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"We don't have time to stop everyone"

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La Presse survey
Photo
These images have been reported to cyberaide.ca as possible cases of child sexual exploitation.
A filter has been applied through the center to camouflage sexually explicit details

The scandal which is shaking these days the Montreal site Pornhub, accused of hosting child pornography images, testifies to a much bigger crisis. Images of sexually exploited children on the Internet number in the millions in Canada, annual reports of child pornography crimes in the tens of thousands. The authorities are not enough for the task. The police must choose the "worst" cases. Foray into a never-ending war.
(Montreal and Winnipeg) “We don't have time to stop everyone. It's just a flood of people watching kids
being raped and then enjoying it. It is reality. "

This sentence is said by a police officer who is an expert in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children
on the Internet when speaking about his work.

In Canada, photos and videos of a sexual nature featuring minors now number in the millions; denunciations for crimes linked to child pornography, in tens of thousands annually, reveals a vast investigation by La Presse. The authorities are overwhelmed. The phenomenon is global and Canada is no exception. Unpublished figures obtained from six different bodies show the extent of an unprecedented crisis.

The numbers strike

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) National Coordination Center against the Exploitation of Children handled seven times more cases in 2018 than in 2015 (102,927 cases compared to 14,951). “And that's doubling almost every year,” says Superintendent Robert Lajoie. The police force has in its database 5 million images depicting sexually exploited children.

In Quebec, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) 's investigation team on the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet has received 1,790 reports since the start of this year, compared to 530 five years ago.

In Montreal, the Police Department of the City of Montreal (SPVM) was given 840 cases of sexual exploitation of minors on the web between the 1 st January and November 4, 2020, against 541 for the whole year 2015 .

As of November, the Canadian Center for Child Protection had 25 million images potentially associated with child sexual abuse in its database. An increase of 11 million images since last March.

Finally, in the United States, the body responsible for receiving complaints made by web companies, Facebook and Google of this world, reports 16.9 million reports in 2019 totaling 69 million images. Nearly 37,000 reports were sent to Canadian police officers because they concerned Internet users from here.

And these are just the cases reported to the authorities.

Why such an increase? With technological advances come new opportunities to produce, distribute and own such images, explains the professor of criminology at the University of Montreal Francis Fortin. “Connection speeds are increasing, and so is the time spent online. He adds, to explain the increase, that more and more people are on the lookout for this type of crime. “There are a greater number of“ guards ”who witness and denounce these crimes. "

Yet indictments do not follow the same curve. Last year, only 775 child pornography cases ended up in courts across the country, according to data prepared for La Presse by Statistics Canada. That's barely 200 more than five years earlier, and a far cry from the tens of thousands of annual reports. The number of arrests, both at the SQ and the SPVM, does not generally exceed 100 per year.

"It's complicated to arrest someone," notes Francis Fortin, himself a former analyst at the Sûreté du Québec. “It takes people to do the searches. It takes people to support the legal process. We could add police officers and police officers
, they would always have files to investigate. "
"Very, very ugly"

December 12, 2017. In a room of the Trois-Rivières courthouse, investigator Laval Tremblay, of the SQ, takes the stand. We are at the preliminary hearing of a man charged with possession of child pornography. An expert in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet, police officer Tremblay exposes to the judge the horror he witnesses daily.

The sentence that begins our text comes from him. “There are 80 an hour going online to transfer child pornography files. Then that is apart from all the other files that come to us. So we don't have time to stop everyone, it's just a flood of people
watching children being raped and then enjoying it. "

The assertion seems alarmist. But dozens of police officers, lawyers and specialists that La Presse
has met in recent months paint the same portrait.
There are some very, very ugly things on the internet. The tip of the iceberg is the ones we catch.

Mélodie Leclerc, detective sergeant at the SPVM

Files come in from everywhere: web companies, citizens, Interpol, police infiltration operations, spyware operated by certain organizations, including the police and the Canadian Center for Child and Victim Protection. themselves.

Faced with a hydra whose head grows back in twos every time it is cut, the police are forced to choose.

"We must prioritize the most important files in a list of files that are all already important," said Detective Lieutenant Marco Breton, head of the Team to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Children on the Internet at the SPVM.

Prioritizing means focusing almost exclusively on cases where the images show children under the age of 12, except when the police can identify the victim and thus prove that she is a minor. Because older than 12, "it's hard to say 100% that it's sure a child is in the picture." "So we always go with prepubescent and even very, very, very, very young," describes Mélodie Leclerc. And there are many. “About 45% of what we see is 8 years and under. The majority of my files are first, second year of elementary school and younger. "

“The first element, adds its commander, Dominique Côté, is to know if there is a victim that we can identify. When the images are already known [because the police saw them in another file, for example], the priority is a little lower because we know that there is no victim in danger when we speak. "
We do our best with the resources we have.

