I'm happy to have Seth also knows the Texas Detective. He has his own TikTok channel. I've watched a lot of his videos, and if you're a parent of children, you need to pay attention to what he's doing. We had the Safe Surfing Foundation and they talk about some of the programs that they have to prevent stuff. And this dude is out here investigating these things day in and day out and has made this his mission. And I'm really really happy to have them on the show. Seth, introduce yourself and just kind of tell us how you ended up. Well, I guess you wanted, well tell us your story, man, I'd love to so. Yeah. So I'm Seth. I am, if my name doesn't give it away, a detective in Texas. I've been in law enforcement for just under ten years. I grew up in Oklahoma, and I don't really go back there much anymore, but I like to say that Texas is my birth state. Anyways. I love the I love the state, but kind of just got into law enforcements at a fairly young age twenty two, and from there it just kind of, you know, did the basic patrol work and getting into foot pursuits and all the fun things. And I worked a couple of cases where it involved children, and those kind of cases they stick with you and you kind of just want to see them through and maybe do a little more besides just the preliminary report. You want to investigate a little further, but that always gets pushed off to detectives. So I had. The urge to get into a detective position, and whenever I did that, I went to a few trainings regarding different different things for children, like child abuse and unexplained children or child death and homicides of children and stuff like that. And my supervisors in my police department actually approached me and said, hey, we know you've gone to these trainings. Would you be interested in taking these cases over? I said, absolutely, and here we are. That was I've been. I've been working these cases for a little over two years now. So so as far as these cases are concerned, is there anything that you're seeing in them that there's a common thread in them that you're seeing that like parents need to be aware of. Yeah, what I preach the most is online safety for kids. There's there's a there's a number out there. I believe it's at any given time, five hundred thousand online predators are active at any given time. I don't know who's out there counting every one of these online predators, but that's a crazy that's a crazy number. And so whenever people give their kids devices, iPads or whatever and they don't use them responsibly, they're or they're not taught to use them responsibly, that's how we get kids who become victims and they get exploited through different different apps. As long as it's on the internet, you can be exploited pretty. Much, right, And so that's what I see the most of is exploitation of children ranging from under the age of ten to high school age kids, you know. So that's that's probably the biggest biggest thing that I see. Okay, so on cases like that, is there any are there any cases that stand out in your mind that you're like, man, this this was or is it all of them that you look at and go, this is preventable. It didn't have to happen like this. Yes, So, so having kids, every parent kind of ask themselves at what age should I give my kid a phone or an iPad or whatever. One case that specifically sticks out to me was one of the cases I've worked of a kid that was under the age of ten that had pretty much just unrestricted access to her iPad. So she's using an app, you know, communicating with who she thinks her kids. Turns out it's not a kid, it's an almost forty year old man, and he ends up instructing her to how to create a snapchat. So they leave the app, they go over to. Snapchat, and he's like, well, you know, since we're friends now, i'd like to know who I'm talking to. So she sends pictures of herself just smiling, you know, happy little kid. But as we all know, that progresses and it gets to a point of if you want me to send you money for this on the app, you know, like we'll take roadblocks. For example, like they have roebucks. Sometimes people they'll offer these kids, hey, well, I'll give you roebucks if you give me a picture of yourself. And as soon as the kids sends a picture of themselves because they want to buy the new skins in the game, that person will keep saying send me this, or I'm going to do this, send me this, or I'm going to do this. And this kid she's under the age of ten, and you've got a forty year old man out here exploiting her. She doesn't know what to believe or what he's gonna do, so he starts threatening her family. All these different things that could have been prevented. And you know not, I'm not gonna put shame on those families or anything that do that, because most of them are they're not aware of what happens online, right, But it's preventable. If parents can become educated and use resources to know what their kids can be exposed to, it's gonna make it a lot harder for these predators to get ahold of kids. So my simple mind works like if I took my kids to a playground and there's this huge dude shoving them, shoving kids down a slide, and I know at the end they might have a really good time going down that slide, but when they land, it's going to be really bad. I'm not going to send them on that playground, but we're going to give them a device that gives them, That gives someone that has the ability to manipulate your child. I don't understand it. I really don't. Yeah, and even further, just give them unrestricted access where there's no parental controls to where they can do whatever they want on there, and whoever wants to do something that them can do it. And a lot of that is used by threats, and kids are unfortunately, unfortunately easily manipulated, right, And so you use somebody who's done this to hundreds of kids and then you get this kid who's been exposed to this for this first time. It makes it an easy target for them. So what I know, I watched one of your one of your reels, I guess is what they're called again the donkey. So I watched one of them, and it's you had three different apps that you think are problematic, that are that are pretty prevalent. Just list those for parents, because I really, if we step on somebody's toes today, that's okay because like from my standpoint, kids are worth that and absolutely so go ahead. Absolutely so. Uh that video you're referencing was the three most dangerous apps to kids that I could that I personally, that's just my opinion these are the three. But that's your opinion, is not just like out of the out of the blue, you as a professional who investigates kids being uh, being manipulated. You know this for a fact. Yes, yeah, And it's backed up by seeing the worts over and over and over and over every month I see these specific ones. So number three I had with Discord okay, and then I had