Casting Light Onto the Dark Web w/ Julie Cordua

being lured into an unsafe situation. The Internet enabled a new era of child sexual abuse, and today we're discussing grooming, sex torsion and how to best protect our kids from falling victim to predators in a digital world. Here to talk to me today is Julie Cordoa, the CEO of Thorn and International Anti human Trafficking organization co founded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore and dedicated to building technolog

aology to defend children from sexual abuse. But before I speak with Julie, I've invited my friends Audrey McDermott and Anna pay to twenty three year old who have graciously agreed to have a candid conversation with me about some of the things going on in the teen world that parents may not know about. Recently, Anna brought something up that I found particularly alarming, and it actually prompted this episode. As a teen, she received three dollars from a stranger

in exchange for a photograph of her feet. Do I have that right? Anna? I wish it was that much. It was less. Unfortunately it was five dollars. Alright, Yes, but yes, I think if I had found potentially more impressive clientele, I could have received in the three hundred range. I know my friends have sent their shoes for thousands of dollars. Okay, okay for before we get ahead of ourselves and make every teenager want to do this. How were you even educated about the possibility of doing this?

How did somebody reach you? And how did you know to photograph your feet and get money for them? Because you know we're gonna this is gonna take us to a dark place. So I'm starting in the PG version. So, um, I guess my story begins when I was sixteen years old or so, when I wanted to sell some some shoes that I had from middle school online, and I went and I posted like my flats and things like

that that I was no longer really wearing anymore. So I post them on like Craigslist and Facebook, Marketplace and some weird niche apps for start buying and selling things. Um, because I was a broke tchanger, I really wanted to buy more bundle packs something like that so I could play my video games. Um. So I finally got some some responses for my shoes, and at first it was like, great, fantastic, these are clearly worthwhile for other people. But then the

messages got a little weird. I was now suddenly requested to to send photos of my feet along with the shoes, and would you say were finishes that were? I think I think that that is what we were dealing with. Indeed, Um, I told Audrey's a Joke, who was very alarmed and told her mother, who was even more alarmed, who called me and said, how much money do you need? You cannot sell your shoes online? Um, which honestly made me want to sell them even more. Yes, because you're sixteen

and you're rebellious in a risk taker. Well no, no, no no. First first to fact check what happened was he said, can we you can pictures with them? And I said no, very intelligently, because they wanted them for free, and she knows what her feet are worth with their photographed.

And then they said, would you mind wearing the shoes a couple more times before I picked them up, and she said, yeah, that's fine, assuming that he wanted them worn in for his girlfriend or something like you're very trusting. And then finally the final straw, as he said, when I picked them up, can I take them off your feet? And then such a good memory. Yeah, these are crazy stories, and Anna people would remember the story, we would remember.

That has completely slipped my mind. But honestly, that's why the sale fell through, because you said no, you can't touch my feet, so there wasn't even though you were a rebellious teenager, you did have some boundaries. Yeah, you didn't do the sale. First of all, there's a huge difference between like feet pictures and selling your nudes. The first thing I would say, because we walk around and sandals all simmer and no one seems to care um slash like. I don't find that as sexualized part of

the body. I've never engaged in any of it, and as my bridge to that side of the world, I'm kind of over on the more conservative side of things. But the other thing I would say too, is with stuff like Only Fans. There are girls from my high school that are on Only Fans like and I don't know how much money they're making, but I think what's tough is it does glamorize when you read about like people like Bella Thorne, who's like a you know, former

Disney star turned Netflix movie star. She made like two million dollars the first day she opened up her Only Fans where she was selling pictures of her boobs And can you just wait, I'm grandma Moses. What is only fans dot com? I don't even know what that is. It's a it's a crazy account. It's basically like a form of social media where people subscribe to see you

posting your nudes. And people not only nudes, it's just posting like a personal arsenal of content that videos photos but usually knew it's because that's what people pay for typically. Is it celebrities doing this? It's celebrities. It's real life down you know, your neighbors, neighbors. Yes, Um, let me ask you guys a question. Have you ever looked at the dark web before? Have you ever gone to the dark Web? I've watched YouTube videos of people going into

the darker web. You know that you can you can buy sell anything heroin, guns, child porns, and credit cards, artwork, um, fake I d s. So you know my concern is that almost like the feet picture, that they can dangle the carrot of hey, how did you like a really uh real looking fake ID? And the teenager goes, oh yeah, because then I can you know, go to clubs and then you go down that path and before you know it, you know you're in some weird sex trafficking thing just

new to you. I mean, I'm terrifying. I love that the I love the reactions. It's sort of I feel like you're my own soundtrack to that. But you guys haven't been in the dark web. I haven't either, but it's always every parents nightmare. But you do have cautionary tales of people that have um been used and ended up in the dark web. And Audrey, I know you have a story which I think is the most terrifying story I've ever heard. Will you tell it? Um? Yes,

