The task force that investigates online child exploitation in Oregon has long been understaffed, leading to a serious backlog of tips to follow up on. But as reported in Willamette Week, state lawmakers recently approved an extra $2.7 million for the team, allowing it to nearly quadruple in size. The money will also support community outreach efforts and training for local law enforcement to aid in their investigations.
Michael Slauson is chief counsel for the Criminal Justice Division at the Oregon Department of Justice, which oversees the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He joins us to talk about the work the task force does and what this new funding could mean.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The task force that investigates online child exploitation in Oregon has long been understaffed, leading to a serious backlog of tips to follow up on. But as reported in Willamette Week, not long ago, state lawmakers recently approved nearly $3 million more for the team, allowing it to almost quadruple in size. Michael Slauson is the chief counsel for the Criminal Justice Division at the Oregon Department of Justice which oversees the task force. He joins us to talk about the work the team does and what this new funding could mean. It’s good to have you on the show.
Michael Slauson: Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here.
Miller: How does the national Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force program work?
Slauson: It’s the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. We call it ICAC. The program works as 61 different ICACs across the country. And the purpose of the ICACs is to protect children from online sexual exploitation. The Oregon ICAC is housed in the division in which I work, the Criminal Justice Division here at the Oregon Department of Justice. And just for context why it’s at the Department of Justice. The Criminal Justice Division is responsible for performing the prosecutorial and law enforcement functions of our agency. We have prosecutors, we have sworn law enforcement officers, and we have criminal analysts to do that work. ICAC is a unit within our division and our primary responsibility is to process and investigate, what we call, “cyber tips.”
And cyber tips are reports, usually from service providers like Facebook or Google, that their services have been used to exploit a child. Usually the kind of exploitation that occurs, that we receive reports on, is where their service has been used in the dissemination of sexually explicit recordings of children. So those are typically the cyber tips that we get. Cyber tips don’t have to be reported by service providers. They could be reported by citizens or other entities.
Once the report is made, it generally goes directly to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And the Center reviews the tips and identifies which one of these 61 Task Forces is the appropriate jurisdiction. Once they’ve done that they send out the cyber tip to the relevant ICAC, which here in Oregon is us. We receive the cyber tip, we review it and we make sure that a crime has occurred. And we do some preliminary research to determine where the suspect is and we refer it out to a local agency for investigation...
Miller: If I may interrupt, I’m curious about one of the steps you mentioned there that, at the national level, they look and see, jurisdictionally, who they should send this to among the 61 different, whether it’s states or other jurisdictions, who could then do more follow up and potentially prosecute. But how do they do that? I mean if, for example, we’re talking about sexually explicit material involving minors, how would they know who is in the video, say, or who shot it or which state they came from?
Slauson: Oh, that’s a great question. So how they do it is through the information that the service providers provide or through a tip. So a service provider can provide additional information about the source of the computer that was used or other devices that were used and that’ll help them at least geographically identify the region in which it occurred. In many cases, when you’re dealing with child exploitation, you may have a suspect in one state and a victim in another. And depending on what information they get from a service provider, they may send it to one ICAC or another. So that’s one way that we coordinate nationally, to do the investigations. Now, if it’s a tip from a citizen, a citizen can call and describe what they’re seeing and where it is and give other geographical information.
Miller: How many tips has Oregon received in recent years?
Slauson: We have seen a dramatic increase in cyber tips and this is not unique to Oregon. This is a national trend. But to give you an idea, in 2017, we had just under 1,600 cyber tips for our team of five that we currently have. Last year, we were just shy of 10,000 cyber tips. So a dramatic increase. And that trend is likely to continue. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the service providers who are reporting these cyber tips, more of them are reporting as are required to do under federal law, and they’re getting better at it. They’re using automated technology to identify when the explicit materials are transferred across their services.
Miller: So is it possible to know, with any degree of certainty, if child exploitation online is increasing? I mean, you’re talking about an eight fold increase of tips sent to this task force in Oregon. Is it possible that exploitation is increasing to that extent or that the efforts to find it and crack down on it are getting more sophisticated?
