Through our work in Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation and our close relationships with law enforcement, we have come to learn that the videos and images of more than 50,000 unidentified children being abused, raped, and tortured are sitting in a global law enforcement database. These crime scene images, known as CSAM – child sexual abuse material, contain clues that could help locate and protect these children. With 85 million pieces of CSAM reported to the NCMEC CyberTipline in 2021 alone, we have to come together now to address this growing issue and get to these lives.
While there are so many heroes working to identify and protect children who are being sexually exploited, they are simply overwhelmed, under-resourced, and outnumbered by offenders. Identifying one child is a labor-intensive process as victim identification specialists need to piece together clues from the images that lead to a location, such as the country, city, and the specific location of the child. Only then can local law enforcement bring that child to safety and arrest the perpetrator. This is where we believe unKNOWN can help in three ways:
Alongside partners, including Law Enforcement, ICMEC, and Onemi Global Solutions, we will continue to bring law enforcement together from across the world as one team.
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The army right now isn't big enough as this is very specialized work, and the technology is expensive. Our goal is to train and equip investigators, analysts, and prosecutors around the world.
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Through legislation, we can create an elite workforce that can use advanced technology to keep pace with identifying the thousands of new victims seen every year.
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Your Case File Awaits
More than 50,000 unKNOWN children are waiting to be identified and protected. Open a case file today and dive into a real-life identification and rescue mission for a child. Analysts and investigators are working around the clock to close the cases like you can read here of children being sexually exploited. We invite you into their heroic work, open a case file now!
CASE FILE: 28202 18203 48204 28202 18203 48204
Disclaimer
Warning: You are about to read a real-life law enforcement case of a child
who has been sexually exploited. Not suitable for all ages
Disclaimer
Warning: You are about to read a real-life law enforcement case of a child who has
been sexually exploited. Not suitable for all ages. Many of the images used in this
campaign are stock images. No images of the children are from actual case files.
CASE FILE: 28202
The Sunflower case began when international law enforcement officials shared that they found material and posts on a chat board showing that a 16-year-old boy was planning to rape his 11-year-old sister. On the pedophile board, he was posting pictures of his sister and asking how he could rape her and get away with it. One image he posted held a clue that helped investigators solve the case: a yellow road sign visible from the window of a moving vehicle. The road sign depicted a sunflower graphic that was unique to the State of Kansas.
For days, special agents drove in pairs along Kansas highways, seeking a comparison between the images in the photos and the actual locations. Just 13 days after receiving the material, and by combining sophisticated photo forensics with traditional law enforcement methods, special agents located the residence in a small Kansas town. These efforts made it possible for law enforcement to intervene and rescue the girl before the level of abuse increased to rape.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office
CASE FILE: 18202
This case began when Canadian police discovered hundreds of sexual abuse images showing a 6-year-old girl. Investigators said the girl was subjected to horrific sexual and physical abuse - some of the worst they have seen.
Police were able to identify the girl from some of the pictures that showed the girl wearing a wristband from a chain of amusement parks and a few other identifying clues.
The police contacted the FBI, which led them to an address where the girl was identified. The girl was protected within 48 hours due to the diligent and quick work of the investigators. The FBI searched the perpetrator's home and found the camera equipment and other items of torture. The U.S. Attorney's Office said thousands of child sexual abuse images were also found on his computer. He admitted he created his own images using the girl and another child and that over 15 years he collected more than 100,000 images. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office
CASE FILE: 8202
In this case, a Special Agent was working to identify a child seen in a sexual abuse video. The agent heard a bird chirping in the audio of the video. He was able to separate out the audio track to get a clearer sound of the bird. Thinking that this could be a helpful piece of information to solve the case, he sent the bird chirp audio to an ornithologist at a well-known university. The ornithologist was able to report to the agent the species of the bird and a map of the migratory habits of the bird. The agent matched the map up to the date that was timestamped in the video. From there, he was able to rule out most of the United States based on where the bird would be during that season.
The agent found another clue in the video: a remote control with a cable company logo. He took a cropped picture of the logo and sent it to all of the law enforcement in the region that he narrowed down. Several officers wrote back to tell him the cable company as they recognized the logo. This particular cable company only served a handful of counties in this one specific state. From there, the agent got facial images of the child from the video and sent them out to law enforcement in these counties. These agencies were able to connect with the schools in the area and from there, were able to locate and protect the child.