I would love to. I heard a really cautionary tale about a girl my freshman year of college who one of my friends was at school this girl lived in her dorm. She ran into her in the hallway one day. She was hysterically sobbing, and she pulled her aside and said,

you know what's going on? Maybe November of her freshman year UM and the girls the same year, and she said, well, I'm I'm leaving campus US and I don't know when I'll be back because someone basically put out a hit on me on the dark web and it had teared financial like responses. So it was like dollars for murdering her, twenty dollars if you assault her first thirty if you film it like horrible, horrible things that were literally every

person's nightmare. And the girl had to get the FBI involved. She wasn't even a US citizen. She had to be evacuated from her US campus. I mean, I would say that is definitely not a normal story. It ended up being some crazy ex boyfriend and thankfully she's safe and nothing ever happened to her. How did she even know that she was on the dark web being advertised like that? So someone stumbled this is the thing that's so surprising

in me. She had a friend who was coincidentally on the dark web just surfing around seeing what was for sale. I don't think participating in buying you know, tigers or Heroin hopefully, but who knows. And I saw her picture because it had her photo, her dorm address, all of her information posted, literally miraculously stumbled across it and immediately alerted her, and she intern alert at the school, who alerted the FBI, who put her into protection until she

was safe. But the Internet is like the biggest platform in the world, and the dark web is like anything, it can be abused. I mean, it can't really be used for good, um, but it can definitely be used. I call the dark Web the evil twin of the Internet. Yeah, I think that's probably pretty accurate. Revenge porn is another thing that keeps popping up. How does a girl guard herself from anything that results in that, either male or

female X Well, I think a couple of things. One that it's kind of like safe sex, Like the best thing you could do is abstinence and just not take photos of yourself or videos of yourself being a good because if it doesn't exist, they can't post it when you don't, you know whatever. And the final thing that you just shouldn't send picture is two boys because they're assholes. But I think that there are like tears of justice

that can be enacted. But I mean, unfortunately, like you know, when you're young and I love, you trust people and they can't exploit that. Have you guys sent nude pictures, even faceless ones. I'm not gonna lie. I've only done it once, which I feel like it's kind of shocking for my personality. I'm pretty, I'm really sex positive and I love, um, you know, just embracing my body and you know, promoting female empower empowerment through uh, embracing our bodies.

But now when it comes to nudes, I've always been really kind of freaked out. You can be you can be sex positive and yeah, my body myself, but you know, like we we were just talking about, you just you don't know what people will do with it so exactly. But is that a norm? Is that something that you know a lot of people that do that? Is that? Yeah? I mean I definitely think that a lot of my

friends do it much more liberally than I do. I mean, I would say we are probably in the minority of girls who have only done in one, one or two times. But I think a lot of guys. If a girl they're hooking up what sends a nude and they mentioned it to their friend, their friend will often say oh really, and then it'll gets texted around. I don't think it's often posted in an online setting that a random person

could stumble across. But I I've seen in high school and in college, like boys have like locked apps where you know there's the secret those And I've seen girls who I know never slept with that guy or sent that guy a photo on my kid's phone. Do people do people do video sex? I mean yes, and what happened? They wait? What you you? You meet somebody online and then you have video sex? Oh god, I people do that. Yeah, people do that, and I don't. I did not do that.

I wanted that clear. I have not done that. That's that's problematic to me. That that, to me, is something that could somehow get you into trouble. No, because I'm not advocating for that for any teenagers at all. As a nanny, this should never happen. Not let your children on the internet. Which brings me to this question for both of you, how do you think your generation will parent their kids their teens when it comes to some social Internet. I've thought a lot about this, I really,

I'm I'm so torn. Um. I discovered horn when I was in the fourth grade. Um because I tried to spell jessin mcartney Radio Disney. I butchered it somehow. I asked my nanny, who did not speak English, to help me out, and she, um somehow felled it in a way that came up Jessine McCartney need photos in some way, shape or form um. And so going on there was like, whoa, what is this? Did you on introspect? Very? Oh? Yeah,

I was, well what is I mean? Your kid? Kids are exploring their bodies, especially during these ages, and so I had no idea idea what a penis was? What is this appendage on this male who I admires body. Taught me a lot about how I'm going to teach my child to use the internet, and when the child is going to be using the internet. I think, realistically, kids are going to be using the computers much earlier than I did, to be honest, especially my own children.

As a parent, I'm going to just talk to my child. Frankly, I'm just gonna say, you know, these are things that are on the Internet. I'm not going to hide it from you. There are things like this. I don't think you should watch it. It's not appropriate for you. You can watch another time when you're much older and it exists.

