Crime Junkie - EXPERT ON: Safety from Online Sex Abuse

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Join Brit and the founder of Safety from Online Sex Abuse (SOSA), Roo Powell, and learn about the incredible work SOSA is doing, how to stay safe online, and how any Crime Junkie parents can best support their children against the monsters of the internet.For more information on Safety from Online Sex Abuse, please visit sosatogether.org. Follow them on Instagram @sosatogether!If you or a loved one is struggling with online sexual abuse or exploitation, please consider the following resources:The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) Take It DownNCMEC CyberTipline, or call 1-800-THE-LOST (843-5678)FBI Tipline, or call 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324)SOSA ResourcesRape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), or call 1-800-656-463 for a 24/7 hotlineCrisis Text Line – text HOME to 741741 for 24/7 support Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/expert-on-safety-from-online-sex-abuse/Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at [phone] to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, random photos of Chuck, and more! 

Hi, Crime Junkies, it's Brit. This is one of two episodes you are getting in your feed today, so if you haven't listened to our previous episode titled Be Weird, Be Rude, Stay Live, Sex Stortion, go back and listen because this episode is actually a bonus episode. Now buckle up because I was lucky enough to have a conversation with the one and only Rue Powell who we talked about at the end of today's episode. Rue is the founder of SOSA, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness

and combating online child sex abuse and exploitation. During our conversation, we talked about the work that SOSA is doing, how to stay safe online, how our crime junky parents out there can best support their kids and so much more. So without further ado, I'm so excited to talk to you today.

I think the first question that I'd like our listeners to know is here a little bit about you and Sosa and kind of how you came to create Sosa. Yeah, so Sosa is the 501c3 nonprofit, and our goal is ending online sex abuse or ending sex abuse in all its forms. So it originally started where I've been this kind of career long writer and child advocacy has always been

a really big part of that. And I was also working in tech. And one of the things that we saw was online sex abuse. We saw a lot of other tech adjacent concerns, right? Like bullying and just everything that comes along with having a smartphone now. And what I wanted to do was really demonstrate the ubiquity of online predation.

So what we ended up doing is I led a team of designers and writers and we just took a photo of me and phed it a bunch and I just wanted to show parents what can happen when a kid's online. I did this because I think for parents who are my age, like my parents never worried about a smartphone or Snapchat. They worried about migraines, me boozing at prom, anyone that was in like the closed vicinity to me, right? So like an actual physical curfew stuff like that. Yeah, if I'm walking home from school, they're worried about if a guy in the 7-11 parking lot is gonna throw me in a trunk, they're not worried about anyone beyond who is in close proximity to me. But now with a smartphone, it's not just the guy down the road. It's somebody's states and states away. So this is brand new territory.

I wanted to really show the ubiquity of not just the ubiquity of online predation, but how it happens and how fast it happens. So we put this fake person online and it happened very quickly. It just started coming in and even in working in the tech industry and working in this safety space, we were all still shocked at the amount. So then I wrote a piece about it. It went viral. I left that company. I started Sosa. I decided that this is the part of the internet that I want to explore and do more work on. So, one of the reasons we're talking to you is we're covering sex-stortion in one of our episodes. And can you speak a little bit to what that looks like, what the victimology maybe is, and more about what you've seen?

I mean, I have people who say, like, oh, I am really worried about my daughters. And it's very gender specific. I'm worried about my teenage girl, but not my teenage boy. And it's really important for people to know that kids are targeted, irrespective of gender, sexuality, identity, race, et cetera. So parents who maybe start to tune out because they only have sons. I would caution that boys are targeted online. And so a way that happens, and there was a period of time where I was getting a phone call a week about this from a local parent that was very concerned. So you've got,

you know, a cute 14 year old boy who's online posting on snap or Instagram or just any typical social media platform and a cute 14 year old girl adds him and they're chatting back and forth. And at some point, the conversation turns sexual or romantic or however you want to call it. And this girl starts sending photos, explicit photos, and starts asking for explicit photos in return. Oftentimes, that's not a 14-year-old girl. That is, an extortion ring from another country, and they're using photos of exploited children

in order to get more photos of exploited children that they can disseminate but most likely used to extort. So it's, hey, you need to pay pal or zelmi $500 or I am sending these photos to your coach, to your team, to your parents, to everyone at your school. And the threat of that is very scary for a young person, especially because they're blindsided. They had no idea that this wasn't a peer. Like they thought they were having a romantic escapade online. And people will ask all the time, like, well, our online predators ever women. And usually that's no.

