'Talk to your children': Gardaí warn that kids can easily be snared by online abusers

Gardaí plead with parents to set sensible ground rules as they detail their work tracking down social media sexual abusers and blackmailers

Detective Superintendent Michael Mullen (right) of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau tells of his experience of the real-world impacts of online child sexual abuse as Det Chief Supt Colm Noonan of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau listens. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins Photos.

Detective Superintendent Michael Mullen has had personal experience of the real-world impacts of online child sexual abuse.

“I previously worked in another jurisdiction. I investigated an incident of sextortion where a young man was engaging with what appeared to be — what he thought was — an attractive young lady, but in fact wasn’t,” the officer with the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau (GNCCB) says

“He then got blackmailed for a significant amount of money and, unfortunately, as a result of that he came to serious harm.”

That kind of extortion often involves the subject being cajoled to send intimate pictures of themselves which the exploiter can then threaten to publish if their ransom is not paid.

Mr Mullen explains that when the incident he described occurred in 2015, young men were being subject to sextortion, or cyber blackmail, at a rate of four or five a week.

“We’re 10 years on from when that happened. That is still occurring here, and in Northern Ireland, now.”

Given the extent to which technology has evolved over the past 10 years, it’s certain that such crimes will have increased exponentially.

Plea to parents 

At a briefing outlining the successes of An Garda Síochána in combating online child sexual abuse over the past two years, Det Supt Mullen’s colleague in the Garda National Protective Services Bureau (GNPSB), Detective Chief Superintendent Colm Noonan, said parents need to be fully aware of the world that exists online for young children and teenagers.

Garda National Protective Services Bureau Det Chief Supt Colm Noonan, left, speaking as Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau Det Supt Michael Mullen listens during Friday's media briefing on online child sexual abuse. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins

According to data released on Friday, 16 child victims of online sexual abuse have been identified and safeguarded in Ireland in the past 15 months.

Some 24 non-Irish child victims of online sexual abuse have been identified.

An additional 52 possible child victims of online sexual abuse have been identified globally. Mr Noonan said: 

We really, really urge parents, educators, anybody who’s interacting with children, to have open conversations with them about how they’re conducting themselves online and their online experiences. 

“We have to be able to speak to our kids to understand what they’re being exposed to. There’s huge potential in technology for online learning and development, but it really must be navigated carefully and with vigilance.”

With regard to how children and their parents can protect themselves online, Det Supt Mullen said there are “key messages” that should be taken on board, the first being that it is “imperative that children do not engage with strangers online”.

He said the message should be: “Don’t ever create or share intimate content, don’t give in to blackmail, and don’t tolerate any behaviour that would not be tolerated in the offline world, in daily physical interactions, just because it occurs online.”

Michael Mullen: 'Don’t ever create or share intimate content, don’t give in to blackmail, and don’t tolerate any behaviour that would not be tolerated in the offline world.' Picture: Sam Boal/Collins

He says the crimes that gardaí are seeing are international in nature, regardless of what is being said to a child online, given that developments in technology such as AI have rendered language barriers redundant.

Two Garda bureaus work in tandem

Handling of instances of online sexual abuse in Ireland is the remit of both the GNCCB and the GNPSB, often working in tandem, with the latter broadly dealing in referrals from within and outside Ireland — from entities such as the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — and the GNCCB focusing on identifying the children seen in online images and videos that are sent its way.

“Our job is to look at an image or video and say is there anything in that video — a football shirt, a book that’s got a German title, a bottle,” Det Supt Mullen said.

“So we’re looking for very small things in the images and the videos to say, ‘can we identify what country this child is in?’ And then try and narrow it down to the town that person’s in.

“And if we’re able to do that, which we’ve done on 24 occasions this year, we’ll send it to the country to say ‘we think this child is in Paris or in France.”

Working in this environment is taxing, he admits.

“This work is really challenging and difficult,” he said. But he added that “the people that are doing this work are very committed to it”.

Advent of AI multiplies the challenge

He acknowledges that policing online crime since the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) is “a race to the bottom”.

“We do recognise the positive value of [AI] as well, and there are significant developments in how law enforcement worldwide is using artificial intelligence to identify and to retrieve evidence and to target offenders online.”

Can the good keep pace with the bad?

“We will not give up. We take every single opportunity to try and protect real people as quickly as possible. So it is not for want of will, it is not for want of expertise,” Mr Noonan said.

“We’re constantly battling, but every law enforcement agency in the world will tell you that we are on the difficult side of this.”