But I don't want my child to stumble upon that, be confused, and then go behind my back to talk to other kids or other parents about it when it is a conversation that's obviously not going to be easy, but it's necessary to have. So I agree with Anna. I mean, I don't kids in the internet. I don't like even know how to have a kid like, like I'm still in the birds and the bees confusion, Like I have no idea how I'm gonna raise them. I

don't have a parenting philosophy yet. But I mean I was introduced to porn out of like co ed hangout when I was thirteen, where a boy opened up a computer and was like this is and it was terrifying, and that it's a horrifying experience. I do think that you want to have like an open communication on that stuff. My parents had a thing with us we were growing up where if you did something wrong or you made a mistake, if you came to them, you could have

infinite things called amnesty. So you just go to them, You go like amnesty, and it was like the equivalent of, you know, protection from the UN that you weren't tried as a war criminal and exchange for your compliance. And I broke the massive, you know, thirteenth century pot in the hallway. I'm so sorry, knowing that they were going to find out eventually anyways, but it developed this habit of coming to them when you're like, I'm scared, I

screwed up, I'm confused. I sent a nude. Now I'm hearing this rumor about him, about this boy sending it. What do I do? And you know, I think that was instrumental in me figuring out how to run the deal with the internet. Make it comfortable and free for your kids to come to you right and and make it like there's no consequences. I mean, obviously, the thing is kids know more about like what's safe and what's right,

and what's like the conservative mature choice. We're not going to make that choice most of the time, but we know what the right one is. So the lecture is usually skippable, I mean, have a couple of conversations around it, but I do think that there's a way to like be a parent that knows what your kids online presence looks like without suffocating them. And that's what I would

encourage people to strive for. You just have to kind of prepare so that if something God forbid does happen like that your child trusts to know that they can come to you and know that if something really scary it happens to them, that you will be there for them and that you'll protect them as much as you can. Thank you, Audrey McDermott and Annape. I hope my daughters grow up to be like you. You guys are strong,

amazing women. And thank you so much for being on my podcast, and thank you for helping me grow my teenage girls. I adore you. Thank you, my mama. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. Welcome back with more. Go ask Alli and now on to today's expert, Julie Cordoa. Julie is the CEO of Thorn That's t h o r N, a nonprofit that

works to address a sexual exploitation of children. As digital Defenders of Children, Thorn has been doing an incredible job equipping tech companies with the tools to eliminate child sexual abuse materials from the Internet. Julie, you guys are doing the work that should be praised and admire for centuries to come. Thank you for joining me on go ask Gali and and right off the bat, can you start by sharing the initial genesis of the nonprofit Thorn, How

it started, why it started? Sure? Yeah, Well, first of all, thank you, um for having me. I'm always grateful for the opportunity to talk about this because sometimes these are uncomfortable subjects, so making them comfortable is the first battle that we all need to do so we can talk about this more and get it out of the darkness. Um. So yes, Thorn was created almost ten years ago now Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. They were starting their philanthropic

journey trying to better understand child sex trafficking. They had seen a documentary about it happening in Southeast Asia and then started to do some research in the issue and realized it was happening here in the United States as well. Um And as they dug deeper, they really wanted to understand what were some of kind of the risk factors and trends and what was making children more vulnerable and really think about how they could use their unique talents

and networks and assets to make a difference. And I joined them early in that journey. And one of the things that we saw when we spent about a year or more out talking to survivors, law enforcement, nonprofits, government, was this intense and emerging role that technology was playing, not just in child sex trafficking, but in the growth

of UH. Technology facilitated child sexual abuse. And while you were seeing this growing role of technology and abusing kids UH, there was no concentrated effort to actually use technology in a way to stop that abuse, to protect them, to prevent it. And so that was the genesis of Thorn was looking at, Okay, how do we bring the best and brightest minds and technology to bear on behalf of some of the world's most vulnerable children and UM and

that was the birth of Thorn. Yeah. It's so interesting because I was talking on a panel in Silicon Valley to a lot of big tech company people about exploitation of girls on Instagram, which to me is a big issue. I just I I fear for it. And afterwards, a lot of the people that work at these tech companies came up to me and they said, you have no idea how bad it is, and we won't let our children do it. And I thought, oh, well, thanks for

keeping it to yourself. And the other thing is that I've noticed with when you talk about sex, try picking. And my eighteen year old is um she's the one that told me about thorn, and she's she's a big activist and she, you know, she said, the thing about sex trafficking is when I discuss it in clubs and at school, everybody thinks it's an international problem. They don't

think it's a national problem. You know. People always say, oh, the sex trafficking, you know, oh that's in the Middle East, or that it's like no, no, no, no no, that's right next door. Thank you for thorn. And here's I know this is going to be a scary answer, but what are the current statistics of sexual abuse online? Yeah? I mean, what we do know is that the trade of child

