JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax investigates the challenges law enforcement faces in the fight and the push for more support.
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Every advancement in technology creates new pathways for potential predators to try to target our children. It also puts more pressure on the investigators tasked with bringing them to justice and protecting victims.
Ashley Reynolds is a victim advocate and victim consultant with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. It’s a role that is personal for Reynolds. Action News Jax talked to her 10 years ago after she came forward as one of the victims in a massive online sextortion case involving more than 350 girls. Former St. Johns County man Lucas Michael Chansler was charged and sentenced to 105 years in prison for his crimes.
Last year, NCMEC got a record 36.2 million reports of online child sexual abuse material. The agency also got thousands of reports of images or videos made with generative AI.
Reynolds said, “Now, look where we’re at in 2024. Look how much technology has advanced, and it worries me about what’s happening out there.”
Northeast Florida is poised to be a national model in the fight against online child abuse and exploitation through the work of its INTERCEPT Task Force, created by the nonprofit Operation Light Shine. It brings together federal, state, and local law enforcement. Katie Yaryan is the Florida Director of Operations.
Yaryan said, “We need the public to start to help fight this war that’s going on in their backyard.”
Yaryan said from specialized software, salary support, and equipment, it costs millions to operate INTERCEPT each year. She said donations are critical, but she wants to see more support from the top down to address what she described as significant funding gaps.
Yaryan said, “We have a certain target, which is to help bridge that gap between law enforcement and everyday public and getting the needs and the materials, the support, the education, the technology needed to help fight these crimes.”
For example, Yaryan discussed how federal numbers show this year the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program got more than $270 million in funding. While the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force program got around $41 million in funding for 2023.
In September, U.S. Congressman and former Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford co-sponsored the Renewed Hope Act of 2024. The bill aimed to increase resources for Homeland Security Investigations to identify and rescue victims of online child exploitation.
Action News Jax reached out to Congressman Rutherford about his plans to address the funding challenges law enforcement agencies face in fighting this pervasive crime.
In a statement Rutherford said in part, “I cosponsored the Renewed Hope Act of 2024 to increase resources for DHS’s Child Exploitation Investigations Unit to hire, train, and assign at least 200 computer forensics and criminal analysts to support victim identification and rescue efforts. There are new and advanced technologies that our law enforcement officers can utilize to better identify victims of this abuse, and it’s important they not only have access to it but are trained on how to use it. This bill would do just that. Finally, this legislation would promote deconflicting, coordinating, and synchronizing child sexual exploitation investigations across local, state, federal, military, and foreign law enforcement partners. We must keep our children safe, and our work to protect them does not stop with this bill. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, I am committed to continuing to work in a bipartisan way to support law enforcement agencies in their vital work to save innocent lives and bring heinous criminals to justice.”
Yaryan and Reynolds hope to see more long-term investments in the efforts to keep children safe. Reynolds said, “I hope it doesn’t happen to anyone else, but that’s the reality we’re living in. And until we figure something out, it’s just gonna continue on.”
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