Safe Adults: The OSINT Cops Who Rescue Kids

In the hands of the right cops, this OSINT platform helped save a child. Here’s how.

“Harm doesn’t only grow in the shadows. It can grow in the brightest rooms, behind the most charming smiles… Sometimes I think people would understand my life more easily if my parents had locked me in a cage like in the movies. The truth is more complicated.” – Anonymous NCMEC Consultant and Familial Sex Trafficking Survivor. [Source: NCMEC]

People “often ask”, said a survivor of familial sex trafficking to NCMEC, “why children don’t speak up when their parents are abusing them.” The answer to this unbelievable, insensitive, but common question is “different questions”; questions that will make most askers uncomfortable. 

What if a child doesn’t know what ‘help’ is? And how can a child ask for help when nobody thinks that they need it - including themselves? 

The youngest victim-survivors are the most vulnerable, but also the most hidden. Most abusers are not strangers - this becomes more firmly the case the younger the child. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports up to 40% of children who have experienced abuse are abused by a family member, part of inisidious cycles of abuse and exploitation where the trusted people they would first tell are in fact those doing them harm. 20% of children are sexually abused before the age of eight, and 14% before the age of six. That’s before their developing brains can grasp highly abstract concepts, complex nuance, non-literal language like sarcasm or idioms, or long-term consequences; consequences that, in a cruel irony, grow greater the longer abuse continues unseen.

“When we were growing up, I thought it was normal… I thought it was just something that happens, like getting your period.” – Leah Heming, Sexual Abuse and Familial Sex Trafficking Survivor. [Source: WGEM]

For these children, there is no clear moment where abuse becomes something to report. They lack the language, the framework, the opportunity or even just the external perspective to recognise what is happening to them is wrong. One in three won’t ever disclose. In these cases, abuse doesn’t just stop one day. It can continue indefinitely, compounding physical, psychological, and developmental harm. Only when a child leaves that harmful environment can they be safe; outside home they can find first real conditions in which recovery can begin.

Law enforcement intervention is often the only way to break the cycle. 

A case like these has to be surfaced from the outside. In the internet age, abuse is frequently filmed or photographed by perpetrators for storage or sharing as Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). Evidence, embedded in data and content, moves far beyond the environment of normalised horror in which it was created. If technology companies can succeed in flagging this material - or the right adults have their eyes open - a tip to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children can shatter an abuser’s domestic hell. 

What investigators receive in a tip, however, has historically needed to be a complete picture to mount a much-needed rescue. This just isn’t what digital disclosure looks like. If there is no name, no address, or no immediate way to reach the child, even the worst report will go nowhere. It’s nothing more than a username. A phone number. Proof that somewhere out there a child is in danger. 

Adults with power have to step up, for kids that rely entirely on them. But how? 

In the right hands, OSINT can be that mechanism by which ‘safe adults’ can enter the room. 

Here’s how OSINT Industries can save a child.

“We tell children to talk to a “safe adult,” but we rarely explain what that means… It took me years into adulthood to learn that “safe” is more than staying alive. To me now, a safe adult is… someone who tells the truth, even when it’s hard… someone who doesn’t punish you for needing help… This is something every one of us can do: we can be safe adults.” – Anonymous NCMEC Consultant and Familial Sex Trafficking Survivor. [Source: NCMEC]

Meet Detective Mike J. and the A Team Reapers.

“We are so thankful for you guys… This platform helped save a child.” – Mike J., Detective,  Investigations Division and A Team Reapers. [Source: OSINT Industries]

Mike is a Midwestern police Detective, working in his force’s Investigations Division.

He’s also part of a specialized group of law enforcement: investigators dedicated to tactical operations, homicide investigations, digital forensics, and cracking the most complex cases involving crimes against children.

These are the A-Team Reapers.

When a child is experiencing abuse, the A Team Reapers are responsible for their rescue - and for bringing their tormentors to justice. OSINT is the tool they use to make it happen.

Mike humbly describes the Reapers’ OSINT work as “not complex, super easy”. However, the impact is immeasurable. By using OSINT to locate both predators and child victim-survivors, the Reapers aren’t looking at carefully constructed veneers of respectability. 