sexual abuse material is skyrocketing. So in the United States last year, tech companies reported over sixteen million reports of images and videos documenting the sexual abuse of a child. Six million m HM. That's in just the United States. UM and that's only what was found, so right, it's

it's it's the tip of an iceberg. Um. As far as how much grooming is happening or how much such stortion is happening, the numbers are really hard to come by because most kids don't talk about so how you know, how how do you measure something that no one's going to bring to the surface. And so what we do know is that law enforcement is telling us that the number of cases they're working for grooming and sextortion is

on the rise. So we're seeing a bigger trend. But is that, um, that's only what's getting reported, right, So, uh, we know it's it's a growing problem. How big it is is really hard to measure. How is the presence and prevalence of child abuse online evolved since Thorn We work on child sex trafficking and we also work on the issue of child sexual abuse material, which um is

the same as child pornography. In the law, it's written as child pornography, but we don't call it that because it is the furthest thing from any type of pornography. It is documentation of the abuse of a child. In both of those areas, the market it has just skyrocketed. And and really that's over the last two decades, not just over the last nine years that we've been working on this. And there's a couple of reasons why. I mean, you you take crimes that used to be very hidden,

and it was very difficult to participate in them. So if you were someone who had, you know, a thought about abusing a child or getting your hands on images or videos of children being abused, it took a lot. There was a lot of barriers to try to go do that, and you probably felt a lot of shame and there wasn't really anyone who was going to tell you that that was okay. Well, the Internet has really removed all those barriers, so it's really easy you within

a few search clicks, you can find it. And not only can you find content, but you can usually find communities of people if you try that are gonna tell you it's all okay, and they're gonna tell you how to get better at finding it. They're going to tell

you how to groom kids for it. Um And so you know, those aspects of the Internet have done the same for lots of really good things, right like we all confine, you know, recipes that we like in groups that like to grow the plants that we like, and well it just does the same thing for bad things in the world as well. Um so, so we've just seen the rate of child sex trafficking increase, but also, uh, the volume of child sexual abuse material just skyrocket. How

is it not against the law? Why aren't there laws against this? I mean, I know that the FBI does you know, deep dives and and they do make arrest and everything, But how is it possible that there there isn't a full government agency dedicated to blocking, stopping, arresting making this completely criminal all the time? There are um so it's yeah, no, no, no, no, it just um

it is an underground crime. So two factors. One, you have to really go look for it, so you know, it takes a lot of effort to go find the people who are engaging in it. And then second it's so big. Well, I mean we just can't. We have entire task force across this country both focused on child sex trafficking and focused on the spread of child sexual abuse material, and they're busy all day every day, and there's much more out there, uh that needs to be tackled.

But there are definitely things that you know, while the laws are in place, that more resources could be directed to addressing these issues for sure. So first of all, what is the difference between the deep web versus the dark web? Sometimes people use them interchangeably. So for the purpose of our discussion, I talk about, uh, the open web and the dark web. So the open web are the web we use every day, the recipes, Yeah, it's

the recipes. How do we can Yeah, it can be indexed, so if you Google something, it will show up in a Google search result. UM. The deep web, which is often conflated with the dark web, but they are different, is things that are not indexed. So think about if you work at a corporation like your intra net. It's not necessarily bad, it's just not indexed on Google, right,

So it's not it can't it can't be searched. The dark web is something different, So not only is that not indexed, but it often is fully anonymized and encrypted UM. And the dark web often was built for good purposes like national security UM, but has been hijacked UM in many ways for illegal activity, this air being one of those. Well, I've never been on the dark web, but I have heard lots of horror stories about UM, people that for

revenge porn or whatever have put people on the dark Web. Um, I'm afraid to even investigate it for my own curiosity. I'm just terrified of it, just even saying it. Um. But it is where the majority of child sexual material is circulated, am I right? So we don't know there is a lot. There is a lot there, definitely, um. And but the scary thing is there is a lot on the open web. So going on these sites that

we see every single day. So an eight year old boy, if he googled boobies, he could pretty much get to child pornography pretty quickly, right, Um he if he if he google that, Plus you know a few other terms that are related to children. Um. Many of these companies implement tools to make sure that that type of abuse material is removed, but um, sometimes it's it slips through. And what is sex torsion? Yeah, it's like extortion, but

related to uh sex or sexual images. So this is where we see when we talk about teens and growing teens, really the one of the kind of biggest watch out areas right now. So it is essentially someone extorting sexual images from you. Or holding something over your head and getting you to participate in this type of exploitative behavior, usually self generated. So give me an example, will give me, give me a story that you've dealt with. Um. Sure,

