(brisk music) (brisk music continues) - The internet has opened up the world to our kids.

They can learn about anything and everything, go anywhere virtually and meet millions of people.

Unfortunately, a lot of anonymous people online have bad intentions.

Tonight we're going to talk with an undercover special agent with the Illinois State Police about the dangers of online sexual predators.

But first, our Phil Luciano compiled some statistics about online sexual abuse.

(earnest music) (earnest music continues) (earnest music continues) (earnest music continues) (earnest music continues) (earnest music continues) I'm joined now by Special Agent Sadie Conner with the Illinois State Police.

She is an undercover agent, so we will not be showing her face.

Sadie, thanks for joining us tonight.

We appreciate it.

- [Sadie] Yeah, thank you.

- I know you said you've been with ISP for 11 years, and you've been in your current position almost five years now.

How does one get to do what you do?

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

- [Sadie] Yeah, so I do, I have a background.

I have a bachelor's degree in criminology with a minor in psychology.

I started out at Tazewell County.

I worked at the State's Attorney's Office for a little bit and then moved over as a deputy at the Sheriff's Department, and then got the call from the state police in the fall of 2012 and accepted a position to go to the academy.

Came out of the academy, I was on patrol for several years until I moved over to investigations there in 2019.

So it's pretty much all law enforcement in my work background.

But yeah, really, it's just kind of... To get here, it's kind of just getting your feet wet with patrol and learning how to talk to people and learning how to investigate crimes.

- We want to talk a little bit about the dangers of being online, especially for kids.

We know that there's a lot of people out there with bad intentions.

Can you kind of tell us what you do with your job as far as trying to find these people online that are doing bad things?

- [Sadie] Yeah, so I do.

I have a focus on child exploitation, human trafficking.

A lot of that comes in the form of investigating crimes like possession, distribution of child pornography, enticement of children, sextortion, things like that.

So any and all of the above, reports like that that come in, I'm usually one of the ones it comes to first.

- So how does that work?

And I'm talking about proactive versus reactive.

Are you mostly following up on tips from people, or are you out there anonymously online looking for some of these predators?

- [Sadie] For me, it's both.

I am trained to be proactive and do the covert nature of going online and trying to find these people in a proactive manner.

But at the same time, I would say the vast majority of the stuff that we get that comes in of this nature, comes in the form of what's called cyber tips that come in from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which we've shortened to NCMEC when we're talking.

But most of those that come in are reports that are kind of generated from, a lot of it is social media sites.

So say Facebook reports a user for uploading an image that they deem to be child porn, they report it to NCMEC.

NCMEC does a little bit of background use, background investigation to see kind of where it came from.

And they give it to one of us that's trained in this area, in the area geographically that that user is from.

- So let's talk about some of the things that you have to deal with out there.

And I'm guessing it runs the gamut from child pornography to maybe an online sexual predator trying to meet up with an underage person.

- [Sadie] Yes, we have seen all of the above and everything in between.

So as I said, the majority of what we do is probably more in the form of possession, distribution of child pornography.

But as far as in our area, here, specifically in the Peoria area, we have seen incidents of enticement where an adult is trying to meet up to have sex with a child.

We have seen, you know, potential child trafficking where we have had people travel from out of state to come pick up a child in our area and take them to a different location.

And we've seen things like sextortion where these kids are being used for pictures or money or something in fear that their information's going to be leaked to their friends or their family if they don't do it.

So we've seen it all.

- I bet you have.

Let's talk a little bit about the solicitation.

And have you been able in the past to kind of thwart a suspect from meeting up with who they think is a child or an actual child?

- [Sadie] Yes, fortunately, we have been very successful in the past.

There are a few of us that are trained to be on the proactive side and try and pick these people off before they actually meet with a legitimate child.

Obviously I don't want to give away our methods but, you know, we're on the same sites that they are.

And we kind of learn their methods in talking to people and we, like I said, fortunately, have been able to arrest several, several people who have been trying to meet up with children as young as eight to have sexual relations with.

- When you talk about those sites, can you give us an idea of what you're talking about?

Because we all know Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, things like that, but are there sites out there that maybe most parents aren't familiar with, or are these predators sticking to kind of those popular sites?

- [Sadie] So I will say there are sites where we find that these types of like-minded individuals do group up.

A lot of them can be like the encrypted third-party messaging sites and things like that, but it is all applications or websites that are regularly used by the public for non-nefarious purposes.

NCMEC did a study and 76% of the sites in that data study where these people were trying to get to kids, it was Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Discord, and TikTok.

So it's generally all sites that parents know.

It's just maybe those parents don't exactly know the extent that their child is using it to.

- Wow, that's scary.

