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Saskatchewan’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit was dealing with a very heavy caseload in 2020.
According to ICE co-ordinator Staff Sgt. Scott Lambie, the unit dealt with about 700 files in 2020, up from just over 500 in the year prior.
“Over the past four or five years, we’ve seen this trending increase,” said Lambie. “I can’t blame it entirely on COVID but with kids at home and pedophiles at home, with the additional 200 files last year, most of that accumulated after the lockdown.”
Lambie says in Saskatchewan the suspects in cases the ICE officers see are mostly men who can range in age from their teens to the elderly. He also says evolving technology has changed the way they investigate these cases.
“Most of these files, we can solve a lot of it by getting the devices that were used during the commission of the offence. So if we can get our hands on the victim’s devices and get the conversation, we can usually have a good idea of where we’re looking for the suspect,” said Lambie.
Lambie says pedophiles find their victims in a number of ways, but often go onto apps that are popular with children.
“They’ll be on the popular ones that the kids are using … so if the kids are using a certain popular app, pedophiles are certainly seeking their targets there,” said Lambie. “If the kids are there, the pedophiles will be there.”
Lambie can’t stress enough how important it is for parents to know what their children are accessing online.
“Parents can’t let their kids have unfettered access to the internet. Whether it be through the computer or through their phone, they really need to take an interest in what their kids are doing,” said Lambie.
“There are so many dangers lurking in the shadows and kids are so naive and they can really be overtaken by a pedophile who knows how to latch onto a child.”
Lambie says the ICE unit expects numbers to continue to go up just looking at the way things are trending right now.
“We used to do a lot of presentations to parent groups and to schools. Hopefully next year we can ramp that up again and maybe have some prevention out there to stop this in its tracks,” Lambie said.