so someone meets a stranger on mine. So perhaps you were talking about Instagram and you know, maybe the sexualization of girls. Someone, Uh, they have a public account, anyone could comment on their images. They start commenting on their images. They then get into their d m s. These people build what they think is a relationship, but they really have never met each other. Um, she your heat. It

happens to girls and boys. UM thinks that this person is their friends, so friends them on multiple other social media platforms, and then all of a sudden, this person starts asking for sexual images. Show me this, show me that. They send them an image, and then that person says, I need more. I need a video of you doing this. And the child says, you know what I've done. I don't, And this person says, well, you know what you friended

me on Facebook. I now have the d m s of all your family and everyone you go to school with. And if you don't do this, I'm going to take all those pictures you just sent me and I'm going to send them to everyone in your school, and I'm going to send him to your mom. So do it. And then all of a sudden, this child is in a position where they are doing worse and worse documentation

UM of abuse. And we've seen cases where not only is it self production, but where they are then asked to abuse a sibling or or someone else um in in the home. And you know, any anyone is vulnerable, right we we look at it child sex trafficking, and that affects you know, we can talk about that at another point. Predominantly UM a more at risk population of youth. This type of groomming and exploitation can really reach anyone

who's online. So let's let's talk about that. Who do you feel is the most vulnerable to be targeted for online grooming or sex sexploitation? Yeah, so UM, for online grooming and extortion, it is really any child that is on social media or connected device or in a community. It doesn't discriminate. So uh, any child that can be connected to a stranger or really anyone who might want to UM extort them is vulnerable. When we work on

child sex trafficking, we see different vulnerabilities. That is much more likely to be someone who has a risk factor of being in child welfare, being from a home where there's violence, or child sexual abuse, being runaway homeless, But those factors don't hold when we get to online abuse and grooming. It really is any child that's on the connected platform, and so they are highly vulnerable to someone who comes along and says, hey, I'll take care of you,

and then they start selling that child for sex. And the way child sex trafficking manifests in the United States is that oftentimes these children are sold on escort sites as adults, and so the person buying them doesn't really know that they're fourteen or fifteen years old, and that's not used as an enticer. I mean, do they use children. I mean, there's obviously going to be people that prefer sometimes,

but not the majority. And so there's a lot of there's a lot of false narratives out there right now about child sex trafficking in the United States that are really trying to drive fear through communities. But the reality is is that there's some high vulnerabilities that are associated with child sex trafficking and intigranted. It can happen to anyone, but it it predominantly happens to children who are already vulnerable because of another reason, when we talk about online grooming,

we don't see that being a similarity. The main vulnerability is are you online and and um, are you putting yourself in a position where you're having conversations with strangers or building those relationships? Do you feel like you don't have a safety net, an adult or caregiver to talk to in case something bad happens online? So there are very different profiles of what could put a child at risk for those two different types. I mean, I'm I'm like a hawk with this stuff, with my kids stuff.

And still my daughter who doesn't do the sexy sexy Instagram at all, she was on Skype or something and this thing popped up and said, hey, how'd you like to have a sugar daddy, which is terrifying. So besides a teenage girl who's doing sort of sexy Instagram, walk me through how a teenager can be groomed online. So, usually someone who's grooming a child online is not just grooming one child. They usually have multiple children and they're

perfecting their technique. They're seeing what happens. They might be blindly reaching out like you said on Skype, or they're watching their Instagram or their social media posts and understanding really what maybe motivates that child. One of the best safeguards to UH ensuring that a child isn't susceptible is having the conversation with your child before it happens. So if that happens first, before a child has any idea that that could happen, like why did someone say to

ask me for three books for a foot photo? And they think at two points, oh, that's funny, I can make three in bucks, as opposed to they already knew the minute they were handed the device that they might get texts or messages from people who they don't know, and those people might try to convince them that they're friends. But here's what happens. We're always going to have an open dialogue as the person who's handing you that device. I'm always gonna be here for you. I am not

going to get upset with you. You can't do anything wrong in this environment that would get me angry. I want you to be safe. Have you found that that a lot of um children that have been vulnerable to this kind of stuff, have kept it to themselves, have been fearful of communicating it with other people, and that's why they become victim to it. Yeah. Well, in our research, one of the main factors in an extortion or grooming situation getting out of hand is that the child felt

like they couldn't talk to anyone. So uh, when the perpetrator has that much control over child where they've isolated them from their family or their friends, um, then it gets bad very quickly because it's when the kids feel like they don't have someone to talk to that they feel trapped, and then the person who is grooming and extorting them is winning. They're going to keep that bind. I feel like we do so much parenting with the real life scenarios. You know, if this uncle or this person,

