Alberta agencies work to educate public amid rise of online child sexual exploitation

Terrance Sambhudyal and more than a dozen other parents sit in bleachers at their children's middle school, in southeast Edmonton, learning more about the digital world where their kids socialize.

A pair of educators from the Saffron Centre, a sexual abuse support and education organization based in Sherwood Park, Alta., just east of Edmonton, are presenting a long-standing Cyberworld seminar, teaching those in attendance about online safety.

The two-hour presentation, among other things, touches on privacy and how much information can actually be shared in a photo, how to transfer boundaries from the real world to online, and red flags and luring techniques to watch for to prevent online child sexual exploitation.

"I'm a little more informed to see what's going on at their level," Sambhudyal told CBC News after the presentation.

The father of two teenagers attended because he felt out of touch with his kids' reality, he said.

"While it's a little bit uncomfortable to start with, it's important to pick up some of these things before things escalate. You can stop it from the grassroots level, so to speak, and guide [your kids] accordingly," he said.

Online child sexual exploitation and abuse is a growing problem across Canada, with cases in Alberta drastically up over the past several years. Cases of sexual extortion — or sextortion — are of particular concern, multiple law enforcement officials told CBC.

Yet, officials believe only a fraction of incidents are ever reported.

Perpetrators of such offences could be anywhere in the world, and organized crime groups are sometimes running such schemes.

"As long as the Internet's been around, there have been issues with safety and children online," said Kiara Warkentin, the Saffron Centre's director of justice, research and outreach.

"Especially since COVID, we've seen a massive increase in the number of online child sexual exploitation files, as well as the number of sexual extortion files online — especially involving young children and teenagers."

Technological advancement has always presented the potential for harm and good, said Bailey Kacsmar, an Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute fellow. She is also a University of Alberta assistant professor of computing science.

If harm arises, the question becomes whether technology can solve the problem — and whether it's preventable at all, she said.

"Many of the things we need to do to try to prevent these issues are simply either not technologically possible, or boils down to us needing to figure out ways of mitigating the harms via social means — so either programs or education," Kacsmar said.

The tech sector has a role to play when it comes to issues like online child sexual exploitation, but the responsibility does not solely fall on it, she said.

"Ultimately, many of these issues aren't created by technology — they're amplified by technology. So we can't ignore the [social] roots within," she said.

The province's Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit, part of the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT), has seen its file intake more than triple in six years, according to its latest annual report.

The ICE unit focuses more on prevention through a community engagement team — and public education is "our best tool," said Cst. Stephanie Bosch, an ICE unit member.

"Historically, telling kids to not do things is not an approach that we can take," Bosch said. "It would be great for us to just tell kids, 'Hey, don't go online.' But the reality of it, it's parenting in a digital age: kids have access to technology, they're going to be utilizing it."

Much of a youth's life happens online now, she said. The ICE unit often sees that kids, if they are prohibited from some kind of technology or social media, are accessing those platforms through their friends' devices, or even school-owned devices.

Speaking with parents — and others in positions of trust with youth — can arm them with the knowledge needed to initiate conversations with kids, which, hopefully, leads to fewer victims, she said.

The Saffron Centre is just one local agency that offers educational programming.

"We recognize that parents may or may not struggle to keep up with everything that's going on, because things do change fast," Warkentin said.

"We want to make sure that we're on top of the trends as much as we can be to help educate them, so they can keep their kids safe."

In addition to safety, an adult discussing online safety with a child, or learning from a child how different apps work, can build trust between them — which is critical if something was to go wrong, Bosch said.

"Kids need to know that they can go to someone," she said.

"Showing interest is the best thing that someone can do because a large portion of their lives are spent online… So we have to lean into that in order to support them."