Usually if a woman is a predator, she is praying on people that she already knows, people in close vicinity to her. So we're talking about like the teacher, student dynamic, or the coach, or the youth pastor, or the neighbor, that sort of thing. It's never really a woman going online trying to find a random kid. So because of that, if people think that their kids are safe in some way, there's also this like really awful, this really awful piece of sex distortion that happens. And we've heard about it in TV shows or in the news for adults, for grownups. Like, oh, I have this boyfriend who's in another country.

And now all of a sudden he's telling me that if I don't send him money, he's missing this to my boss. That also happens to kids too. So in your opinion, I mean, like you said, parents are kind of thinking, you know, I would see these changes. I would see a difference. I would know that it's happening. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about online sex abuse? Well, I think a lot of it is, you know, I think parents think like, oh, well, you know, it would never be my kid.

You know, my kid is a good kid, and it really isn't about being a good kid or a smart kid. It's just about being a good kid or a smart kid. It's just about being a kid on the internet. And it's not about like, I don't know, I think that there are this preconceived notions that, you know, and parents will say, and they mean, they mean the best, but they're like, well, they're these girls online, posting photos of themselves and their swimsuits at the beach. I'm like, yeah, we all do that. That doesn't give people the right to abuse them, right? They're just being teenagers online. I think some of the misconceptions include that it doesn't happen often.

And I think that's because we see all these like wild stories online, like, you know, man drives 12 states in order to pick up such and such kid. It doesn't always happen at that extreme, but it happens a lot. You know, it is not rare. I think that every time I go speak with a bunch of high school kids, I go, hey, how many of you have had like a random DM from someone that's like, oh, you're so pretty, you should be a model. And it turns out they were, you know, way older than you. And everyone's hands go up because every kid has experienced this, not every kid, but most kids have experiences in some form, right?

And it takes a long time. And that kid's know that they're being abused because it doesn't read as the wrong thing at first. It's just, hey, there's this person who is being so nice to me and is asking me about my day and is offering to give me advice and be like an older brother figure in my life. Those aren't necessarily red flags, and in fact, we've seen plenty of conversations

where a perpetrator will groom without ever using sexual language or a curse word or anything that necessarily seems overtly sexual, but grooming is still happening. Right. So what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes or ways we maybe don't realize we're making ourselves or our children more vulnerable in these situations? I think the number one thing that's keeping perpetrator safe is victim blaming.

And I know that's a really bold thing to say, but predators know that society victim blames. It's like the online version of, you know, well, what was she wearing? Did she drink? Was she the shame element? Yes. Yes, 100%. And I think that, you know, you have a kid who's online, who's curious. Just like I was in those AOL chatroom days, like, oh, what is this chatroom? The Wild West of the Internet, right? Yeah, it's that location, you know, one of cyber. Of course, like a kid is curious, right? And so if something happens, if they feel like somebody's going to shame them,

or blame them, or even if they're being targeted, and they go, hey, parents, look, I'm being targeted, and the parents' response is to go, how could you, like, how could you be so stupid? How could you be so dumb? Like what did you do? Right, like you posted this TikTok of you, like shaking it, all these things

that genuinely don't matter. Like we've also put kids online covered neck to knees with like nothing remotely salacious happening and these perpetrators are coming in anyway. But the point is shame is what's keeping kids from sharing, like the fear of shame, the fear of being blamed. And if a kid's not gonna report because they don't wanna be shamed

and they're suffering and silence, then the perpetrator is getting away with this. And they know that and they keep doing it, which is why so many online perpetrators have multiple, multiple victims. And that kind of goes in line with punishing a kid too. Like, oh, Britt, this terrible person was terrible to you online, that's it.