you know, you have to come tell me. But I find less and less parents do this with devices. I almost think it should be part of the ritual of giving your child their first device. Is this whole piece of education. The minute a device is put into the hands of a child, you start this conversation depending how old they are, um, right, and it has to be ag appropriate and then you have it often so it's

not a one and done. You m them the device, you talk about it once a week, you sit down, you say, show me what you're doing on those apps. Would love to better understand what among us is, you know, show me how to play Fortnite, and have those conversations, and then at some point you really have the direct conversation about what the threats are. And I think for many of us who are parents today, we didn't grow up with any of this. So it it is, it's scary,

and it's unknown. We have to remove the fear from it. We have to have these conversations as just normal conversations about how we prepare our children to live in a

digital world. Think about it about empowering them, making them more resilient, um helping them navigate it, versus coming from a place of a lot of fear where we're gonna shut it down or get really you know, angry, because then they don't feel like they're going to have a safety net, right, And whoever makes them feel comfortable online will make them feel more comfortable than their caregiver, the person who needs to be there to support them as

they navigate this world. Now, a quick word from our sponsors, welcome back to go ask Gali. Let's get back to the discussion. What are the suggestions UM, particularly from Thorn about making social media safer? That there are other tools or techniques that we can use to kind of keep our kids from this kind of harm. Much of this

is based on kind of age appropriateness. I think one is have a conversation early, have it often, UM, understand what applications or kids are using, and understand the safety features on it. So there are some applications where the default setting is that kids can chat with anyone or their accounts are public. So make sure you don't just let them sign up. Go in and see are are these accounts private? Can they not chat with anyone? Can they chat with only someone who's in the house. Can

they chat with someone who's on their friends list? UM, go through on a regular basis and have them talk about who who their friends are that are on their list. Right, So, if you've had an agreement that I'm okay with you friending people in this environment, but I wanted to be people that you know in real life. So once a week, let's talk about who's on that friend friend list and explain to them why right. So these blanket rules without an explanation of why, um, I think are hard for

kids to consume. But kids want to be safe too, So if you can explain to them why, um, I think that's important as you go along. So, for instance, a twelve thirteen year old, how much do you divulge about a person that could be grooming them? Do tell it it's for sexual exploitation, Like how far do you go? Um? Sometimes you have to give a little bit and then see where they go. Like, every child is different, right, It might it might be based on what they've heard

at school. Um. If they're in a group of friends who maybe aren't online a lot or don't talk about these things, they might not be ready for a more in depth conversation. But if they've heard things at school and they're curious, um, you start the conversation, give a little see what they ask. If they're asking, it's best to answer it factually. And you're a mother as well. You have three kids, so being immerged in this world, what kind of conversations are you having with your children?

I know they're younger, but no, but still, I mean, I think, um, I have taken the position of trying to be very factual UM, straightforward, non emotional UM, creating a a safe space so that they know the facts going in and they feel like they can come to me if anything, UM go sideways with them or themselves. Sometimes I have to take like ten deep breaths before I go into a conversation because I know a little too much. But I don't want them to feel fear.

I want them to feel empowered, and so I really just try to anchor all my conversations that way. So I have one child who will ask all the questions and so I give all the answers. I have another who who won't, and it's just not even on their radar. So I I just say, you know what, this person UM may not have the best intentions for you, UM or we just don't know, and so let's focus on

the people we do know and our friends. Here. I have those those same two children, and with my younger one, the one that really doesn't want to hear, gets very frightened by stuff. You know, we keep it in the stranger danger thing. Where is my older daughter who wants to know everything? She could rattle off every sex trafficking statistic around the world, like she confronts fear by giving me, give me all the information, that's my ammunition, tell me everything.

So I mean, I think you're right. I think you have to kind of uh create a scenario that's age appropriate if you're sort of these learning techniques or telling stories. The other thing I wanted to talk about was, um again, I call it real life. In real life, I've had situations where, uh, like one of my daughter's friends came over when she was fourteen, and she was asking me all these questions about statutory rape, what does it mean?

And how old you have? You know, to the point where I was like, this is a huge red flag. This fourteen year old is asking me question about statutory rape. How do I look for those red flags online? Yeah? Uh, it depends by age, right, So there's there's also something too as kids get older, demonstrating that you respect and

trust their privacy and balancing their safety. So when they're younger, I go back to some of those maybe like weekly conversations about looking at friends lists or understanding apps if you've started to do that. Um, as they're younger, when you get older, when you want to respect their privacy

and let them do their thing. Um. Then it comes down to have you planted the seeds of an open conversation so that instead of actually having their device in their hands and looking at it, you can talk to them and say, have you know, have you experienced anything online lately that makes you feel uncomfortable? Um? Is there any any challenging text you've gotten their messages that you know I can help you with? UM? Maybe red flags, especially when we're in a pandemic. Is have they become