Roadblocks and then Snapchat. In both of those, you know, Discord you can create chats to uh talk with groups in and share images and videos and whatnot back and forth, and so a lot of that. A lot of the times that I. Get tip off of that is for like online enticement where they're trying to solicit a kid to do something, or they're even sending child sex abuse material over over their chats. So that's typically Discord roadblocks. I see a lot of online enticement. You know, they're chatting, their chatting and chatting, and then they get their ages and from there they will take their conversation. They'll like, hey, you know it's kind of hard to talk here on roadblock. What if we use a different a different app to communicate? Okay, what's that app going to be? Snapchat? Because what these predators want to do is they want to be able to take that chat from somewhere that their parents can go back and monitor what their kids talking about. They want to take it somewhere. Where it is harder to keep track of because you know Snapchat, if you send pictures, that picture to the parents is not able to be seen again unless the kid takes a screenshot. Of it or something like that. That picture's gone ween law enforcement can recover that photo for a period of time, but it just makes it harder for parents because they don't know what. The kids are doing. But that's why I had Snapchat listed as my number one, because that's where the majority of these end up going to, because it's a fairly discreet way of communicating with kids, and the parents don't even know that their kids kid has Snapchat. So what I'm hearing is you as a parent can have the best intent and you can say, hey, I want I'm gonna have these controls, and but as much time as you spend thinking like, hey, I am going to give them access to roadblocks, I mean, because I mean, that's a pretty cool game. Everybody likes playing it and everything else, and everybody at the school is doing it and everything else. Talk a little bit about again, these predators know where these kids hang out, and you can't have like this blind eye to if there's a spot where a bunch of kids congregate, predators are going to go there and they're going to find ways to transition them and make them more vulnerable. Talk about that. Yeah, well, it's just like you hear predators going to playgrounds. Why do they go to playgrounds because they can go get pictures of kids doing innocent things and they can turn it into whatever they want to turn it into. It's the same thing being online. They're not going to go and just chat. They do, but if they're wanting to get a hold of a kid or talk to a kid, they're not going to go talk to a bunch of adults. They're going to go where they know young teens are playing, typically around twelve to thirteen years of age, I believe is the most targeted age. But they're going to go on roadblocks. They're going to get on. Just different different ways or different applications or gaming formats to try and talk to these kids. You know, it even. Happens on online gaming with like PlayStation's xboxes, because. You can talk to a whole host of people on there. But I think what I see a lot of is parents are afraid to tell their kids know they can't have roadblocks, because the kids want to be able to communicate with their friends in school and be able to go to school the nex day and be like, hey, that was fun playing one of these fifty thousand games that's on Roadblocks. We had a great time. And I grew up where I played. Xbox all the time with my friends online, and we would go to school and we talk about the fune we had. But what I tell parents, and what I tell my own kid is if you don't know what you're getting into, I don't want you. I don't want to send you into that. I'm prepared. And so yeah, my kid, she doesn't, she can't play Roadblocks. She's not happy about it, but she understands because I explained to her the dangers and why there's a reason behind everything I do, and she understands that. Whether she agrees with it or not, she knows she's not going to play it. All of her friends play it. I've talked to her friends' parents and told them this is what I see, and it's constant. Just look at news articles. They're getting sued all the time and people that they choose to I don't know if they just want to ignore it or they just want to act like it doesn't exist. I don't know, but it's dangerous and just having that discussion with your kid and telling them we're not we're not going to do that right now. When you get old, if you make your own decisions, you can play if you want. So for parents that, let's walk through a couple of different types of parents. Parents that their kids are just starting to get to the age where they feel like they can go online, have a device to communicate and everything else. Talk about that a little bit about like how do you prepare that parent for that technology going into that child's hand, Like how do you come up with a plan of action to prevent them from being a victim online? So one thing I preach is parnal controls. Okay, because there's various forms of that. Some people just use the printal controls that are installed on the device, and then some people they'll go get a phone specifically that has uh has printal controls. Like I'm not sure if you've seen the video or not, but like we use we use the Bark phone. It's actually been great. It was referred to me by another detective I work with so I was like, all right, if he trusts it, I trust it. And that's actually what I recommend to people because after using it, I see my kiddo, she can't text people. And this is the only phone she's ever had. She can't text people unless I approve it. So that's one thing for parents who are giving phones to kids, making sure that they're ready for their kids to try and download whatever is cool in school, and being able to monitor what they're using. And you know, take your kid's phone if you need to. Every night, whatever, once a week, whatever you want to do as a parent, and go through the phone, see what apps they're using, see if they have see if they have little. Ways of hiding the apps. Like you know, there's some screens where you have to double tap two or three times and then the apps will pop up. And uh, just trying to stay educated on those things for parents. Because the kids they're smart, they're they've grown up with technology. They're gonna be a lot better with technology than we will ever be. So what kind of what kind of resources are out there for parents to like get ahead of it. So like the bar so you're saying, like for a parent, that's just ready to give their child a phone, go with the bar Gap correct or Bark phone. Yeah, that's that's personally what I use. I know there's others that people use, but I don't personally have experience. With those, but but I know what's worked for us, and it is the. Bark