After charging a 21-year-old man with child luring and sexual assault in the summer, Alberta investigators now believe there could be upwards of 100 victims.
“It’s a very large investigation,” ICE Sgt. Kerry Shima said Wednesday morning. “One-hundred, maybe more, victims. It’s very, very resource-heavy.”
In July, Imesh Ratnayake was charged in relation to child luring and sexual assault involving six children. The victims were aged 11 to 13 at the time. He was later released on conditions.
On Tuesday, ALERT’s Internet Child Exploitation Unit said 18 additional charges had been laid against him for offences in the Morinville area.
“All of the offences that are alleged to have occurred since his first arrest are in relation to the six previously identified children,” Shima explained.
The investigation, which began in June after reports to Morinville RCMP, looked into child luring, sexual assault and child pornography.
“The investigation into Mr. Ratnayake has been evolving since his first arrest last summer,” Shima said.
“ICE forensic technicians, our criminal analyst and investigators have discovered thousands of videos and images that depict upwards of potentially 100 additional, unidentified victims of child luring and sexual assault.
Shima described the materials as “explicit” and “egregious.”
“Sometimes it’s difficult for us to determine what the ages of the children are,” he added. “We’re calling them children because we have reason to believe they are based on what we’ve seen.
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“Some of our victims many present as older or younger in these images and the video,” Shima said. “We want to determine, first of all, who these people are, and second of all, their ages and third, whether an actual offence has been committed.”
“As a result of the ongoing investigation, Mr. Ratnayake was arrested for offences he is alleged to have committed against previously identified children in the Morinville area in the fall of 2021.”
Ratnayake was re-arrested on Dec. 9, has been remanded into custody and is now facing the additional 18 charges which include sexual assault, sexual interference, six counts of luring a child, two counts of making child pornography, obtaining sexual services for consideration from persons under 18, five counts of making sexually explicit material available to a child, uttering threats, and failing to comply with a release order.
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“We believe the contact offences occurred in the fall (of 2021),” Shima said. “There’s additional online offences that happened after fall.”
Edmonton-area, Morinville and St. Albert parents are being asked to discuss this case with their children to determine if they communicated or met with Ratnayake. However, the contact could reach farther.
“There could be victims in our city, province, country, or in another country,” Shima said.
“We’re here to help those kids and that’s our priority,” he stressed. “We also want to make sure that we’re not just dealing with one person (suspect).”
According to the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT), Ratnayake is believed to have used several Snapchat profiles with usernames “islandsauce0129,” “monked.ruffy” or by his pseudonym, Matt Wintoni or “mattwintoni.”
Police are also asking Alberta parents to speak with their kids about the user names he used on Snapchat.
“Releasing his Snapchat handles is one of the ways that we’re going to be able to identify our victims,” Shima said. “A lot of the time, victims of luring or online sexual exploitation don’t know who’s on the other end of those devices or who they’re communicating with.”
He said Snapchat is one of the most common platforms on which police are finding child sexual exploitation material or children being lured.
“It’s one of — if not the most — popular applications used by children for communication,” Shima said.
Police believe the accused somehow made it on to a child’s SnapChat friends list and then “made his way” through that Snapchat contact list.
“There was a degree of transactional behaviour involved in these incidents,” Shima added, saying police believe the children may have been lured with things like vapes, marijuana and alcohol.
“So there may be a window there for parents to begin a discussion with their children, especially if parents have recognized their children have come into things like a disposable vape pen or vape device or alcohol… and the parents aren’t quite sure where that came from.”
ICE investigators would like to identify and speak with potential victims and witnesses. Anyone with information about this investigation is encouraged to call their local police, the Edmonton Police Service or Crime Stoppers (anonymously).
Click here for ways to protect children from online sexual exploitation.
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