Children are exploited via technology in a myriad of ways

The Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) awarded a $380,000 Cooperative Agreement under the Missing Children's Assistance program (CFDA 16.543) to the Zero Abuse Project, a non-profit organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota. The goal of this 2-year award, effective October 1, 2024, is to provide advanced experiential training and job aids to Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) investigators and prosecutors to enhance their technological capabilities in areas such as AI, de-aging technology, electronic storage detection K9s, and investigating sextortion. The project will also deliver skill-based training to improve ICAC investigative methods for child exploitation search warrants, suspect interviews, surveillance, and courtroom testimony. Additionally, Zero Abuse Project will develop and offer new self-paced online courses, maintain a secure resources portal, and provide technical assistance to ICAC task forces nationwide.

Despite the exponential increase in the quantity, sophistication, and severity of technology-facilitated crimes against children, many icac investigators and prosecutors are still limited by a lack of experiential training, and often only minimal access to innovative methods and/or technologies to investigate these crimes. This lack of innovative, experiential, and self-paced training for those tasked with responding to these online exploitation cases is impeding efforts to effectively address abuse involving digital evidence and emerging technologies. Zero abuse routinely communicates with icac investigators and prosecutorial agencies to understand what knowledge, skills, and job aids they need to effectively investigate csam, online exploitation, and SEX trafficking. To address technology-facilitated crimes against children, zero abuse project will implement the advanced experiential child exploitation training project. The goals of the project are to: 1) provide training and job aids to icac investigators and prosecutorial agencies to build their technological capacity in the areas of AI and DE-aging technology, using electronic storage detection K9S, and investigating sextortion, and 2) provide experiential, skill-based training to improve icac investigative methods in the areas of child exploitation search warrants, conducting child exploitation suspect interviews, surveilling icac suspects, and testifying in csam cases. Through this project, zero abuse will develop and deliver two new highly-experiential in-person courses; develop and deliver three new technology-based virtual trainings; develop and offer two new self-paced courses; continue to deliver three existing in-person courses and webinars; maintain and expand an on-demand secure resources portal to provide icac investigators and prosecutors with legal process templates, resources, and other job aids; and provide technical assistance and training by request to icac task forces and affiliates.