I need to take your phone away because I don't know what's happening online. That's punitive, especially when there's a psych social currency that comes along with being a teacher and having a smartphone. Right. If the result is punitive, then of course a kid's going to be reluctant to share what happened to them

online. Kind of protective of what's going on so that they can have this thing that's connecting them to the outside world, that they're still curious, and they're still like, not all bad stuff is happening on there. They still want that connection. They're protecting that. Yeah, of course. I mean, and I'm very pro-internet.

I think the internet is great. It allows us to talk. It allows us to know what's happening in the world. You can like learn how to hobby. You can learn how to, I don't know, crochet online. That's what I did. Yeah, there are great things online, but there are also these, you know, parts of the internet or these avenues that can be abused. And so that's why I think parents will sometimes, or caregivers will sometimes have like a quick talk, like, hey, don't talk to strangers or don't send news or kind of that's it. But, you know, I have teenagers and the conversation is ongoing. It's kind of

like the sex talk. I don't just have the sex talk with my kids once and then that's it. It's a conversation that we're constantly having and the same goes for online safety. Right. Now that makes a ton of sense. So in addition to keeping these lines of communication open with their kids, what can our crime junkies with kids do to best protect their kids in these situations? Like you said, you can't take them away from the internet. You can't isolate them away from this, at least not forever. So what can they do to empower their kids to protect their kids?

Yeah, well what I tell any parents or caregivers is that the best way to prevent predation is to really have open lines of communication with your kids. So that means talking about online safety, that means kind of being a soft place to land for your kids. And I think there's this idea of, hey, let's just delay the phone. Let's just take the computer away. And that can happen to an extent, but my kids were turning in homework on their school issue devices in third grade.

Yeah, I have a sophomore and a kindergartener. And we had some e-learning this week and my kindergartener has a laptop. Like, she has the internet. In her tiny little five-year-old hands. You can't prevent it. Right, or even like your kid is on a sports team and so they all are using a specific app to, you know,

communicate and their parents that will say or caregivers that will say, well, I'm just going to keep the phone, the iPad, the whatever out of my kid's hands. All right, well, does your kid ever go over a friend's house? Right. Because that friend probably has a laptop, a phone, the iPad, the whatever out of my kids' hands. All right, well, does your kid ever go over a friend's house? Right. Because that friend probably has a laptop, a phone. It's like when you went over a friend's house and they had, you know, a huge computer and a thousand free hours of AOL. Like, that's access.

So preparing kids for it, irrespective of whether or not they have a phone at the moment, I think is really important. I'm also really big into teaching kids to trust their gut. Like if there's something that feels off, like if you have, and there's this translation in real life too, right? If you're at a gas station and you feel like your spidey senses are tingling or something feels wrong, you're supposed to trust that feeling. Exactly. And same for kids, like if something feels weird oric or gross, tell someone you trust, tell a parent, tell a caregiver, tell a

teacher. And I think trusting your gut is a big part of it. So we have these conversations all the time. And this is why I also think not shame your kids is important because it's very easy to be tricked. And you know, it's very easy to trust someone. And instead of looking at it as, oh my kid broke my trust in some of these images, look at it as, oh this person deeply manipulated my child and this person who is very practiced, very experienced, manipulated my child and now I have to protect them. So I think looking at it from that vantage point is really important. point is really important. We actually have a lot of parents who listen to our show with their kids, kids who we know are most likely online. So what about kids? What can kids do to keep themselves safe online?