Dominique Côté, SPVM commander

The problem is that by consuming this type of image, some offenders develop a desire to take action. Who ? When? Or ? It's unpredictable. "When is the fracture done? We can't tell. Is it going to happen? We can't determine that either, ”worries the captain.

Even the researchers have yet to put their finger on it. "The holy grail for research is to see if there are risk factors that make a person, depending on the content they are interested in, their deviant sexual interests, more likely to be an abuser," says professor of criminology Francis Fortin. And at the moment, we don't have the answer. We are wondering if, by looking at someone's collection, we can determine their probabilities of taking action. "

Even when a consumer of child pornography does not pass the measure, it still makes victims, said M e Joanny St-Pierre, coordinator of the consultative committee for the fight against the sexual exploitation of children on 'internet for the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions. “There are a lot of misconceptions: these are just pictures. During this time, I do not touch a real child. Except that behind each of these photos, these videos, there is a victim of sexual assault or sexual exploitation. "
Younger victims, more violent images

March 12, 2020. It's winter again, the real one, in Winnipeg. The parking lot of the Canadian Center for Child Protection, discreetly installed in a residential area of ​​the Manitoba capital, is covered with ice.

Inside, in a large bright room, a dozen analysts are immersed in what humans do darker.
Photo
This is where complaints about the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet come from Canadian citizens. It is also here that millions of images of child sexual abuse land that a spy software called Arachnid, in reference to the multiple legs of a spider,
unearths in the depths of the web.

The team views and then categorizes the photos and videos into seven categories, ranging from “material of sexual exploitation of prepubescent children” to “nudity” to photos of children dressed but used in context. operating. The organization then reports the images to internet providers around the world for removal from the Web.
Photo
Catherine Tabak is the team leader. What she says is unbearable. “In extreme cases, it could be an image where a child is tied to a bed or a chair and at the same time there is going to be sexual acts with an adult, or an animal, or objects. We see a lot of images where there is torture on children. They get hit by objects while naked. Or with sex toys that adults would use. In other cases, the adult is seen to urinate on the child or force him to swallow urine or feces. "

Almost 80% of the victims are under 12 years old. More than half of this group has less than 3.

Catherine Tabak, Team Leader at the Canadian Center for Child Protection

This reality, it is not the only one to report it. Several studies show that children assaulted on the web are younger and younger and the images, more and more violent.

Criminology professor Francis Fortin documented it a few years ago by analyzing 61,000 images of child pornography seized by police. First, children aged 6 to 12 were mostly represented. Then, the violence of the images viewed by predators increased as they were consumed. “For the larger group in the study, the more time went on, the more they took pictures of younger people and more graphic pictures. Over time, gravity increased and age decreased. "

Recent judgments in child pornography bear witness to these findings. The stories of the police too.

“What struck me when I arrived at the unit was to see the age of the victims,” says Commander Dominique Côté of the SPVM. It's getting younger and younger. For me, it's elusive to understand how you can have fun with a baby. There is something wrong. "

“Imagine the worst and multiply it by 10,” said RCMP Superintendent Robert Lajoie. We see very early ages. We see very violent photos. It goes from newborn babies to teens. Boys and girls. It really is material that is hard to watch. "
"The battle is not lost"

Is the battle against the sexual exploitation of children on the internet lost? No, answer those who fight against this scourge straight away.

I will make the link with COVID-19: it is a social responsibility that should engage everyone. Everyone has their part to play. Whether it is to denounce, to act or to invest in different ways. The battle is not lost. People have a great sense of anonymity when using the web, but technology means that we are able to challenge them. There are also new laws that help us do our job. Social commitment means that we are able to continue to fight the phenomenon.

Robert Lajoie, Superintendent of the RCMP National Child Exploitation Coordination Center
Photo
When I joined the team, there were tools that we have today that did not yet exist. We don't know what tomorrow has in store for us. Is there always going to be child abuse? Yes. Is it going to be also present on the internet? I am not sure. Because I really see tools that are developing.

Mélodie Leclerc, detective sergeant at the SPVM

The battle is not that it is lost. We win all kinds of things, we improve things, but there are too many people. It is as if you were asking me: have we lost the battle against drugs? It's hard.