Source: Law Enforcement
CASE FILE: 19202
The Philippine National Police were alerted to a case involving a young teenage girl who was being sexually exploited online. The referral came from the Queensland Police Service, Australian Federal Police which earlier arrested a man for crimes related to online child exploitation, including possession of child sexual abuse materials.
This man was found to have solicited child exploitation material online and had been sending money through wire transfer services to a Filipina trafficker in exchange for sexually explicit materials showing her teenage daughter. According to prosecution evidence, the trafficker had allegedly exploited her daughter online for several years.
The 56-year-old mom was arrested while she was caught in the act of offering to sexually exploit her 15-year-old daughter in exchange for money from a foreign online predator. She pled guilty to exploiting her own daughter online and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The teen victim was rescued and is now recovering at an aftercare shelter.
The survivor said her prayer was answered after she was protected “I prayed that the abuse would stop. It started five years before I was rescued.”
Source: International Justice Mission
CASE FILE: 30004
A 27-year old man responded to an ad on the dark web offering child sexual material for sale. In his response, he inquired about paying for a video of an 11-year-old girl being sexually assaulted. Over time, he made more requests like this to the user... specifically requesting a video of the rape of a child wearing a diaper and the sexual assault of a 9-year-old - in which he even asked the child's face not be covered as he wanted to see the child's reaction while the assault took place.
He continued to pay for videos of young children engaged in sexually explicit conduct including a 30-minute video of a child being raped by an adult which he paid $909 for. During the execution of a search warrant, agents seized his electronic devices and discovered thousands of files of child sexual abuse material. The investigation also revealed that he had produced child sex abuse files of a 12-year-old child known to him, using threats and coercion. He was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison for child sex trafficking and the production and possession of child sexual abuse material.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office
CASE FILE: 12861
"In a widespread investigation that spanned two continents, law enforcement uncovered a massive child pornography network. The investigation revolved around an abuse photo of a distraught 18-month-old boy clutching a stuffed toy bunny. One Massachusetts man unknowingly sent this photo to an undercover agent on the dark web. This set off a chain of events that would eventually bring down a disturbing child pornography network."
"Investigators forwarded the photo to Interpol and several other countries. It was an investigator for the Dutch police that recognized the stuffed bunny as a character in a popular Dutch children's book series. This investigator also traced the boy's sweater to a small Amsterdam store that had sold only a limited number like it. A photo of the boy's face was also broadcast on a national TV news program, which quickly got the attention of the child's family and friends."
"This revelation led them to a daycare worker who had been babysitting the boy. This worker's computer contained thousands of horrifying images of children being molested and raped, including the boy in the photo. His arrest was the beginning of a domino effect that unveiled a sickening network of predators spread across seven countries."
"The original investigation of the Massachusetts man with this photo led to over 36 different cases around the world with victims ranging from 4 years to just 19 days old. These perpetrators have since been arrested, changing hundreds of children's lives."
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement & The Associated Press
Each of these people have played a pivotal role in today's fast-paced and complex world of child exploitation, where specialized knowledge is paramount to solving intricate challenges in the field. These individuals are highly knowledgeable and experienced, possessing deep expertise and insights that make them invaluable resources to our foundation and so many others around the world.
Retired Special Agent with Homeland Security Investigations and a global leading expert in crimes against children and victim ID.
Jim Cole served for 20 years as a special agent with Homeland Security...
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Retired Detective Inspector with Queensland Police Service, Founding Partner at Onemi-Global Solutions
Detective Inspector with Queensland Police Service, Director with the International Center for Missing Children in Australia...
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Co-founder of a Counter Human Trafficking Non-profit and CSAM Justice Advocate
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Jim Cole served for 20 years as a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, primarily working child sexual exploitation. During that time, he initiated the HSI Victim Identification Program, a program that is focused on identifying victims of child sexual abuse material using technology and other sophisticated methods. This program has helped identify and protect more than 15,000 children.