That is a really great question and it's funny because my kids, their friends look them over and sometimes ask a question or two and they know they can pull me aside if something's gone sideways online They're not sure how to handle it. I think that I mean there are a couple things you can definitely look out for But I would always recommend just making all of your accounts private whether that snap whether that's Instagram Twitter Reddit discord wherever just making it private making it friends only and then This is a short, wherever, just making it private, making it friends only. And then just also be a little bit judicious about who you add. Because Snapchat has like, hey, we think that you should add these friends. And people just go, you know, click, click, click, click, click down the line. They're just adding whomever.

So the rule of thumb with my kids is unless you know, you can like tell me who they are because you've met them or they're in a class with you. You know, just hold off on adding them for now. That's one thing. The other thing to do, I think, is to look out for sneaky tactics that a lot of perpetrators will use. One, we call it the white knight tactic. So let's say you're on a forum, you're in a discord server, you're on Twitch, and

someone says something like, oh my gosh, hey, be careful. I know that you're 13, there are a lot of really bad people online, but don't worry, like I can help you. I can- I'm not one of them. Right, right, like I can help you, like you need to be careful, but I'm happy to look out for you. And almost as if they're like taking on this like big sibling role. Like, you can't trust these people on the internet, but you can definitely trust me. There's also the photographer who thinks you're so pretty

and you can be a model, but they don't even have like a photography portfolio. They're like, oh, it's in the works. Or I can send you some photos and you can send me some photos. And this is a little bit glib, but when we were younger, people would say, all right, if there is a person that comes by and says, hey, can you help me find my puppies?

My puppies are lost. Don't go help them. Like that's a trick, you know? Right, right. I would say there's like a 2023 version of that too. And it's, hey, if you add me on Instagram or Discord or Snap, I can show you photos of my new puppy. Wow.

Which sounds absurd. But I feel like at my age, I can show you photos of my new puppy. Wow. Which sounds absurd. But I feel like at my age, I might fall for that. Like, oh, a new puppy, what kind? Let me see. Send me those pictures. I want to see. I would say I'm kind of interested. I'm not going to lie.

Yeah. So what we find, people will ask all the time, like, what are the good apps? What are the bad apps? Like a snapchat the bad app? What are the safe apps? Is Instagram safe? And unfortunately, the truth is there are no good apps or what are the bad apps? Like a Snapchat the bad app, what are the safe apps? Is Instagram safe? And unfortunately, the truth is there are no good apps

or bad apps because any app that has some sort of chat client or has some sort of opportunity for communications, whether that's comments or like a group server or whatever, that is a place that can be used to abuse a kid or sort of conversation. So I was consulting with this tech company that does a lot of gaming and they have one specific app and it's a coloring book app and they have been seeing a lot of predatory behavior on it. And I think for you and me,

like I wouldn't think twice about downloading a coloring book app on iPad and handing it to a kid so they're preoccupied for 20 minutes. For sure, like waiting room situations in the car, like that sounds like an app that I would never give a second thought about. Right. And that's when you'll see a lot of that too, like, hey, love your art, what's your Instagram or AdMian Instagram? Or this is so cute. You would love to see photos of, you know, my puppy or drawings of whatever. I'd love for you to draw my puppy. And we see this on lots of different apps. Like even when we're doing these decoy apps and perpetrators will say, I don't feel super

safe texting you. Can you download this makeup app and all download this makeup app and we can talk on the makeup app? Because a makeup app and a coloring book app, those apps seem so benign and innocuous. They don't seem potentially sketchy. Yeah. And like if you're someone who's accessing your kid's phone or looking into anything for some reason, I wouldn't ever think to look at a coloring book app for like a communication that I was concerned about. That wouldn't be where I went.

Right. Like we're looking at Instagram. We're looking at Reddit. We're not looking at or much friends, right? Right. Wow. So, young person, if you're listening, I will tell you what I tell every teenager in my life and that is, do not send nudes. Ever. If you ever do, make sure your face isn't in them. Don't do it.

