 and 48 so far in 2022.
“This is a heinous crime and it obviously has serious repercussions also for the people who investigate it,” Det. Const. Robb said.