Retired Detective Inspector with Queensland Police Service, Director with the International Center for Missing Children in Australia, Professor with Monash University's Artificial Intelligence Lab, Director with Daniel Morecombe Foundation, Director at Onemi-Global Solutions.
Jon Rouse served for nearly 40 years in law enforcement, in which he dedicated 27 years of his career to investigating crimes against children. For 16 years, he led a unit called Task Force Argos, which is a branch of the Queensland Police Service responsible for the investigation of online child exploitation and abuse. In the last four years of his career, he was seconded to the Australian Federal Police, where he was responsible for developing the undercover victim identification and training capability at the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation.
to help identify and protect unKNOWN children
for the children, our team, and partners
to invite others to the fight
Child sexual abuse videos and images of more than 50,000 children sit in a global law enforcement database. These children are seen, but their identities are unKNOWN. Through partnerships with law enforcement and other agencies, we can work to identify and protect these children who have experienced the darkest of evils.
Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is the crime scene recording of the actual sexual abuse of a child. These photos and videos are shared, traded, and circulated across the internet. They memorialize a child's worst moments.
Through our work in Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation, we have learned more about the growing problem of child sexual abuse material. We have collaborated closely with law enforcement and other agencies and witnessed firsthand the challenges they face in their tireless fight against this heinous crime. During an international gathering hosted by TTF in Europe earlier this year, where the world's top victim Identification experts convened, we learned that there are more than 50,000 boys and girls around the world that law enforcement has seen in abuse images, but who have not been identified.
Child sexual exploitation crimes have outpaced law enforcement's ability to keep up. Child sexual abuse material crimes started before the internet, when images were distributed through print media, magazines, books, and film. It wasn't until the mid-nineties and end of 2000 that the digital landscape began to evolve, and law enforcement began to quickly see these images distributed across online newsgroups, chat rooms, and email. The internet has facilitated a global market for these images, and the demand for new images can only be met with new victims. Law enforcement agencies are doing everything they can, however, governments all over the world have not resourced law enforcement at a level where they can combat these crimes at scale.
The identification of these children presents a huge challenge, requiring highly skilled and trained analysts who can uncover the subtle clues within the images to determine the children's identities and locations. The disparity in investigative resources, inadequate laws, access to technology, public education and awareness globally continues to be a significant issue. Only the most developed countries have dedicated cyber-crime units investigating this specific crime type, and even less have dedicated victim identification units. It has very much been the role of the developed nations to take the lead on this issue by both proactively identifying the children depicted in CSAM, and then getting that evidence to the relevant country. Even then, countries don't have the proper resources to carry out the investigations and prosecutions of these cases. While law enforcement agencies are doing their utmost, they cannot keep up with the overwhelming scale of this crisis. Every nation should mandate and invest in changing their legal frameworks in addition to creating workforces to address this exponentially growing backlog of images and videos. TTF is dedicated to helping nations develop these specialized teams to do the work of victim identification, so these children can be identified and protected.
To understand the prevention of child sexual abuse material crimes, there first needs to be an understanding of the types of offenders committing these acts. For children whose images are actively traded across the internet - the majority of these children are being abused by family or people in their circle of trust. This abuse is then photographed or filmed. To prevent these crimes, we need to address the root cause of sex offending, like early childhood physical violence. We also need to believe children when they come forward and report sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse material producers have dozens of victims. If you stop one offender, you can prevent the abuse of dozens, sometimes hundreds of children. To prevent the online exploitation of children, both parents and children need to be equipped with tools to keep themselves safe online. Some online safety resources can be found here.
To prevent the accumulation of these unknown images, governments must increase investments in specially trained victim identification teams who have the expertise to do this type of child protection work.
In partnership with some of the world's leading experts in victim identification, including ICMEC and Onemi Global Solutions among others, TTF will contribute to the development of a victim identification training curriculum and will deploy these experts across the globe to train nations in victim identification work. Through this training, we are going to bring that capability to these investigators in countries with limited resources and expertise. They can then replicate this work in their own countries with the hope that the training and skills learned empower them to identify children in their countries.
At a time when child exploitation crimes have grown faster than any other crime type, many countries have decreased funding to law enforcement. TTF will step into this void and provide critical support for nations to collaborate, share best practices, and continue victim identification operational efforts around the world.
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