Francis Fortin, professor of criminology at the University of Montreal
Photo
It is a social phenomenon. Can only the police forces overcome it? I do not think so. But you have to get on board anyway. Help must be available to victims. We must be in prevention. We must be in coercion. And we need to talk to each other to have the greatest impact possible. Are we going to overcome it one day? I would tend to say no. But can we build better ways of doing things? Can we improve? Yes. You should never admit defeat.

Dominique Côté, Commander of the Sexual Exploitation Section of the SPVM

The battle has only begun. The sexual exploitation of children is not a new phenomenon. However, the arrival and exponential growth of the possibilities offered by the Internet has opened the door to a form of exploitation that was still unknown to us a few decades ago. It would be a very big mistake to give up and throw in the towel in the face of the magnitude of the task and it would be turning our backs on all these children who are being abused day after day.

M e Joanny St-Pierre, coordinator of the Consultative Committee on the fight against sexual exploitation of children on the Internet at the DPCP
Pornhub in turmoil

The Canadian Center for Child Protection has sent Pornhub 119 requests to remove child pornography images since May 2018, according to figures obtained by La Presse . And that's just the tip of the iceberg, warn its experts. Recall that the popular pornographic website, whose parent company MindGeek is located in Montreal, is in the hot seat because an investigation by the New York Times ( NYT ) alleges that it disseminates content of sexual exploitation of children and rapes.
119 complaints

The Canadian Center for Child Protection, whose software searches the web for child pornography images, has asked Pornhub 119 times to remove videos featuring minors in just over two years. In several cases, specifies the spokesperson of the Center, René Morin, they were prepubescent children. "It may not seem like much, 119, but it does not correspond to reality. This is the tip of the iceberg. The images that we report are images that are already known because they are in the databases of the police forces or ours. On Pornhub there is a flood of new content that is added by users. If this content has never been reported to the police or to cyber help, we have no idea that it exists, ”explains René Morin. According to him, many teenage girls whose images are found on this type of site have the reflex to take steps themselves to have them removed rather than lodge a complaint. The problem: “This site allows users to download videos to their computer. So even if Pornhub removes an image, it exists elsewhere and nothing prevents someone from putting it back two days later. "
Disastrous consequences

Last week, the NYT gave voice to several young victims who ended up, despite themselves, on the pornographic video streaming site. In the survey, entitled "The children of Pornhub", these young victims say that they were filmed without their knowledge or that they transmitted intimate images to their boyfriend, then that these images were broadcast on Pornhub. This has had - and continues to have - disastrous consequences on the lives of young victims, some of whom have attempted suicide.
The company defends itself

Technology company MindGeek, parent company of Pornhub, dismisses the claims NYT's , calling them irresponsible and patently bogus. “We have no tolerance for child sexual abuse content. Pornhub is resolutely committed to the fight against [this content] and has instituted a state-of-the-art trust and security policy to identify and remove illegal content from our community, ”she said last Friday. The company, physically established in Montreal and fiscally in Luxembourg, adds that there are less of this kind of videos on its site than on traditional social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. After roundly rejecting the allegations NYT's for several days, Pornhub announced on Tuesday that it no longer allows its users to download content from its site and that those who upload videos to its platform will have to in the future submit to a verification and identification protocol.
Politicians urge Quebec and Ottawa to act

Shocked by the revelations, politicians from Quebec and Canada called on the federal and Quebec governments to act "as soon as possible" against Pornhub. The Liberal Party of Quebec urged Quebec's Minister of Public Security, Geneviève Guilbault, to implement article 5 of the Report of the Special Commission on the Sexual Exploitation of Minors as soon as possible. This article recommends “that the government of Quebec entrust experts with the mandate to produce an opinion concerning the presence of child pornography on sites linked to companies registered in Quebec and the measures put in place to prevent and repress it”. The vice-president of this commission - Liberal MP Christine St-Pierre - also demanded "to analyze what are the tax advantages that [parent company] MindGeek can have in Quebec".
Trudeau arrested

In his investigation, the reporter NYT directly questioned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "How can a self-proclaimed feminist tolerate the presence on Canadian soil of a company that distributes rape videos on a global scale?" He asked. Already last March, a group of elected officials and senators in Parliament wrote to the head of government in the hope of convincing him to take action against Pornhub and MindGeek, arguing that "the government has a duty to ensure that people appearing in sexually explicit videos that are uploaded and posted by businesses located in Canada are not children or victims of human trafficking or sexual assault ”. Independent Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne has proposed, in a private bill, to block the entrance to the site to those under 18.

For more information or to ask for help: marie-vincent.org, cyberaide.ca, the Parents Line: 1 800 361-5085, the CAVAC network: cavac.qc.ca or 1 866 532-2822, Provincial Sexual Assault Line: 1 888 933-9007

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