phone, and that's that's what you would recommend starting off. But if you're but how do we educate parents and how to parents educate themselves on what is out there? Technology wise? Number one? But number two to monitor what they're doing, your children are doing, Like, yeah, because kids, I feel like kids have, like you said, they can navigate something so much quicker than we can. And for a parent to try to catch up, what's the best way for them to like catch up? Well, I would say watching my tiktoks for one. But yeah, so, but aside from that, the National Center for Missing Exploited Children have tons of things like videos, educational videos, powerpoints, all this stuff that talk about being safe online for families. There's there's videos for kids, there's videos for teens, there's videos for adults. But then there's also like the FBI they have you can go to their page and look at their resources and stuff, and they have a lot of they have a lot of like little kind of like digital handbooks stuff you can kind of scroll through and read through about online safety for your kids and kind of what the most current apps are or even honestly, we all have access to chat GPT. You can type in what should I be looking for in my kid's phone or what signs show to look for that my kid is having an issue maybe being exploited it online through a phone or whatever, and it'll give you steps, it'll tell you look for these apps. These are the most sought after apps by child predators at the moment. You know. So you've got all kinds of information on the palm of your hands if you just take to it and you want to take time and you want to educate yourself, I personally think that's the best way. So I think what you're doing is amazing. And so just talk about what you do with TikTok and how that has been beneficial for parents but also for children. Just talk about because I feel like that's your mission. I mean, I feel like you have a job, and your job is to go after these child predators. But I feel like you're being proactive in your own community by making these types of videos. Yeah, so. The way that I feel like it's beneficial toward parents, even people who aren't parents yet they watch the videos. I get tons of fee back, and it's from people who, like I said, don't have kids yet, people who have several kids. But I get a lot of feedback of you know, I never thought about this or I never thought about it this this way. I even have people reach out to me that were victims of abuse as a kid and they will send me topped out letters of explaining what happened to them and how they didn't feel like they had a voice, and then a way that. It benefits kids. I've had several parents reach out to me and tell me that because of my videos, they decided to look through their kids phone and I just have one, I think two days ago tell me that they were not aware that roadblocks was what it was, so they looked on their kids phone and they had to contact the police because their kid was being exploited or trying to be exploited. Solicited, I would say, But then they say that they sit down and they'll have those discussions with their kids because they've not they've not done that before and then they see because some of these people they may know me from my job, they may see me around and then they'll coment on a video and say, hey, I know where you work and I've seen the stuff you post, and hearing that it's this local, it really hits home and it makes me want to talk to my kids. So the biggest thing I'm trying to do is educate. But also I'm not dumb. I know that there's child predators that watch my videos, and to me, I hope that they watch my videos and they just get furious with what I'm talking about, and I hope that they understand that they're not slick. It just takes a matter of time before everybody gets educated on how they do it. So it's just removing from your standpoint, it's prevention, but it's also for some of the predators putting them on notice sake. We're we're not going to lose this war with our children. We're gonna win it. And the way we're gonna win it is educating them. And because of the way that you put the information out there on TikTok to entertain but also educate, that's you're fast tracking it. Yeah, one of the things that I one of the videes that I watched that I really really liked and just talk about making it what it made. And I think it's not just on child prayers, but you know, victims of sexual assault is believing. You know that you will be believed, Like come forward and talk and you know you will be believed. Just kind of talk about what led you to that point and just what your thought process is when you make a video like that. Yeah. So with something like that, I go back to some of the cases I've worked and a lot of hesitation from victims to want to pursue charges further because they're afraid that somebody along the lines won't believe what happened and it's going to be like a he said this, she said this, And I think they are in fear of something like maybe them not getting justice for what happened to them, and then people holding it against them, saying that they were liars and all these different things. And I always tell them that's not the case. If nobody wants to listen, keep talking, keep pushing until somebody listens, right, Because to me, I couldn't. Imagine I was never abused like that as a kid. But I couldn't imagine having my innocence taken and then trying to hold all that in and not tell somebody knowing that my childhood was that somebody tried to take my childhood, somebody tried to ruin my future, and then trying to hold that all to myself. It's a lot. That's a lot of weight to carry. And also I had a family member, or not a family member, a follower who said they have a family member that. Kind of held it in for a while, and. She just wanted me to make sure that I expressed how important it is to get that out there to these people, to let them know that they will be listened. And a sad note to that is to the parents if their kid says something, listen to what they're saying. They may not straight up tell you so and so did this to me, but they may say, you know, I don't want to go see my grandpa anymore because he gives me hugs and I just don't like it. And it could sound simple and easy and just like that. And I've had parents who just brushed it off and never thought of anything, and then years later come in and they say we found out why you're like, okay, and this is exactly what happened because and it wasn't nothing, no fault to the parents, They just they didn't dig any further into it. But there's usually a reason why kids decide they don't want to go see anybody anymore. Well, I mean, it's interesting you say that. My wife's a prosecutor and that's one of the things that she dealt with recently, is and she she put that out there, and she had an expert