By focusing on digital double lives - the social platforms, messaging services, and applications in which paedophiles reveal their true colors - these cops are able to be the safe adults that understand. Mike and his team can expose predators without fear or favour, no matter their offline relationships - because they see the truth. Even if abusers present to the world that their home is a safe place, Mike’s OSINT will break the facade; if necessary, they’ll break the door down too. 

This is how OSINT helps victims become survivors.

A Report No One Wants to Receive.

The report came in from a social media platform. The content in question was horrifying. 

On a mainstream social media platform, somebody had reported a video depicting one of the worst crimes imaginable. A user, alias User01*, had uploaded footage of the sexual assault of an infant by an adult. 

In the footage, the abuser’s face was clear. How he looked was visible to anyone - as was the child. This, however, does painfully little on its own to locate a predator or his prey. The report on this appalling video gave only limited information; all the platform could provide to aid the Reapers in their search for User01’s real identity was a phone number and an associated IP address. Lucky for this social media moderation team, they had contacted a group of officers who could make these scraps of data go a long way.

Mike and the Reapers’ first port of call was the internet service provider (ISP). This provider has the power to fulfil requests for subscriber information tied to a specific address - even if social platforms don’t comply. Simultaneously, while they waited for this comparatively slow legacy-tech process, it was time for the Reapers’ very modern secret weapon. Mike and the team deployed numerous OSINT platforms and providers, but “several… failed to produce results - until OSINT Industries”.

Multiple OSINT searches with our tool yielded multiple platform results. A range of messaging and social media platforms and services were associated with User01’s phone number. One in particular stood out immediately. 

User01 was signed up to iSharing, a location-sharing app that listed a potential real name. A ‘family safety’ app, made for parents to track children, would help track down a pedophile.

Hunting The Monster in the Video.

A government name is a key pivot point for law enforcement officers. Investigators with access to law enforcement databases can here integrate with traditional people-searching techniques that utilise real-world data - and that’s just what Mike’s Reapers did. 

User01 was known to law enforcement. The database listed a corresponding real-life address - and even more crucially - a driver’s license photograph. Mike and the A Team Reapers recognised the face. The individual pictured on this innocuous drivers’ license was the pedophile depicted in the video.

The Reapers were looking at User01, the predator who had scarred a child for life.

Shortly after, another legacy process yielded results that corroborated the OSINT. The internet service provider (ISP) delivered location data that matched what Mike had found via OSINT Industries.

Following this data would lead to the home in which a child was living a nightmare. This child could be rescued. Still, there was one hitch. The suspect resided in a different jurisdiction. No matter. Mike’s investigators just had to relay the information to the right agency - and with a clear OSINT report, communication issues wouldn’t prevent the two teams joining forces.

Soon, detectives from the right agency were on the way.

When they made contact, they located both the monster in the video, and the child he had harmed. Stripped of his digital mystique, User01 was only human: just another guilty pedophile headed into custody. The child was now safe. She was transported to a hospital for the evaluation and care she needed. 

How OSINT Changed What Came Next.

“I think some police officers get overwhelmed and think “no way I could do that”. That’s a huge reason I tell everyone to use your platform…. It doesn’t always need to be complex. It could be super easy…and you can save a child.” – Mike J., Detective, Investigations Division and A Team Reapers. [Source: OSINT Industries]

What looked like an end turned out to be a beginning. 

Once the suspect had been taken into custody, investigators could forensically examine his devices. On his cellphone, User01 confirmed the A Team Reapers’ worst suspicions. Numerous additional videos showed the victim being sexually assaulted, again and again. 

Evidence of assaults on previous occasions, packaged for distribution as CSAM, was enough to put this offender behind bars for the foreseeable future; where he could cause one child - and possibly other children in future - no further pain and suffering.

The case, Mike says, was “resolved quickly with the assistance of OSINT Industries”. It didn’t have to end with vulnerable children still in the worst place. It didn’t have to end with a suspect unidentified; with further crimes never uncovered or paid for. More children out there are experiencing abuse, but OSINT means their rescuers are coming. 

Not long ago this victim took her first steps. Already, thanks to the A Team Reapers, she’s on her journey to survivorship.

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