But if you do, there's help. Nick McNathielsen, Center for Missing and Exploded Children has a take it down tool, a take it down service. There are people that can help you through this and don't suffer alone because there are people out there that are very good at doing this, very good at manipulating people. So if you're listening and you're a kid and this has happened to you, definitely go right to Nick Mc.

Tell an adult that you trust. We talked a little bit about what are listeners with kids and our kid listeners can do. But what about those who don't have kids in their lives immediately? And some uncles, all those sorts of people who are kind of periphery, but maybe aren't the people who are limiting screen time,

checking it on apps, stuff like that. What can they do to protect, again, themselves and the kids in their lives? I think that, you know, the role of cool aunt is very, very important because sometimes kids don't want to talk to their parents about it. And I think just being an adult in a kid's life that they feel like is safe, that their feelings and emotions are safe with, that they can go to someone and say, hey, this happened to me, whether you're a teacher or an aunt or an older cousin or even an older sibling, just being able to kind of affirm that this stuff can happen, abuse is never a kid's fault, you know, abuse is never a victim's fault, I think that's really important.

Even just being able to share resources when needed or sometimes it's nice to have a buffer with the parent as well. Being like, by the way, I know that so and so it has this app, this app, this app, this app. Have you had any chats about online safety? Nicknick has lots of great resources. We've got resources on the SOSIS website.

Rain has resources. So I think there's a lot of ways for other adults to share, but I think that just being somebody who cares in a nonjudgmental way is very important. I would love for my kids to have plenty of people in their lives that they feel like they can go to if something went down like in an emergency. And that's how I feel about trying to foster a relationship

with my kids where they feel like they can come to me. I think when I was younger, if something happened that was bad, I would say, oh my gosh, my parents could never find out. Whereas I hope now that my kids would say, oh my gosh, something bad has happened, I need to call mom, because she'll know what to do. If you can be that person that they can call

because you'll know what to do, that's always a great thing. I would also like to just say this, if you wanna be this person in a kid's life, so my teenagers have friends and we saw on one of my daughter's friend's phone, it says, you know, Rue, and then Call of In Trouble. Like that's what I'm saved as on our phone. That's your contact. Yeah, Rue, Call of In Trouble.

Oh my gosh. Which I feel very honored that a teenager would say, I know to call if I'm in trouble because she'll help me out in some way. Yeah. So if you can be that so and so Call of call-if-in trouble on a kid's phone, I think that's a wonderful thing. Yeah, I love that.

So let's talk a little bit more about undercover underage. What has that experience been like? And how has that media coverage helped SOSA's cause and the cases you're covering? Yeah, I think television is kind of a wild west too. I said, so, so, and then a production company said, Hey, can we follow you around with a camera? We really like the work that you're doing.

And I said, no, that's really weird. And they said, you've reached all of these people with this piece that you wrote. If one of your main goals is awareness, imagine reaching a million people per week. And that sounded like a really good way to raise awareness about online sex abuse and exploitation. So that's how undercover underage started.

I will say that, you know, we do this work irrespective of the show. So we're doing decoy ops, whether or not there's a camera. But I think that it's been really helpful for people to see how quickly it can happen, how sneaky it can be. And then really to the extreme of like, most of the time when we catch a perpetrator, this has not been their first time, right?

They have a long list of, or they do the forensic examination of the phone, and there are multiple, multiple, multiple messages. As far as the media helping, you know, one of the things that we do as well as we advocate for better legislation. So we help pass in Connecticut, which is where so is as based, a bill, HB6737, and it's essentially the act of communicating with a minor in a sexual manner.