come in there. And people lie for for two reasons, is what the expert said. One is to protect themselves and the other is I'm trying to think of how she said. One is the is the lie to get something. That is one reason they lie, and the other one is something to the effect of they lie to help to make themselves look better. In a victim of a sexual assault, especially a child, both of those boxes are not checked because it doesn't benefit them because it usually is a family member or somebody inside their circle of trust that has done it to them, and so they it is a lose And I wish I could remember the exact words. I wish you was here. But basically, if a kid tells you something, it's probably true because they have no reason to lie. There's no benefit for them saying this family member did this to me, or someone in my circle of trust has done this to me. There is absolutely I can't and maybe you can educate me. Is there any situations you think the kid is going to be dishonest about a sexual assault or being exploited where it benefits them to lie. No, I've not. I've not worked one, Like, especially if they're they're younger kids. They shouldn't know what any of that stuff means anyways, all right, to be able to fabricate a lie of that extent and say so and so did this to me. That's typically not the case. And anytime that I've had a younger child make an outcry, there's been some truth to it. Yeah. You now, maybe they don't recall every little detail, but what they do recall is it's true. Yeah. I think about a case that I worked, and I think, like, with what you're doing, there has to be a lot of satisfaction at the end of it, you know, realizing that these that you are making a difference like you are. But a case that I worked is there was a comment made at the end of the act and there was no evidence other than that child's testimony. And that's what we went on, is we went on, there is no way a child could come up with that kind of a statement and be that And it wasn't like any bad words. It was just a vile statement from an adult to a child that something to the effect of I was glad, I'm glad I was the one that brought you into womanhood. That is not a child statement. And I mean, it's sickening to think about that. There are people out there that are, like, you know, terrorizing our kids and basically hunting them for their own satisfaction. It just it's got to be tough to deal with that day in and day out. But I guess there is some relief for it by being able to go on and make these TikTok videos and you have that positive feedback where people are like, are actually listening and you're getting you know, you're getting the message out there. Yeah. Absolutely, And that's so whenever I started making the tiktoks, I'd even told my wife my goal before I even made tiktoks. Let's go back a little bit, okay, I always. Told life if I ever had any time of platform where I could reach people. Obviously I'm not gifted enough to play a professional sport, right, but if I had a platform to where I could reach people, what I would want to tell them is what these kids have to go through that whenever they wake up on their birthday, it's not a special day to them, And when they wake up on Christmas, it's not a special day to them because they get abused physically, sexually, emotionally, all these different things. And not that I want people to wake up and think about that every day and just be depressed, but think about it and don't let it slip your mind, because what we try to ignore as adults who are disgusted by the thought of somebody doing that to a kid, there's toddlers, there's infants, there's toddlers, there's young teens. There's kids all over the world that live that. And while it makes us upset at our stomachs, like I feel sick about it, can you imagine how the kid feels repeatedly being abused And it drives me insane. And so that was kind of the that was kind of the motivation to start the tiktoks, and some of my earlier tiktoks were just kind of just random to try and build followers. And I think whenever I hit around the twenty thousand mark is whenever I really started talking about it, because I felt like I had enough followers that somebody's gonna see it and it will still push it. Whereas if I started talking about this stuff with five or ten followers, I felt like the algorithm would probably shut me down because nobody wants. To hear that stuff. But now it's going pretty quick, and I'm thankful for that because I can do what I wanted to do, and I only planned to grow from here. No, I think it's great what you're doing. I think one of the things and I'm gonna throw something out to you that we dealt with with safe surfing that I want you to comment on, and if I would say, you're going to be about as disgusted with it as I am. About COVID and what the school systems did. You can judge them one way or the other as far as that's concerned, but we got we pretty much gave them access to the internet. These kids, every single kid from K through twelve have a government issued computer and ability to get online with and we're issuing them to people who their parents may or may not be involved. So this same school systems that we have that seem to have all kinds of other agenda items. Safe surfing is in West Virginia and basically they have a program that is free that they have older students. It's called it's called cybrus Watt and basically, these older students create a curriculum to educate their grade down on how to safely navigate the Internet. And do you want to guess how many school systems in Virginia have it? None? Yeah, and nobody wants to do it. It's one hundred percent free. You're fine to give a kid a computer and hope it works out. You're fining to dictate all these different things. But why in the world, if we have something that is free, that doesn't cost anything other than a little bit of effort, why would you not use it to impact these kids and prevent them from being victims. I wish I had a great answer, but I don't. And then these schools they wonder why their kids are depressed and committing suicide because stuff that they don't prepare them for happens to them, and they feel like their life is over right. But as much as it's a parent's responsibility, it's also a school's responsibility. The school teaches, but they don't teach that. And I don't know why. But is it that they don't believe that it's happened, or are they just like parents that they want to turn a blind eye to it, that it doesn't happen. I think it's that. I think they want to act like it doesn't happen. I think they know what happens. You know, it happens in every school. I can't think of a school, even the smallest of schools. I can probably go talk to some administration and they'll tell me, yeah, we've heard of those cases and we've had a couple in our school. What are you doing to prevent it? Yeah, nobody's