more withdrawn? Are they in their room alone with the door closed for extended periods of time? UM? Do they seem more stressed or irritable or uh, you know, always having their device at a different degree than they used to. Now, this may not This may mean something else and may mean that we're in a pandemic. Internect their devices all the time, so you have to you have to be careful, but you have to partner that with trying to have those open, non judgmental conversations with the kids, UM, so

that they feel safe raising concerns. It's interesting have you guys discussed at all at Thorn about being in a pandemic and how people are not as strict about device rules right now? And how more and more kids are on their devices, much more than they were pre pandemic, right right, Um, we see all of the ingredients for it to get worse. The I think we'll have some reflective studies and you know, in a year from now,

we get through this and see what it was. But you know, you have more kids online, you have more people online, and just as I said before, all the good that has come with the Internet, all the bad. So when there's a rise of net presence, you're going to get a rise of bad things happening. But I I also think in addition to the perpetrators, you know, potential perpetrators online, we have to just look at the

behavior of sexting. I don't know if that's something your kids have brought up, but just how common you know, consensual sexting is, and and that something that can go from this is my boyfriend, I actually know this person and I've chosen to send a naked image can turn bad really quickly when that person decides to send that image on to the rest of the school. Well, I'm glad you brought this up because I don't understand sexting.

I don't understand it. I mean it's almost like when you know, twenty years ago people would say I made a sex tape. Why would you make a sex tape? It's gonna end up in the wrong hand, like nothing good can come from it. Um and again, this sexting is something with my own children, I say, there's no reason of her to do this. It will live forever. You know, Harvard will see it. You're not going to Harvard if they get a whiff of this. But also you know it's going to end up in the dark web.

But it's it's become so commonplace. And you know, I also think, I mean, that's child pornography if you're a teenager and you're sending naked photos to your boyfriend. And by the way, the boyfriend, just because his frontal lobe hasn't developed, he's going to show it to all his friends. And it's just terrifying to me, the sexting thing. But when you have adults around you that do it because it's you know, sexy and cute, somehow it takes the stigma off of it, I think. Or we'll see it

in shows and you know, it all seems normal. I said to my daughters, if you ever get sent a dick pic. You bring it to me right away, I will destroy that boy. Yeah, we we we were doing a lot of research right now with kids. About two years ago we started looking at this issue because again we focus on the broad you know, group of child sexual abuse material. What we were seeing was that a

big portion that was growing within that. A lot of that is produced by perpetrators documenting hands on abuse, but what we were seeing was this trend where a large part of it was becoming the self generated. And it's not all generated when someone grooms you. A lot of it was happening in this way through consensual sharing. And we went to go look at the studies that were out there, and we found that a lot of them were kind of five years old, and things moved so quickly.

We thought, we've gotta we gotta understand right now what kids are experiencing and trying to understand the conversation that might change behaviors or make kids more safe in a situation where this is happening. I'm not sure we're putting the genie back in the bottle right So, in a in a world where kids are going to do this, how do we make them as safe as possible. Even with teenagers I know or my own, you could easily see the scenario of you know that they have a boyfriend,

they trust him, show me some sexy pictures. They do that. Uh, later on they break up, there's revenge born, meaning the boy or the girl uses these pictures against them. It ends up in the dark web, and then you've got the sex tortion right there, right, Yes, she can be blackmailed for this these pictures she sent to her you know, cute boyfriend and Khaki's in a tie, who seemed like the nicest, most honorable boy. It can happen um to

anyone I are. The setting we did of kids found that about teen girls had shared a nude UM, one in ten teen boys had shared a nude, But over of kids thirteen to seventeen had seen nudes of someone else without their consent. So that's nearly half of kids have been shown a you know, shown a picture of someone else um on their on their device. And this gets back to teaching our kids the idea of consent. So how how can parents define consensual sharing for their

kids when it comes to social media. I think we should start with outlining if you're going to share images of your body and your you know what you consider private. Everyone has that differently. Just understand the consequence and understand what can happen, even if in that moment in time you firmly believe the person you're sending it to will never do anything. We gotta help us expand the realm of possibilities for kids. So let's make sure a child

knows that. And then second is if you receive an image, asking yourself was that image intended for me? Is it being sent to me with the intent and consent of the person whose body it is representing? And if not, um, it needs to stop at your device, and you probably need to alert someone either if you know the person who's emitted it is a caregiver, someone at your school, um,

and and really help stop that. And then the third would be to talk about how it's a criminal offense child pronocate, I mean, do you go into the scare tactics at all? I think that's part of the first conversation, you know, just in a factual way, like let me just talk to you about what you're gonna be coming it up against. In middle school or high school, you might get asked to share a picture of your chest or your private areas. I want to prepare with all