That's now illegal. You might think that that's illegal everywhere, but it isn't necessarily, so you can have a 50-year-old man reach out to a nine-year-old girl for photos of her feet, so he can, you know, self-gratify. And that's considered creepy, but not a crime in many, many states. considered creepy, but not a crime in many, many states. We think it should be a crime everywhere. Yeah. So criminalizing online grooming, even if it's not necessarily overtly sexual, I think is important. So we're talking with different states. You know, we've met with some legislators in Florida recently to discuss this as well. So we're hoping as we get one law passed in one state and another all passed in another state. Maybe there's a domino effect, same with

advocating for a higher age of consent. So most states, the age of consent is 16. If 18 is the arbitrary age that we choose that people can vote or serve in the military or whatever, then we also think it's the age that they can, you know, make decisions on whether or not they want to have a consensual sexual relationship with someone, you know, 40 years that are senior. Right. But I will say being able to share about that. Like online, we also share about our cases and what the verdicts have been. So sometimes I have to testify. A lot of these cases end up, you know, going to a plea deal, right? But sometimes they go to trial and sometimes I have to testify. And lot of these cases end up, you know, going to a plea deal, right? But sometimes they go to trial and sometimes I have to testify. And so one of our cases,

he ended up getting a sentence of 20 years in prison and 10 years probation, which is our biggest sentence to date. And I think what that has also done is raise awareness about, okay, wait, what exactly was this person doing? How can we make sure that we're adequately punishing people that are doing this? Because he was targeting very, very young children. And I think that being able to just raise awareness about that has also pushed legislation in the right direction, has also pushed school education,

like educating in schools in the right direction as well. Right. So what would you say has been the highlight of this journey, getting Sosa started and working on a show like undercover underage? I think one of my biggest plans of pride about undercover underage or the work that we do at Sosa and then we share online is that we have these people who say this happened to me when I was younger and I had no idea it wasn't my fault until now. Or I had no idea that what happened to me was bad,

because it seems abstract, because when we're talking about abuse, we're always talking about hands-on abuse. We're never really talking about abuse that can happen online, and that could be, you know, trying to create CSAM, child sex abuse material, and getting kids to send images, and sending images back

or being in a relationship. And so I think for a lot of young people, I know you have young listeners here, but our TikTok, like 70% of our audiences under the age of 24, and a lot of that is, hey, this happened to me a few years ago, and to hear you say it wasn't my fault has been really, really healing. What I really like about the show, so undercover underage is rated TV 14. And even though it's a show that could be very much rated TVMA just because of the content, but everything's been sanded to make it TV 14. And one of the reasons why is because we're hoping that teens watch it, or we're hoping that people watch it with their kids or kids that are, you know, important to them because it becomes a tool for communication.

I mean, I'm sure you know you having us off more. Sometimes speaking like eyeball to eyeball is difficult. It won't bring up a lot more honesty, but like if you're driving in a car and you're both staring at the same road, right? Oh, for sure. That's when like those conversations become a little bit more vulnerable and honest. It just seems less risky. Like it's a way that you can kind of connect with your parent and it feels less, I don't

know, like, feels like there's like kind of always an out like, okay, it's probably going to end and then the conversation will be over or another thing like late at night, like right before bed, they're getting their last sip of water or something and they're like okay like they can't keep me up forever so if I start this conversation now we can have it and then like 10 o'clock will happen I'll have to go to bed or whatever and like those little moments where you can really connect are so incredible and yeah to have a show like this as a resource to utilize and to connect over and to reference back to is is something like as I was watching it and rewatching it to prepare for this my husband kind of like walked in on a

couple episodes and like we started conversations about like okay what does this look like implementing in our family what does this look like in how we start conversations with our son who's a sophomore or a daughter who's you know and kindergarten but like this is a conversation that we're going to have to continue Like you said, to have with her, maybe not now in very graphic details, but like a conversation that is going to be for the next 10, 15 years of her life in our communication with her.

Yeah, and those late night talks are so real. It's like the moments before bedtime become like the real world confessional, you know, those from years ago, they're like, hey, I'm gonna get all of this off my chest now. Yes. And so even if you don't necessarily have a formal, okay, what did we just watch?

Let's talk about it. It's gonna come up at some other time. I joke that sometimes my role as a parent is just being a house plant. Like they don't necessarily wanna interact with me, but they like that I'm in the room, or they like that I'm there. And then eventually they'll wanna talk.