doing it. I think. I don't know. When I think about the school systems and things like that is extremely frustrating that, like I said, I feel like we're running into a We already have the we already have the information that shows that this is this is a problem. But because it's a little bit uncomfortable that parents won't talk to their kids. The schools don't want to make the time. I guess I don't know. I mean I think about universities and I think about I'll say this outright, I mean, you know, you have large universities that have Title nine programs because we've ignored sexual assault on campuses for so damn long and now we're paying a heavy price. Is that what's going to happen with this? Because like from my standpoint, I don't know anything else that's going to rock them into reality because they whether they want to say it or not, they've given them a tool that is going to turn them into a victim. Absolutely. Yeah. Anytime they have access to the internet and nobody's taught them how to use it safely, there's a I would say almost one hundred percent chance that somebody online will solicit them. But as much as giving them that computer and then not training them how to use it appropriately. How many of these schools do you think are implementing programs for people to come in and talk to their their staff about inappropriate relationships with kids. Probably not a whole lot, because and you hear about it all that tiver happens. You know what happens, what do you what are you going to do to prevent it? And nobody these schools, I'm sure there are some out there, but I haven't met one yet that's bringing people in to talk to their staff. About where, yeah, like where the line is, how to stay out of this situation. I mean, hell, they hire people, They hire people, and that's the other thing is just with the technology and everything else. I think we had a parent, we had a parent or a teacher here that got recently arrested and they had come from another school system starting in the school and somehow somebody published the information and they found out like that he was under investigation in another jurisdiction in Virginia for a sexual assault. And so I just I think we always talk about, like, hey, we're really worried about our kids, but I think at this point to some degree, and I'm just as guilty. You know, it's easy as the parents to sit there in point what other people are doing wrong. But like, as a parent, I don't feel like I've done a great job with my kids as far as educating on what's out there, and so you know, and I think that's just something that we have to do as parents is just be honest with ourselves and say, yeah, it's very uncomfortable for me to say that this dude is going to this this person is going to go and and victimize you, and this is what it looks like to be a victim. It's an uncomfortable conversation, but it's not near as not near as uncomfortable as dealing with the fallout after they're already a victim. Yeah. I've seen families completely fall apart after something like that, and it's like, all right, you know, I don't want to go have that discussion with my kids, but I would way rather have an uncomfortable five or ten minute conversation than having to deal with the trauma that is caused by that for years and years, you know, because to me, my kids they have goals. You know. One of them says she's gonna be a vet. She wants to be a doctor, she wants to be a police officer, she wants to do all these things. And that's just a kid's mindset. But there's nothing to say that she can't go on to be a doctor or something that's going to benefit the world. But if something happens to her and it can change the outcome of her future because of me not wanting to have an awkward conversation. I don't think I would ever forgive myself, you know. So, So how do we I know you talked about this earlier, about these kids waking up and on their birthday and it's not a good day and just the way that makes us feel. How do we how do we transition that into action for people? I know you're putting a lot of information out there, but like I feel like it almost is one of those things where you almost have to shake somebody into reality, and I don't I don't know what that looks like. Yeah, trying to prevent kids who are already in those situations. I think a lot of it's going to have to come down to. Public awareness, knowing what to look for for like abused kids and like you know, toddlers that have bruising on parts of their they shouldn't have bruising, and doctors and stuff, Pediatricians they are all trained and knowing all those things. But the general public, I think I think it is a I think people are afraid to stand up as one person whenever they see somebody doing something wrong. I'll give you an example, I have a case. That I'm not sure exactly what's happening, yet still trying to get some information on it. But a reporting party decided to not call the police and waited until this man and this little girl were gone to report it to the staff at this establishment of what was going on. But basically, the. Reporting party overheard this man takes this little girl into a bathroom and sounded like he was beating her. The girls screaming, and then she comes out and she's got markings. All over her body, and they walk out and get in a car. Instead of stopping them out there, instead of calling on one while it was going on, wait until they were gone, and then still didn't call the police, instead told the establishment, Hey, this is what happened, and then the establishment called us. And that's where I think. You know, maybe it was nothing. Maybe the kid was being dramatic because she was getting her butt spanked or something. I'm not sure, but what if the kid was actually being beaten, and instead of trying to stop it because whatever reason, maybe you were uncomfortable in this situation, instead of stopping it, you not let that little girl go home with the person who was potentially beating her, and you don't know how far it's going to go from there. You know, maybe there was one time incident more than likely wasn't. Maybe went home beat her more. You know, you don't know, But I feel like that's the public's perspective of things, is they're afraid to stand up as one person to try and correct something, but would rather be more comfortable in a group. And I think that's just the truth. So how do you start a big enough group where people will pay attention? Because I you know, like I said, I I don't work the cases like you work. I mean I'll that I'll every once in a while I'll get a child exploitation case. But I think from working them day in and day out, that has to wear on you at some point and has to I don't want to call you a victim, but like, at what point for you do you get so frustrated and they're like what am I doing? Like I can't. I mean, I think it has to help to