I want to talk a little bit about how big of a problem it is.

I've got in my hands, I don't know if you can see me but, state police, that we seem to get on a weekly basis about arrests for anti-human trafficking, child pornography possession, dissemination of child pornography, even more.

I know even one case is a big problem, but how big of a widespread problem is this, do you think, in Illinois as far as child pornography and predators trying to pick up children?

- [Sadie] So unfortunately it's increasing.

We are seeing the numbers go up.

I actually just got the numbers for our task force specifically as far as just the cyber tips that we get.

So from 2022, we had 9,280 cyber tips, and 2023, we had 13,516.

So it's increasing.

And like I said, those are just cyber tips.

Those don't count, you know, anything we're being proactive on.

That's strictly just the reports that come into NCMEC and get dispersed out to us.

And that's for the Attorney Generals ICAC Task Force that covers everything except Cook County in Illinois.

So just put those numbers in perspective.

So it's hard to say whether or not the problem is increasing or some of these sites are getting better at locating this stuff and reporting users.

I will say, thank goodness, there's more and more of us signing up to do this sort of work.

Unfortunately right now, there's more work than we have bodies, but I do think we're making a nice dent in this right now.

- And I'm sure those mainstream social media pages, they don't want that on their pages.

So they're happy to let you guys know when something's not right.

- [Sadie] Oh, yeah.

They work very well with us.

As long as we have the right probable cause and the right court orders and stuff like that when it comes to search warrants and things like that, they help us out.

They give us the information very quickly because they don't want their site getting out there as one that's known to be hosting this sort of material.

- I'm curious, you've been doing this for about five years now, and you're working with experienced people.

When I look at press releases from the Illinois State Police and the Attorney General and local police departments and prosecutors, I see the suspects who are again, innocent until proven guilty, but the only thing they seem to have in common is that they're white men.

Has there been any kind of study done or is there any kind of psychology behind?

Can you put a common thread with these alleged predators?

- [Sadie] I think you pretty much nailed it other than the white part because we actually have seen kind of across the board different races.

The only thing that has really been a common thread is it's typically males.

I believe the number for female right now, I think it's about 9% of offenders in those categories is female, everything else, male.

And it ranges in age from teen males to seventies.

I know I've had an arrest of a 73-year-old.

So it's tough.

It runs across the board as far as socioeconomic status.

It's very hard to peg one individual.

We've seen a very diverse set of careers.

We've had prison guards.

We've had clergy, teachers, you know, firefighters.

So it would be nice to be able to pick somebody out of a crowd.

But fact of the matter is, you never really know what somebody's doing on their phone in the privacy of their own home or their computer.

- That's really interesting information.

And I wonder with these people who were doing this, and I'm not saying this to be funny, but are they stupid?

I mean, they have to know that there's a good chance of getting caught.

Is it that they can't control themselves?

Why do you think they take the risk?

- [Sadie] So I think there's a couple different things in there, I think depending on what sites they're using.

Some of them, you know, do say that it's fully encrypted.

So I think it offers some sort of false sense of security for some of these people, that they can upload or download or ask for whatever they want without fear of repercussions.

Which is obviously not true because at the end of the day, they get to meet us.

And then on the other hand, I do, I think it's an urge.

It's something that is built into some of these people, and they don't seem to be able to help themselves.

They take the risk.

I know multiple people that I have talked to after arrests.

They kind of guessed that it was coming.

A lot of that comes after, they know their account got reported.

So I think after that happens, after they get reported, they're kind of on edge and they're just waiting for the day.

But, you know, they kind of have to, they weigh risk versus reward.

And a lot of them, they just go straight to the reward.

- I'm guessing with the due diligence, that you and your fellow officers do.

You get the warrants, you have evidence.

I'm guessing there's a pretty successful prosecution rate with these suspects.

- [Sadie] Yeah, yeah.

Honestly, looking back, I don't think I've ever lost one of these or had one not be prosecuted.

Most like first offense, usually still getting sentenced to at least 10 years.

So it's a subsection of crime that we're still pretty tough on.

And that's not just here in Illinois, but that's throughout the country.

I do like to say sometimes it's easier because we generally have most of our evidence before we even serve a search warrant or an arrest warrant, because we have the digital evidence versus like going into a drug house and trying to find it and recover it.

Well, we generally already have it from doing our background and our pre-search warrant work on this.

So it's good that way.

- Besides child pornography and things like that, we've heard especially in the last few years the term sex trafficking really come to the forefront of the discussion.

Can you tell us a little bit about that issue in Illinois and what you're seeing?

- [Sadie] So I will say specifically in the Peoria area, we haven't been plagued by that too much that we've seen, but it does happen.

