An open window to predators

Children who have a phone with an app have a potential open door to an online sexual predator.

The combination of internet access, prevalence of smartphones, rise in social media and a decrease in internet “stranger danger” has created the ideal breeding ground for online sexual predators. Those predators can contact children to solicit explicit photos and video, or share their own images and videos with victims and other predators.

Lewiston police detectives Cody Bloomsburg and Zach Thomas investigate the cases where either the victim, defendant or sexually exploitative material is in Lewiston or Nez Perce County. The cases are then prosecuted by the Nez Perce County Prosecutor’s Office where Chief Deputy Prosecutor April Smith works to hold the sexual predators accountable and seek punishment for their crimes.

Although Bloomsburg, Thomas and Smith work in Lewiston, they say that sexual predators are everywhere in every city, country and phone application.

“If a child is on the internet, no matter if it’s Snapchat, Telegram, anything, any application, if they are on the internet communicating with someone they don’t know, it’s tantamount to dropping your child off at a bar and saying, ‘Go in there and make some friends,’ except everyone in that bar is a sexual predator in a brilliant disguise,” Bloomsburg said. “That’s what I’ve seen in my investigations. There is nowhere safe on the internet.”

Bloomsburg said that although the problem is everywhere, investigators and prosecutors in this region are motivated to go after online sexual predators.

“As bad as these predators want to meet your kids, I want to meet those predators worse,” Bloomsburg said.

Catching a predator

Reports that spark an investigation can come from anywhere: a parent bringing in a phone, a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and once, someone found a phone on Memorial Bridge with an SD card that contained a video of a child being sexually abused that eventually led to an arrest. Once a report is made, investigators are quick to take action to find the suspect and make sure evidence isn’t lost.

Investigators can trace IP addresses to find where a person is and there use surveillance to identify the person and make an arrest. If it’s a social media account, they can use subpoenas to learn the name of the account user. If it’s through a phone, Thomas can use the International Mobile Equipment number to identify the phone. The number is more specific than a serial number and is assigned to only one unique device.

Lewiston police also work with other local agencies, including Clarkston police, Moscow police, Asotin and Nez Perce county sheriff’s offices, as well as the FBI and the North Idaho Violent Crimes Task Force and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

There are times where the suspect is outside the U.S. and those cases are handed over to the FBI. Bloomsburg is deputized with the FBI and Smith is a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Coeur d’Alene; that means both have good access to the federal system to pursue cases to a higher level.

Cases involving interstate commerce, using a phone or internet across state lines or distributing or soliciting child sexually exploitative material can be pursued in the federal system. With Lewiston being so close to the Washington border, there are many cases that qualify but not every case goes to the federal level.

“We just look for the best way to hold the person accountable and get the greatest punishment,” Smith said.

The details in the data

When Thomas receives a phone in a case, he can forensically extract the data on the phone to see what’s on the device. He explains the process like a filing cabinet and someone taking out a folder, pulling out a document, getting a photocopy of it, then placing it back. Using that process means he can be sure the information from the phone is an accurate copy from the device for evidence collection purposes.

Sometimes people try to hide their data and use fake apps to store photos. For example, an app can look like a calculator app but if someone puts in a specific number or equation, it will reveal a photo storage app. Even deleted photos on a phone can sometimes be recovered.

A person’s phone has more data stored on it than most people realize, Thomas said. It can track where people are and who they are with, which can then be used for data marketing companies. For investigative purposes, that data can be used to corroborate or disprove a suspect’s statements on where they were or who they were talking with on an app.

Thomas doesn’t always need a person’s phone to build a case. For a phone to work, it has to be connected, either through a cellphone service or internet connection. Using that information can help investigators single out which user is using a certain phone or account.

Professional predators

Online sexual predators can come from every socio-economic, race, religion, gender and sexual orientation, Thomas said. Bloomsburg said they have a lot of experience and time to manipulate children online.

“They have nothing but time to figure out what works,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how smart your child is. It doesn’t matter how good of a parent you are. It doesn’t matter how good a home you have, you’re up against a professional.”

Predators will often have multiple victims at the same time. If they try to initiate a conversation and it doesn’t work, they’ll move on to the next person, Bloomsburg said.