do your you know, do the TikTok, But like at what point do you go like you just want to grab somebody and just like start shaking them and going like pay attention I have way too much work, and you need to step up as a parent, so I stop having that much work. Yeah, well, it's always disheartening whenever you know, I make a video talking about monitoring kids devices because that's a preventive way of them being exploited. And then I have parents comment. And it's not very many of the parents, but there's been some parents that comment and say, well, that's an invasion of my kids privacy, and that drives me insane. As long as my kids are living under my roof, they're living under my rules. If I say I want to look at their phone and I pay for that phone, I'm going to look at it, whether they want me to or not, because my goal as a parent is to protect them. And I feel like too many parents are trying to be friends. And I think that's where a lot of it comes from. Is that's where a lot of my frustration comes from. Is when they don't believe their kids, or they try and say, oh, that probably didn't really happen and you maybe just dream that, or just being afraid to look at their kids stuff because they don't want to offend their child. We can only do so much if you're not willing to try and protect your kid. You can't be mad at the police whenever we are not able to solve the case because whatever reason. So here's here's like a wild card question. What video did you make that you've got the most likes of that you look at and go, that's you know, that's really good. But that's not what I was trying to say. And then like I saw one of your videos, You're like, I don't think many people are going to pay attention to this, but I'm going to say it anyway. So which ones are really hitting really good and which ones aren't? The ones? I think the ones that really hit good are the ones that have more of a shock the families. Like I did a video about not posting your kids pictures online of them in bathing suits. Uh wait a minute. The guacamole, right, yea, yep, got it? Uh was gua it was something like that. It was making avocado avocado. Yeah, I was in the name. Uh I was. I was thinking I nailed it and then I missed it was right, it was the right vegetable there. Hey, you even convinced me that you had it? Thanks, all right, go ahead like that. I never before working these cases, I never would have thought that predators would find an innocent beach photo of my family and use it for uh, their self gratification. But every search warrant that I've gone on, you know, I'm looking through devices that I find stuff on, and that with those like the child sex abuse material photos videos mixed in there, I will find where family members post pictures, you know, with their kid at the beach in Florida or California wherever, and it's an innocent family photo and they're all wearing their bathing suits, and it'll be a group photo of the family. You can swap over a few and then you're going to have a picture of a kid, a little kid in a bathing suit. And tell me why a fifty five or sixty year old man has a picture of a four or five year old little girl in a bathing suit in. His phone where he also has. Child sex abuse material, which I mean, I can't think of a good reason. There is no good reason. Yeah, we know the reason they have that. But people that tell me, they're like, well, I only have close friends and family on there, and I can look at their profile and they have one hundred and fifty friends or two hundred friends. I'm like, so, how well do you know those two hundred people, because. Not well enough to leave them for them to babysit your kids. And that's basically what that's the same level of trust. Yeah. Yeah, And these people that I talk to that are married to their spouse and I go and tell them, yeah, we're here to start your house, and this is what we're looking for, and this is why we're looking for it. I've had family members completely break down because you know, they don't expect it. And these people are good at hiding it. They're good at not letting their spouse know or their kids know what they're into. And so if their own spouse don't know them well enough, I guarantee you being friends with them on Facebook is not scratching the surface. I've never thought about it. That is that makes I don't think I'll have any bacon for a while because of that. Thank you. I don't know, it's just it's beyond me that I mean that. I don't know. I don't get it. I don't get parents not being engaged. So I feel like this might be a good transition. Talk a little bit about what you learned at the latest iye CAAC meeting. You said that that the threat of bullying and stuff like that which has caused the death of some teens. Talk about that a little bit and what parents can do to navigate that. Yeah, so just as much as. You will see these predators and stuff get online and ask these kids for pictures of themselves, pretending to be a fourteen year old girl, fifteen year old girl, whatever, and they will get a picture of somebody's junk and then they're like, hey, you know, actually I'm sixty years old or I'm fifty years old, and I'm going to send this out to all of your friends and family. If you don't pay me twenty or thirty bucks, good chances they're going to send that out whether they get their twenty or thirty bucks. Anyways, I've also seen that same stuff happening with their own peers, where they'll pretend to be somebody you know, and just to get a picture of it so they can spread it around school and bully these kids. And there's been several there's been several that and you can even find them in national news headlines where kids took their own life, and it's usually about I think what I learned in that ICAT or in that CAAC conference was I think the average time is about twenty to thirty from the time that they get that first threat of their video or picture being published that they actually will take their own life. And that's crazy to think. Even the very first day of school in. The city that I work in, there was a kid who went home and took her life because she was sounds like she was being bullied, and like, that is completely unacceptable. And my kids have been told over and over and over and over, if I ever catch you bullying somebody, that's gonna be about the last thing you ever want to do, because it's you're going to have a hard punishment because we don't put up with it, just like I'm not gonna put up with somebody bullying my. Kid, right, Yeah, I mean that's it. I mean that brings up another thing is that I'm plugging them a little bit. But like safe Surfing, that is something that they have, is they actually have some kind of AI. That a lot. It's an app that these kids can put on this on the phone. So like what you just described, would it would intercept that and say, hey, you need to talk to the