(The Center Square) – Louisiana investigators have fielded more than 20,000 tips on online child sexual abuse so far this year, already surpassing the state’s total for 2024, according to figures provided to The Center Square.
The tips have led to 457 arrests, with 70 child victims identified and 49 rescued. Officials say the numbers likely represent only a fraction of the true scale of abuse.
“Investigations have moved from being primarily proactive to almost entirely reactive due to the massive increase in reported Cybertips,” the Louisiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force wrote in an Oct. 23 memo.
According to the memo, the amount of tips increased from 809 in 2013 to over 6,000 in 2022, then jumped to over 13,000 in 2023.
“This is an increase of almost 1,200% over the past ten years,” the memo said.
“We are seeing a lot more of it, and I think that is a consequence of social media and the access that a lot of apps provide to predators,” Attorney General Liz Murrill told The Center Square.
The surge goes well beyond Louisiana. Over the last five years, annual tips to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children climbed from 18.4 million in 2018 to 29.4 million in 2021. There were 32.1 million tips in 2022, an average of more than 80,000 every day, according to testimony from Michelle DeLaune, president and CEO of the organization, to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
Child sexual abuse material is “distributed repeatedly through thousands of search engines; social media; photo-sharing, file-sharing, and email services; and gaming and messenger apps,” DeLaune told the committee in February 2023. She said “virtually all” reports sent to her organization’s CyberTipline relate to content being “shared, stored, and distributed on the open web, not the dark web.”
Newer forms of abuse are driving some of the increase, she said, including “sextortion,” where offenders coerce minors into producing sexual images and then threaten to release them unless the child sends more material or pays money.
Financial sextortion cases jumped from 139 reports in 2021 to more than 10,000 in 2022, she said, with many cases involving teenage boys and, in some instances, victims dying by suicide after being blackmailed online.
To handle the backlog of tips in Louisiana, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force has increased its partnerships with local police and sheriff departments. Officers receive training, technical support and help from the state’s cybercrime team.
Each tip leads to basic research and digital legwork before it becomes a full-blown case. Investigators trace where the report originated, what platform was used and whether there is evidence of possession, production or active abuse. Cases involving a child who appears to be in immediate danger move to the front of the line.
A tip might come from a person or another law enforcement agency. In a recently filed lawsuit in Louisiana’s Eastern District Court, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provided a tip to the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation that led to an arrest of a New Orleans man who allegedly had 40 child pornography images.
The indictment said the suspect – already a registered sex offender for child pornography-related charges – accessed the internet through an Xbox gaming console along with his cellphone.
Predators often make contact with victims on a game or popular app, then “move them on to some other encrypted or other means of talking,” Murrill said.
In August, Murrill sued the gaming platform Roblox, alleging it lowered protection standards in order to attract more users. Roblox denied wrongdoing, calling any assertion that Roblox would intentionally put users at risk “simply untrue.”
Murrill’s office has also been broadcasting its crackdown more, by using blogs and social media to publicize charges and share photos of suspects.
In November, her office announced four arrests involving the sexual exploitation of minors, including two separate cases in which suspects were charged with dozens of counts of possessing child sexual abuse material involving children under 13.
Another case involved a New Orleans City Park police officer accused of using a social media app to contact a juvenile girl, allegedly transporting her to hotels in St. Landry Parish and attempting to impregnate her.
The nature of the work limits how quickly the state’s enforcement unit can grow. Investigators need advanced cyber-forensics skills and the fortitude to spend days combing through disturbing materials.
Victims may also have a harder time finding support services, Murrill said.
“We have victim advocacy groups that support minors and adults who have been victims of sexual assault and battery,” Murrill said. “But the numbers have gone up so much that I think they are definitely outflanking the resources that are there to support victims.”
Murrill said her office is building a centralized victim advocacy hub to allow families to click on a parish and see what services are available, as well as nearby options if their home parish has service gaps. She is pursuing federal grants to expand victim support services and investigations.
The overall goal, she said, is to teach parents and children how grooming works, what warning signs to look for and why “sending a photograph of yourself to somebody over an app or phone is never a private interaction.”