As I said, we did have a case recently where an individual met a child online through a social media site.

The child I believe was 15, and the individual she was talking to was from out of state.

He made arrangements to come get her and take her out of state for purposes unknown.

That was here right at home in Peoria within the last couple years.

So it does happen.

We have seen it.

I know we've had reports of it coming from like the casinos and stuff in Iowa, that sort of area.

And then who knows where they're traveling to?

It's not the biggest issue that we see in this area of work, but it is there and we do have to be able to respond to it when it comes up.

- Let's take the rest of our time and talk about how parents can best try and protect their kids.

Short of banning them from social media, what do you recommend parents do to smarten their kids up and try and keep them away from these predators?

- [Sadie] I would say the biggest thing for parents is be involved.

Know who your, and online.

So one of the biggest things that we see is a lot of these kids, and that goes for ages from when they're given a cell phone with access to the internet all the way through their teens.

One of the biggest things we see is they add everyone as a friend.

I don't know what it is, but it seems like on all of the social media sites if they look like they're around the same age, they're going to add them as a friend and they'll talk to them.

They'll pretty much talk to anybody.

Unfortunately, what we see is a lot of these predators if they're going to be looking for a kid, say a 12-year-old girl, they're going to make their profile out to be like a 13, 14-year-old boy, right?

They're going to do what gets the attention of a kid.

They're not going to go in as a 46-year-old man because that looks creepy, right?

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Sadie] So, you know, as a parent, being able to be open with your kid and ask them, who is this person?

How do you know them?

How do you know them in person?

And if they don't know them in person, then, well, they probably shouldn't be talking to them.

Be familiar with the apps that they're using.

Like I said, a lot of the ones that we see the trouble on, it's popular applications.

So if you're a parent that knows nothing about Snapchat, but you allow your kid to have Snapchat, well, maybe you should do some digging on how to use the app, what the app's about.

It operates on this guise that it disappears, it goes away.

So these kids will do things on there under the assumption that it's going to disappear, when in reality it doesn't.

Like I said, being familiar with what they're using, minimize their screen time.

Younger kids especially, be very cautious about camera usage.

We've seen a pretty big uptick of self-uploaded videos to YouTube of young kids not wearing clothes and being curious with themselves and things like that.

Is it child pornography in the sense that it's being produced for that purpose?

No, but it can in the wrong hands be used that way.

So, you know, teaching kids from a young age what's appropriate, what's not as far as taking pictures.

One of the big things too is be alert to changes in behavior in your kids.

Or if they have age-inappropriate knowledge about sexual conduct, things like that, that could be a red flag.

Maybe they're being told this by somebody and you should probably check.

It's not just cell phones, it's computers, it's tablets.

It's their Xbox, PlayStation, things like that.

Just you got to stay on top of it.

I do have a couple of good sites for parents- - Go ahead and give us those.

- if you want the resources.

- Yeah, real quick.

- [Sadie] So the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they have a program called NetSmartz, N-E-T-S-M-A-R-T-Z.

And that kind of runs the gamut of really preschool through high school.

They have age-appropriate material that parents can access to try to teach their kids internet safety.

OnlineSafeOnlineSmart.com is the Illinois Attorney General's site that's similar to that NetSmartz, where they have tools and resources for both kids and parents as well.

And then a personal one for me that I have used and told parents about in the past, it's called CommonSenseMedia.org.

That's a site where you can go in and you can plug in, say, a video game title.

Say your kid wants to play this game.

You can go on there, you can type in that title and you can see what other parents have said about it.

Is this appropriate for my 9-year-old, or is it maybe too violent to whatever you deem.

So it's a good tool there.

- Okay.

Special Agent Sadie Conner with the Illinois State Police.

We appreciate all the information and keep up the good work.

- [Sadie] Thank you very much.

- Joined now by Phil Luciano with a preview of "You Gotta See This!"

- One of my favorite episodes.

We're going to talk with a record expert, records, vinyl records, why those have enjoyed a resurgence.

Which I'm glad 'cause I like the records.

I know you do too.

Julie and I are going to paint like Bob Ross and look like Bob Ross while we paint, and we also have a story by you about a cave house.

- Yes, cave homes right here in Central Illinois, they are kind of what they sound like.

And now with everybody I think getting ready to get those air conditioners back humming, cave homes can actually save you a lot of money on your utility bills.

- Not just "The Flintstones" anymore.

- Nope, but yabba-dabba-doo.

We have got a great show coming up in just a few minutes.

Thanks for watching.

We appreciate it.

Check us out anytime, WTVP.org and WTVP on Facebook and Instagram.

(brisk music)