authorities, which to me is I don't I don't know. I just for me, I just don't know what we can do. I hear people talk about human trafficking. I talk it's whatever, the talking points of the day, But I don't hear a whole lot of people saying like, Hey, our kids are in danger, and what are we doing to fix that? Yeah. I think honestly a lot of people are just pretending they're not in danger. They'll hear, they'll read it on Facebook, and then that'll be it. You know. They'll be shocked when they hear if someone I'm taking their own life, but after a week or two, they'll go back to doing whatever they were doing before and hope that it doesn't happen to them until it does, you know, And I hope that doesn't happen to anybody that watches or listeners to this or. Anybody out there. But it's real. You think that those families ever thought that the kid would do something like that because they were bullied or because they were exploited online. I guarantee you if. They knew that that would happen, then they probably would have taken more of a measure to stop that. Well, not just the danger of that, but just you know, the bullying is one thing, but I just think there's an imminent danger for our kids online just to I can't remember, I think you would set a number of in these gaming and it might have been the guy from Safe Surfing Eddie, but he said that the predators in gaming that they I think out of one hundred ninety some out of one hundred kids that are in a gaming thing, that they will be approached by predator. I think it's ninety it's either ninety or ninety some percent chance that if they're in a gaming app that they're going to be at least contacted by a predator, which is unreal. Yeah, and so doing like some undercover chats and stuff, you know, posing as a as a little kid. It's unreal. How quick I can post a simple little status where I know a lot of people get exploited. I can go post a simple little status and within under a minute, I can almost guarantee you I'll have twenty five to fifty messages from men asking me, oh, well how old are you? Where are you from? I mean even have people go as far as saying would you like for me to bring you to and from school. So they know. So you're so you're identifying as a child when you put that message out there. And how I mean age range we're talking about that you're putting out there before these adults start contacting you. Yes, thirteen, thirteen year old kid, you put just put a message out there and you have the main people coming after you. Yeah, I'll post something, you know, regarding like high school or summertime being over and having to go back to school, and you know, I typically throw high school in there so there's no confusion for college or something like that. And they know what they're getting into at that point. And some of them will start out by saying, hey, what grade are you want? I'll say, well, I'm in eighth, but I'm about to go to ninth or something like that, you know, And then I'll I'll say, well okay. Then later I'll get on my age too, so they can't say they didn't know, right. So, but it's crazy, It is unbelievable. So I feel like we keep circling around, at least in my brain is just what I feel like you're doing a lot, But like what else can people do? And like what organizations can parents plug into to get the information out there and to get their schools. Okay, if you don't want to invest the time in having your kids, at least equip them. I mean a lot of people don't train their kids on how to drive a car properly. But there is a you know, a driver's aad course at the school. Why aren't we doing the same thing for kids as far as safety on the internet, Because to me, it's just as catastrophic as one of these kids it's victimized online. Yeah, So there are like certain police departments that will go around, Like I know, Dallas Police Department has a really good organization where they have. Like public outreach where they. Will go out to schools and they will talk to schools the ones that are willing to have them. From from what I understand Dallas ISD is they're very welcoming to what Dallas PAD has to tell and so they'll get out there and they'll talk about this with kids. But that's one of the only districts that I've heard of that really allows that to happen at least in the like the middle school to high school level. You know, everybody's fine with cops coming out to talk to h six or seven year olds because at that age they're not really going to understand child exploitation, you know, and most schools know that and they're like, oh, they're not going to come in and talk about anything too harsh, right, But we can start kind of planting that base there of you know, here's some safe games that you can play and give them resources like through Nickmick. Like I said, the National Center for Missing Exploited Children. I think that they do fantastic work. UH. Support everything that they do because. I've used those resources in classes that I've put on in TAP parents like about online safety, and you know, you can play dramatic videos and stuff that'll stick with families. But as far as why there's not a specific course for online safety, I have no idea. Aside from if a parent is wanting to be proactive and get to know what to do to prevent their care from being a victim. Aside from them taking the initiative to reach out, there's not really anything set in stone to uh to prevent it. It seems like the two entities that are that should be the most engaged with school age children, which are the school system and the parents needed both of them kind of checked out as far as responsibility for educating these children. Yeah, I agree. Well, anything else you want to talk about, Uh, I feel like you have done You've done an amazing job. I mean, I think it's I think it's really easy to get frustrated and think, you know, at some point like I don't know why we're doing this, but I think it has to be good to see people engaging, like what you described earlier, where you had people saying like, hey, I had this conversation with my child and it prevented this, or it prevented that, or we were this child was in the beginning phase of you know, being groomed or whatever online and you interrupted that cycle. And I just I just wish we had a way to interrupt that cycle. Because once you start that cycle where it ends two in three generations later is I mean, it's horrible for the first generation, but it doesn't stop at that generation. We're two or three generations into it at some point, and I think, and that's without all the technology that we had. I mean, the sex offenses that we're having on children with families is two or three generations old, and that is that is a totally different environment that they don't have access. I'd hate to think, with the access to information like kids have these days, how fast that is growing