So I do think this is a great subject for a house plant parenting. Like you could just kinda sit there and wait for them to say something. House plant parenting, I'm gonna have to steal that. Well, the show is outstanding, just incredible, incredible work, both on the show and with Sosa in general.

So how can our listeners support Sosa and the work that you guys are doing? We run on donations and we have some really wonderful people that donate every month and we have some people that do, you know, once a year giving as well, but we're very good at stretching dollars. We are still like a pretty small nonprofit with a pretty small operating budget. Small but mighty, small but mighty. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, we support IKAC teams all over and we pack up these bags and just kind of fly out and we'll do a quick operation. And I'll say that a lot of times the question is what separates you from like vigilante groups that you might see online, that kind of are running through a Walmart with a phone going because they're live streaming to YouTube. And the difference with us is that we definitely work with law enforcement from the outset. We talk with the DA's office, we know the requirements for prosecution.

You know, we're working in tandem with them as opposed to kind of going rogue and then calling them later saying, hey, go pick up the sky. Because those cases are often not prosecutable, we're very proud to say that to date, our conviction rate is 100%. That is amazing. Yeah, yeah, I try to say that we're batting a thousand, but then my team reminds me,

I don't know enough about sports, to be using sports analogies, but I hear that that's an appropriate one, so. I honestly wouldn't know. So I believe you. I believe that's a good thing. Yeah. I think that even if you are not able to financially support, just following along with us on social or really active,

we share a lot about tips and tricks and tricks in the bad way, but also in the good way, right? Just tips on how to be safe online. Sharing that always helps with just raising awareness and exposure. One thing that I always suggest for parents, like, hey, if you're kids on TikTok and you're trying to make sure they're safe online,

if they're begging you for TikTok, you can say sure, but you also have to follow Sosa because we make a lot of content for young people too. I love that. Just on how to be safe online. Yeah. For whatever reason, we're just very cool on TikTok. There's a little bit of embarrassing ourselves for the sake of getting a point across,

but it's effective. And if it's a way that we can support young people, great. For sure. So I think the last note I want us to end on is supporting survivors. Can you give us a quick rundown of some of the resources out there that survivors can turn to and how our listeners can support survivors

of online sex abuse? So photos have been shared online. Nick Mix take it down service is great. Also, they have Nick Mix cyber tip line. If you ever come across a perpetrator online, we lovingly tell people, please don't send that tip to SOSO. We can't do anything with it,

but let your local law enforcement know. FBI has a tip line as well. If you need resources, SOSO is here. We've got resources on our website, but we also have our survivor fund. There's also a rain, which is a great resource. And I also would even like to mention the crisis text line, because even though that's known for very specifically the suicidal ideation,

they do help with other issues as well, so keep that one in your back pocket too. I think, generally speaking, first start with the people in your own lives, right? I think affirming to the people in your lives that have experienced this in some way that it's not their fault is really important. At SOC we started a survivor fund because sometimes it takes you listening to a story to kick up some feelings and realize, oh my gosh, this happened to me when I was younger or that was really upsetting and I never told anyone about it because I felt so ashamed. So we cover people's survivors therapy. We'll cover like a dozen therapy sessions with somebody who is trauma trained and we connect people with therapists that are in their own state because that's usually where

they're licensed, right? And being able to help facilitate that kind of healing, like not just be in the intervention piece but also be in the hey. Even if this happened 10 years ago, let's talk about it now. How can you heal from it now? Just being able to support in that way and just making people feel validated and what they I hope you enjoyed this conversation with through as much as I did. And our hope is that you walk away from this episode, armed with knowledge and resources right in your back pocket to keep yourself and the kids and loved ones in your life safe online. You can find all the resources mentioned in this episode in our show notes, and I highly

encourage you to follow at SoSit Together for more online safety content. And if you have a minute, please take a moment to share this episode with someone in your and their lives. Crime Junkie is an audio-check production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?