Today is World Day of International Justice. A July 17 targeted to fight impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes affecting the world community. Currently, the most virulent of crimes is pedocrime.
Four months ago, I acted as an expert witness in a vast study on the trafficking of girls and women in Canada, initiated by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women in the House of Commons in Ottawa. My condensed speech on the new challenges facing our integrated squads in the face of the sex trafficking of young Quebec underage girls quickly appealed to the members around the table, regardless of their political allegiance.
I discussed the particularities of so-called “aphrodisiac” drugs, cut with opioid “boosts” and used by flesh traffickers to disinhibit girls and make them instantly addicted. Offbeat interprovincial laws preventing our police officers from picking up, with a warrant, minors who cross the Ontario border to serve as dessert in an all-you-can-eat buffet, where the hunger of the “clients” is inexhaustible. Recommendations for permanent school training for our children over the age of 12 on the pitfalls to avoid on the web.
We are no longer at a technological “shift” in sexual exploitation. This is a monstrous puzzle for cyber investigators…
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology with no moral code known to create content at an impressive speed. For example, the “Stable Diffusion” platform is an image generator that makes it possible to create realistic photos from a simple voice command or a textual description. Millions of photos of sexual assault and rape of teenage girls and boys, as well as young children, are being watered down all over the place.
Some will say, “At least it’s not real people who are being assaulted like this. Please, dear citizens, question yourselves for more than 15 seconds. The exorbitant flow of this pedophile material generates a normalization in the eyes of Internet users. For good reason, some consumers of child pornography content, who had not yet dared to follow suit, are now taking action, and public security stakeholders are witnesses to this.
Pay attention to the photos of your youngest’s last “pool party” that you upload to Facebook or Instagram. They could be taken, modified and circulated for unhealthy purposes.
Forum moderators are extremely efficient. Photos and videos of so-called “soft” or moderate child pornography transit to sites in Japan where the legal age of sexual consent was 13 until very recently (it officially increased to 16 last June) and where the laxity related to juvenile prostitution is rather flagrant. Through these sites, using specific codes, sexual deviants are redirected to American platforms that run communities without algorithms or intrusive advertising. It is therefore possible for them to subscribe to their favorite creator of child crime content in the subnet. And these creators do not hesitate to make their popularity profitable. The major American platforms say they have a very rigid policy on this subject, but do not deny being completely inundated and understaffed in the face of this tidal wave.
And the real victims in there?
They are paying a serious price. Child pornography fabricated by AI is far from reducing the real victims undergoing repeated rape and abuse, on the contrary. This makes it more difficult for cyber investigators to spot exploited children and teenagers. Those without parental supervision fall even faster under the yoke of predators. Our cybercrime investigators juggle child decoys, extortion, death threats, incitement to suicide, lark. The most recent annual report from our anonymous reporting line shows a marked increase in cybercrime.
From the direct sale of people on the “dark web” and traffickers of child pornography who are the parents of exploited minors: yes, it does exist.
There are content consumers, producers and distributors. Those who fall into these three categories simultaneously are often relatives of the sexually exploited child’s family, or the family itself.
Help resources for child abusers are slim. There is the Sexual Delinquency Intervention Centre, which offers services to people who have or have not committed a sexual offense and to people struggling with deviant fantasies without acting out. The Sexual Assault Support and Treatment Center (CETAS) and the Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Centers (CIVAS) also offer assistance services.
To deal with the problem, the government will have to increase funding tenfold to aid organizations specializing in sexual deviance, which attack the heart of the problem. The cause must be heard much louder at all levels, both in the National Assembly and in the Parliament of Ottawa.