with the exploitation online. Yeah, yeah, And that's what I'm trying to tell people, Like, the Internet's not just some big, bad monster. It's great and you know, we can do things that people years ago and never thought we could do. But it's just like with anything, predators will get a hold of something good and they will try and destroy it. But child exploitation has been going on, child sex offenses have been going on since forever, you know, and it does make it easier for them whenever they get into a chat with kids, to be able to at least online exploit them. But it all comes back to education and prevention. But it's not because the Internet is an ugly or bad thing. We wouldn't have half the things we have we didn't have the internet. But with everything, that's like I said, everything is good. If somebody wants to do something bad with it, they'll do something bad with it, right, you know. People not to get off topic too far, but people will blame guns for violence and murders and all these things. But go back to Canaan Abele. You know, he's killed with the rock. So you know, if somebody has bad intentions, they will that will use whatever is readily available to them. And so you're absolutely right. I just I mean, I think of all the things that are negative that the internet creates, and I just wish there are more people like you that used it for a positive. Yeah, and there are there are places that you know. That these people, these predators, they will just go on to sites and it's specifically all they're doing is trading images and photos or videos and images of stuff. Those things like that they shouldn't exist. And I see people all the time like, well, why does the government not stop it? Like how do you stop it? Right? Like we can go get a website shut down and five to ten minutes later it's going to be back up under a different URL. Right, And everybody assumes that, you know, we can stop it because we're in the United States, we can stop all of that from happening here. It's not possible because this is happening. The majority of the online cases that I get for like possession of child pornography stuff like that, most of those cases, those kids in those videos are not from the United States. It happens plenty here in the United States, but the majority of the ones that I see are not from the United States. So it's like, yeah, we can shut down some sites here, but what are we gonna do about all the end of the countries that they upload that, and then the dark Web transfers it over to our people here in the United States. You know, Yeah, it's a big issue. So I'm gonna get I'm gonna get a list from you to close out most important thing. As a parent that listens to this, what are the most important things they can do right now to keep their kids safe and educate them on what's online. So if somebody were starting today, you know, I think y'all are an hour ahead of time. I'm ahead of me there, but here school is about to. Get out, So go pick your skit up, pick your kid up from school, take them home, set them down, have that conversation with them, tell them, Hey, I want to talk about something. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but I want you to know that I love you and I do these things because I'm trying to protect you and I want to know I want you to be honest with me, and I want to have that open communication from here on out, you know, because you're only going to be more tempted as you get older. Temptations is gonna people are gonna be trying to tempt you to do all these things. Have that discussion with them and tell them, I am gonna check your phone. I want to see what apps you're using. Familiarize these parents that need to familiarize themselves with what apps are being used. There's an app called Hush, Nothing good happens on there. These kids are on there. There's an app called Volcanto, nothing good happens on there. Snapchat, Discord, roadblocks, all of these things, Telegram, all of these things, if you kid has them, good idea to look through them, especially Hush and look into all those those are red flags. Shouldn't have them, Telegram, shouldn't have it. But have that discussion, set them down, look through their phone and tell them why you're doing it and the dangers of what they could have access to. Right that, to me, I think is the best baseline to start. After you have that discussion. Watch some of the videos from Nick Mick, Watch some of the videos from the FBI, there's a the name I would just slip my mind, but I think it's Kids Smart, something like that Net Smarts or something. But it's it's through Nick Mick and. They got age appropriate videos for like I said, preschool toddler or not toddler, a preschool to you know, all through elementary, middle school, high school. Even on the parent level. For education, that's another thing, I would say, educate yourself. Go watch these videos. Know what you're looking for. If you don't know what you're looking for, you're not going to find something unless you just stumble across it. But yeah, that's uh. I think that would be what I would do in my first step. All right, as a parent, you you engage your kid. There woking parents and woking elected officials. I'm thinking sheriffs and police chiefs going to the school system and say, yes, we definitely have a problem. I've got the reports to show it. We need to come up with the program to start educating these kids. Yes, I absolutely agree that needs to happen. I think there's plenty of data to support a you know, I'll refer to it as a m d T and multidisciplinary team between the schools, the police, Department of Sheriff's Office, the CCS, all of these things need to get together and they need to figure out a way to approach the problem. And you know, I'm not going to go out of balance and say completely shut it down, because it's going to take a long time and it's going to take a lot of people to do that. But suppress it, and maybe you can shut it down for your area. You know, at the school the kids in your school, educate them, and not just one time a year, educate them, educating them throughout the year. Every other month, have some kind of something you can broadcast over the smart boards or something. Just say hey, this this month, we're going to cover this mhm. You know, And I think that's the only way. There's there's no way to stop it aside from education. Well, brother, I appreciate you coming on. It's been educational for me, and I appreciate all the work that you've done to keep kids safe. And like I said, thank you for coming on, and keep up the good work. If there's anything we can do, I think you're so far ahead of us. We may catch up, but I hope we don't, you know, because I feel like your stuff is so good. I hope we're chasing you for your years to come, and I appreciate that. No, you're welcome, sor thanks for your time, brother,