Sexual predators will send a message through an app and try to groom their victim. Bloomsburg and Smith said the grooming process conditions a child to think that sexual contact, conversation and images are OK and that they are special. Bloomsburg said the predators always have an excuse or reason for their actions.

“That predator is gonna get in (the victim’s) head and manipulate their emotions,” Bloomsburg said. “It takes deep roots, the words they’re using, the things they’re doing, they take deep root in that child’s head and emotions. It’s hard to clean that out.”

Thomas said sometimes a conversation will start with a request for a regular photo of the victim and then they’ll compliment the victim. Then the predator will start sending or requesting more sexually explicit photos, like telling the child to go to the bathroom and take a nude photo.

“The predators work up to sending and requesting pictures and explicit messages from the children,” Smith said. “This is a gradual process.”

Predators will sometimes have the conversation move from one app to another or move it to text messages. Most of the time, the grooming will remain online, but sometimes they will try to meet in person to physically harm the child. In those cases, the predator has been grooming the victim for a longer period of time.

Bloomsburg used the example of one case in 2020 when a 15-year-old was groomed by an adult man who was a registered sex offender and picked her up from school. She was gone for three days before she was found in Spokane, where Bloomsburg said the victim was potentially going to be trafficked. That case highlights that there is a wide range of outcomes in these cases, from only messages to missing children — and a sexually explicit message is likely the better of those possibilities.

“It’s a terrible thought that the best-case scenario if one of these predators is messaging your child (is) your child is going to get a video of an adult man masturbating,” Bloomsburg said. “That is the first thing that comes across in all these cases.”

Many of the suspects are also repeat offenders. Bloomsburg knows of a case where a convicted sex offender was in prison, got a phone and began sending messages online.

“So you put a window into prison in your child’s hand,” Bloomsburg said.

Apps to avoid

The problem for parents is how to avoid the dangers of the internet when it can be so readily available at the touch of a download. Flip phones are thought to be safer compared to smartphones, but Bloomsburg said there are chat apps that can be used on flip phones.

“There’s no way to get a phone dumb enough to stop this now,” he said.

All chat apps have the potential for someone to cause harm, but some apps are more sinister than others. One that Bloomsburg and Thomas both warn about is Telegram, a cloud-based messaging platform. If a child has that app on their phone, parents should talk with their kids about why they installed it and who told them to, Thomas said.

“There is no good reason for a child to be on Telegram,” he said. “If the internet is a cesspool of humanity, Telegram is like the drain at the bottom of that cesspool. It is a terrible, terrible place that a lot of pedophiles use.”

The reason that Telegram is commonly used by online predators is because it’s based out of the U.S. and doesn’t honor U.S. search warrants or subpoenas, so investigators can’t get records. It also had end-to-end encryption, which means the only way to get messages and content from the app is to have someone’s phone and password. But Bloomsburg said they still have ways to search the app in investigations.

Another app to watch out for is Snapchat.

“Snapchat honestly is the bane of my existence sometimes because that’s where a lot of these cases start, especially the enticement cases,” Thomas said.

The common belief is that images in Snapchat go away, but the app does store images on its servers, not on the users’ phone, which can often be accessed by investigators.

Bloomsburg noted a recent case that used the app called Randomly, which matches users with a random person to chat with. The app was “rampant” with adult men attempting to meet with young girls.

Thomas mentioned some other chat apps that aren’t as “nefarious” but can still be used by predators, like Kik, Discord and Facebook Messenger. He acknowledges there are some good uses for the internet, but it come with risk.

“I’m not trying to scare a bunch of people off the internet, but this stuff does happen, it does happen here,” Thomas said. “There are people actively trying to solicit kids for sex — there’s not a nicer way of saying that.”

Advice for parents

Parents looking for ways to protect their children can start by having conversations with them about what they do on their phone. Those conversations are important even though people don’t like to talk about such uncomfortable issues.

“I think parents do get complacent and forget all the predators that are out on the internet, so they do need to stay vigilant and have conversations with their children about the things that can happen on the internet,” Smith said.

Thomas said parents should monitor their children’s phones, know which apps they use and who they are talking to. Parents can also set up their internet router to track internet activity, like which apps are being used.

