By Simone Dominique
A random gust of wind blew, and Colleen Lockwood held on to her hat. The New York native spent her formative years in the Washington, D.C. telecom sector and moved to Florida during a southward sojourn working onboard a yacht. Today we meet in Boca Raton, Florida, and chat about a world once dark now filled with promise.
As we sit, Colleen beams with energy because the nonprofit for which she works, the Child Rescue Coalition, is tackling a large problem with the savvy, expertise, and efficiency of a private-sector corporation.
There are a disturbing 45 million child predators around the globe, people who download pornography, graphic videos, and sexually violent content against children. Several countries have sex offender databases, which help notify the public after a crime has been committed, but yet-to-be-caught offenders lurk in the shadows and currently outnumber their spotlighted counterparts.
Colleen takes me into this world and dispels common myths about sexual crimes against minors–it happens to children by adults in positions of trust including their parents. The profile of most online offenders is male (an overwhelming 99.99%); no matter where you go, sexual violence against children crosses economic and ethnic classes at an all-too-large 2% of a given population; transgressors who are not on the sex offender database infiltrate schools, daycare centers, and everyday institutions that are set up to protect children; and as a consequence, almost 30% of U.S youth aged 14 to 17 have been sexually victimized.
The figures are large because offenders hide behind virtual padlocks: proxy IP addresses, private tunnels, torrents, and advanced techniques that obfuscate their online identity–until now.
The Child Rescue Coalition fights back with high-technology surveillance. Its software was initially created by Hank Asher, whose company TLO was sold to TransUnion. When Hank passed away, his daughters Carly Asher Yoost and Desiree Asher retained the surveillance technology and founded the Child Rescue Coalition. The software is like no other in that it makes elaborate masks look like flimsy padlocks.
Colleen fires up her computer and asks me to choose a place on the world map. We plug in a neighborhood and see that somebody with hidden information downloaded child pornography. We zoom in and can tell that the information was retrieved in a nearby field, from a wireless device. I shudder at the thought but then realize that even though the user went to great lengths to remain anonymous, identification information has been captured and local police with real-time access are already aware of the case.
The details of how it works are deliberately kept quiet since highly publicized arrests have the potential to become the learning grounds for pedophiles. International government agencies and law enforcement departments in 62 countries now utilize the software with great success, and where CRC’s technology is used as an expert witness in court proceedings, its evidence has been accepted 100% of the time.
In the last 4 years, CRC has aided in the arrest of 7,100 online predators and rescued more than 1,700 children from abuse. Its service is offered for free to police departments, border patrol, and government agencies. Its API capabilities have fascinating prevention implications for a variety of online marketplaces in the private sector, such as dating sites where online offenders prey on single mothers; childcare reservation sites; and bed and breakfast as well as roommate rental companies that bring seemingly nice strangers into homes with kids. CRC will soon be launching a forensic tool, which will greatly improve the efficiency of child exploitation investigations.
As the Vice President of Advancement at the Child Rescue Coalition, Colleen is tasked with getting the word out about the software, finding corporate partners, fundraising for future software development that stays ahead of the bad guys, and working alongside CRC’s President William Wiltse and CEO Carly Asher Yoost to make sure that all of this leads to a safer world for our children.