Slauson: That’s difficult to answer. It’s possible, as the national center has been reporting that, that uptick in reporting [is due to] the service providers getting better at [identification]. I can tell you that the troubling trend that we’re seeing when we’re getting these cyber tips, are often related to the visual exploitation of children which, keep in mind, is a serious crime in itself. It carries with it a presumptive prison sentence. But what we’re finding in a number of these cases, we’re identifying children who are victims of previously unreported sexual abuse. So not only are these suspects, here in Oregon and across the country, engaged in the visual exploitation of children. We’re finding in a number of instances they’re having hands on offenses. In our experience, that number has been increasing in terms of the overall percentage of cyber tips that we’re getting.
Miller: You mentioned about 10,000 tips that came into the task force last year. We’ll talk about the increase in staffing, that’s coming up. But five people have been responsible for looking into those. What does that mean? What does it mean for five people to be dealing with a deluge of 10,000 tips?
Slauson: It means a number of things. It means we’re running a pretty significant backlog. And when you’re talking about cases in which you can actually save children from child abuse, it’s very significant. We are unable to do really any investigations ourselves. What we do when we see these cyber tips is refer them out to local agencies. And currently, with our current staffing levels, we’re doing less than 1% of all the cases referring.
We’re also way behind on collecting data to know really what are the outcomes of these referrals. We make the referrals. But we just don’t have the staffing to follow up to determine what the outcome was. Was there an arrest? Was there a prosecution? We’re hoping with additional positions, we get that data.
And one thing that’s really critical is prevention. And we don’t have the capacity to do the kind of outreach that we’d like to do. So we’re not doing any kind of training for law enforcement. We need to make them better at their job and we’re not going out to the schools and community groups like we’d like to.
Miller: How do Oregon’s numbers, in terms of those tips that are coming in, compare to neighboring states like Washington or Idaho?
Slauson: Well, that’s interesting. Washington, we’re surprisingly very close. We’re only about 10% behind Washington in the total number of cyber tips. But they outmatch us in staffing, five times as much.
Miller: But they also have a population that’s almost twice as much. So, we have about the same number of tips even though we’re half the size?
Slauson: Yes.
Miller: How do you explain that or can you explain that?
Slauson: I have been asked several times to explain that. I do not have a good answer for it. I don’t know. But we do have about 10% less and they have significantly more staff. Idaho is very well staffed. They have 24 individuals staffed on their team. And they had about 2,000 cyber tips in 2022. So they’re doing very well. We’re also far less staffed than other states like Utah. I would say that a lot of states, just like Oregon, are sort of reacting to this dramatic increase in cyber tips. And I think across the country, we’re seeing an increase in staffing levels at the task force.
Miller: Am I right that the DOJ has asked for more funding for this task force in the past and it was only this year that the legislature said, “Yes, we’ll give it to you”?
Slauson: Yes, we have asked for the funding before. But I’ll tell you, we took a different approach this time. We worked closely with the legislative fiscal office to get advice on how to put together a presentation. And we spent a lot of time meeting with the legislators before the session. So I don’t know if that made a difference. But that’s definitely something we did that was different.
Miller: This seems like brutal work for the investigators. I mean, are they forced to view explicit images or recordings of children day after day, to look for evidence of crimes?
Slauson: I really appreciate that question because I think what you’re getting at is a vicarious trauma that people involved in this work can suffer. And I’ve been in prosecution for almost 20 years. The topic [has] been talked about, I’d say, for the last five or six years. The good news is this particular unit has been a bit ahead of the game on that. They all participate in quarterly wellness check ins with a licensed psychologist. They work very closely together. They rely on each other.
Everyone in the unit is not forced [to be there]. They’re here because they chose to be in the unit and they really want to make a difference. The work they do, I would agree, is probably some of the most challenging work we do, with respect to the emotional toll. But at the same time, it’s some of the most rewarding work that we do because they are literally saving children from sexual abuse.
Miller: So that phrase you use, “vicarious trauma,” has that led to higher levels of burnout or staff turnover than other job descriptions within the DOJ?
Slauson: No. And really, I think for the reasons that I have said, I’ve taken some steps to be mindful of the potential impact. And it’s really, at the end of the day for the people in the unit, it’s about the work, and about making a difference, and saving kids.
Miller: Michael Slauson, thanks very much for your time today.
Slauson: Thank you.
Miller: Michael Slauson is chief counsel for the Criminal Justice Division at the Oregon Department of Justice. He joined us to talk about the big expansion of funding for Oregon’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
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