Knowing what apps their children use and what their username is can help parents monitor activity. But Thomas noted that at least half of kids he’s interviewed in investigations have two accounts on their social media: the one their parents know about and the one their parents don’t know about.

For specific apps, like Snapchat, parents need to be aware of a section called My Eyes Only, which is a password protected photo storage folder. For children who spend time in video game lobbies online, Thomas suggests that parents not give their child a microphone if their child’s voice sounds young to prevent solicitation from predators. Phones can be monitored with parental control apps, like Bark and Life360, but they aren’t foolproof.

“(Kids) have a lot of time to figure out how to get around restrictions that are put upon them and they’re very motivated to do it,” Thomas said. “But parental control apps are helpful because it’s one more barrier to stop someone from contacting a child who shouldn’t be.”

If a child has been groomed for a long time, there can be some behavioral changes like not wanting to give up their phone, deleting things on their phone, getting defensive about their phone and trying to send messages secretly.

Children and teens can be vigilant themselves and not take nude photos of themselves. Bloomsburg, Thomas and Smith warned that once a photo is taken and sent, it’s in control of the predator and its presence on the internet can revictimize the person again and again.

“It’ll be out there forever once it’s on the internet and you don’t have any control over who the predator is sharing that with,” Smith said. “Predators have other predator friends that they exchange photos with, so it will be on the internet forever.”

If a parent is concerned about a message their child received, Thomas said the first step is to call police that can help start the documentation process. Other steps parents can take is preserving evidence by taking photos of the message with their phone or placing the phone on airplane mode to prevent the app from connecting to the server and potentially deleting evidence. Thomas also suggested that parents don’t block the account or number because the predator can just create another account and begin a new conversation with their victims.

Bloomsburg and Thomas used the example of Gary Hardin, who was sentenced in 2022 for sending illicit texts and nude photos on Snapchat. The parent of one of the victims regularly monitored the child’s phone and noticed that her child was messaging an adult. The parent took photos of the messages with her phone and messaged Hardin as a 12-year-old and he solicited nude photos. The parent reported it to the police, who were able to use the photos as evidence against Hardin.

Bloomsburg said that if parents want to keep their children safe from predators, they should limit their online contact to their local peer group, like school friends, rather than strangers on the internet. Bloomsburg and Thomas said there is less concern about teens interacting with other teens online; the issue is when adults begin messaging minors.

New dangers for new generations

The situation with predators on chat app is similar to the internet chatrooms of the 1990s and 2000s, but the world has changed a lot since then. Thomas said that as a millennial, he grew up in the early days of social media and was aware of “stranger danger” and wouldn’t accept requests from people he didn’t know.

But Gen Z and Gen Alpha are less skittish about adding people they don’t know on social media. That’s because they want to get as many followers as possible on a social media account for the status it provides.

“I think they conflate that for positive affirmation from their peer group,” Thomas said. “A lot of these people they’ve never met in real life, it’s unlikely they’ll ever meet in real life and a significant portion of those people might be following them because they know they’re a 12 year-old girl.”

Online predators will use that to their advantage and follow accounts of potential victims, commenting compliments on posts and then move to direct messages. Smartphones, with their easy internet connection and camera access, have also made it easier for sexual predators to victimize children.

While Thomas understands why kids want to take photos for memories and to document their lives, having it on their phones brings some risk. Thomas said parents can give their kids smartphones – just destroy the camera.

“It does really concern me how easy it is for a child to take a photo of themselves, especially at 2 in the morning, and send it to someone,” he said. “And the second they send it to that person, it’s gone.”

Until it becomes more difficult for online sexual predators to access children, they will continue to solicit exploitative material from them.

“I don’t foresee any of this going away, I foresee it getting more prevalent, probably worse before it gets better, until we as a society figure out a good way to handle a lot of these issues,” Thomas said.

Brewster may be contacted at kbrewster@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2297.

Basic tips for parents

Know what apps your child is using and their usernames

Monitor activity and conversations

Limit contact to local people in their peer group

Parental control apps like Bark and Life360 can help

If your child does receive a concerning message:

Report it to police

Take a photo with your phone

Put the phone on airplane mode