HODGENVILLE, Ky. — In the town of 3,000, weekly cases of online child sexual abuse show up according to Chief James Richardson of the Hodgenville Police Department.
"Everybody knows it's out there, but nobody wants to talk about it because of the stigma that comes with it," he said.
The chief knows talking about online child sexual abuse is tough, but he wants families to do it anyways. At the small department, he investigates those troubling cases.
Twelve phones, stacked together, are a mound of digital crime scenes sitting on his desk. Many of them are sextortion cases, where someone's nude photos are used to blackmail them into giving money or more pics to an online predator.
"We've had our kids involved in international investigations," he said, "we've had kids that were selling other kids nudes that they got ahold of on the internet."
Getting someone to report the crime can be hard, however. "Especially with parents," social worker Brionna Taylor-Garrett said. "No one wants to think that they're child is doing something like this. But what they don't realize is it's not necessarily the child's fault. There are people that, this is their job to be online and to get money from kids and to groom kids."
Taylor-Garrett works at the department. She hopes families can have discussions about the issue as early as age ten. In Hodgenville, they've seen cases where fourth and fifth graders were duped into giving out nude photos. "You can't delete them," Taylor-Garrett said, "they can easily be shared without your knowledge. So it's just important to have that conversation just straight-and-to-the-point without sugarcoating it.
She also wanted victims to know that they're not the ones in trouble. "We're looking to find that perpetrator—that's usually an adult—that shouldn't be having these conversations with kids or photos of children," she said, "that's our focus."
This type of online sexual abuse against children can affect their mood dramatically. Taylor-Garrett urges families to look for warning signs like suddenly deleting social media, giving away personal items, or isolating from friends and family.
"Even if you don't report it," the chief said, "we want you to get the help and the resources you need." The department has their own at lchat.online.
Other organizations like the Internet Crimes Against Children task force and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have help too. The NCMEC has a tool for helping take personal photos down.
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