the facts before you get that question. Um. One, it's illegal you know to Uh. You might think you're sending it to the boy who says he loves you or the girl who says, um, he loves you, she loves you, but it could go elsewhere. And what how are you going to feel if the whole school has that picture? Right, Like, let's just talk through this scenario so that you can process this before the time comes. Um. So that's one, and then the second is if you are a recipient

of that, what is the definition of consent and intent? Um? And so these are just new conversations that we're not used to having that we have to make normal and have with our kids. All right, So, as a as a parent and citizen, of course, I want to know how we combat with this epidemic. But also because I want to circle back to Thorn, because you're addressing all these issues, Can you tell me a little bit about Thorne's strategy in working with law enforcement and tech companies? Yeah, so, um,

you mentioned this at the beginning. We have a bold goal. We want to eliminate the trade of child sexual abuse material online in the next ten years, and uh, we are building the technology systems globally to do that. And we think that there's three kind of key things that we have to do. One is we're building solutions for law enforcement to help them find children faster. So every imager video that we see online is a child. Um some of those represent children who are being abused right now,

and some of it's just recirculated content. So you know, once an image goes viral, it can be seen millions of times. So you have to use data and technology to sift through all those mounds of data, get down to where there's a victim right now, and help law enforcement have all the information they need to find that child. So we build solutions for law enforcement to help them do that and get to the kids who need their

help immediately. The second thing that we do is every single company this is we're talking about the open web now that hosts user generated content Instagram, Fisco, Facebook, Flicker, Shutterfly, anywhere you can post an image or video I believe needs to proactively be detecting child sexual abuse of material

and ensuring it doesn't go viral on their platform. That is a basic standard I think for any tech company, and the reality is is that there's probably fifteen to twenty that actually have the systems in place to proactively do this, and yet there's hundreds of companies out there. And so that's an area of work where we've actually built software for companies to make it really easy so they can no longer say like I can't afford to build this, or I don't know how to build it.

We've built it. It needs to be used this software some other type of software to detect this type of abuse content which is also illegal to have on your platform at scale. And so those two areas we build technology. We connect the data around the world so that it moves really quickly, uh, law enforcement and tech companies have the intelligence they need to find kids and take content down.

And then our third area of work is what we've been talking about today, is um there is no technology that you can put in place that can help change behaviors with kids and caregivers. That these are conversation sations

that we need to be having. This is why we need to be talking today because we need to reach moms and parents and dads and caregivers and teachers who are with children to really normalize this conversation and realize that when we're talking about sex said, when we're talking about developing kids, we have to add in the fact that they are developing in a digital world and they're gonna do some crazy stuff and we need to arm them with the information, um and the security and the

resources to reduce the potential horm Absolutely, God, I agree with. Is there any kind of software that a parent can use now that we can see our devices? There are software products out there that you can put on kids devices or home devices to you know, detect potential threats. Um. I don't know any off the top of my head, and I think some may work well. My only caveat to that is that I don't think that type of software is a substitute for the good conversation at the

open door. Yeah, every time you're child, you're given a child of device. You go. This comes with instructions for me, sit down, grabag ginger ill, and let's talk about this. So um, yeah, you guys are just doing such great stuff. Is there any government organization that we can write to? Is there any push we can sort of accelerate from

our side? I think, um, stop sex stortion dot com is a resource that I think you know, parents can pick up one to educate themselves, to to share with their schools because there's there's school resources on there of how to start to have this conversation. There's a cute little video on there that makes it really easy. It has cats in it. Everyone loves a cat. Uh, some people some people don't say, some people don't, but it'll

make you laugh. Um. It really kind of breaks down some of the barriers to this conversation in a really really easy way. And then if you or someone you know is being extorted or being groomed and you need an outlet, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a hotline. So you call that hotline you report that. I know I have been approached by many parents who

feel like we don't know where to go. If you call your local police department and this is a digital crime and they don't know where the perpetrator is, they might not know how to even handle this. So reach out to the National Center for Missing Exploited Children if you need help now. Uh. And then thorn dot org has is our organization has a ton of additional resources and research. If you want to learn. Julie Cardulla, thank you so much. Well, thank you for being brave enough

to put this on there. It's it's not always comfortable to talk about. Sometimes it can be scary for us parents. UM, I'm eternally grateful for that. Thank you for well. As Kara Sawa says, never look away, and I believe that, so thank you so much. I agree. Thank you the power of informing, being honest and being an advocate. Just recapping some of the main recommendations from today's episode that parents can use for the future. Thank you for listening

to Go ask Ali. Remember to subscribe to Go ask Alli and follow me on my social media Twitter, at Ali E Wentworth in Instagram. The Real Ali Wentworth. Go ask Ali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.