[Stephanie Bosch] We’re so happy to be here, Tanya. Thanks for having us.

[Tania Johnson] Yeah, we’ve done a little bit of work before and we’re just honestly so blown away by your work that we just want as many people out there to have your message as possible. Yeah, so for everybody listening in who’s not sure, can you guys tell us a little bit about the ICE unit and then what exactly you guys do in it?

[Stephanie Bosch] Right, so as you introduced us, Scott works for the RCMP and I’m a member of the Edmonton Police Service. We work together in the Northern Alberta in an Internet Child Exploitation Unit. It’s part of, we work underneath the umbrella of ALERT, which is the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, which basically is a fancy way of saying, you know, the government of Alberta will fund ALERT and allow Scott and I to work together as a joint force police operation, investigating crimes online.

[Scott Sterling] So for the ICE units specifically, the mandate of the unit is to investigate crimes where the internet is used for child offenses. Now, primarily, that is child pornography offenses that we’re investigating. So crimes where the internet is used to transmit, upload, or trade child pornography material. We also primarily, the second half of most of what we do is child luring, sextortion files, which we’re certainly seeing on the rise in our office.

We do have some other ones, so voyeurism, making sexually explicit material available to a child is part of the ICE unit mandate, but as a whole, our primary roles are investigating child pornography offenses and sex extortion.

[Tania Johnson] And is this full time for both of you?

[Stephanie Bosch] Yeah, this is our full-time job. So specifically for me, my job role is with the community engagement team, just connecting with law enforcement partnerships, going out into communities and connecting with educators, parents, like kids even. And then Scott’s role is a bit different than mine.

[Scott Sterling] I work as an investigator within the unit, being assigned the actual investigations themselves and conducting those hopefully to successful results.

Understanding Terms: Sextortion, Luring, and CSAM

[Tania Johnson] Okay, okay, beautiful. Okay, so before we really jump in, I think we probably need some clarification because there’s a few different terms out there. So we’ve got our child sexual abuse material, child pornography, child luring and sextortion. So maybe we could get clear on what those are exactly before we really dive into how to help our kids.

[Stephanie Bosch] Yeah, so lots of words in there. So in Canada, the definition in the criminal code is child pornography. Now there has been a switch globally to change that wording to child sexual abuse material. In Canada, the legislation has gone through and as of October of this year, it will be child sexual abuse and exploitation material. So same. And the push for that really is just…

Honestly, we have to take a victim centered approach when we’re considering talking about this content because of the impact that it has on victims, right? If we’re calling it child pornography, it discounts the abuse that’s happening in these images and in instances of sex extortion, right? So by calling it what it is, we’re taking that victim centered approach and doing justice to what’s actually happening.

[Tania Johnson] Makes complete sense. Okay. So child-luring, let’s look at child-luring first. The difference between sextortion and child-luring. What is it? What do parents need to know about it?

[Stephanie Bosch] So sextortion, I can tell you. So sextortion really, I mean, it’s just extortion with that sexual component. So at a base, really what it is, it’s where someone online has obtained an image from a child, a nude image of a child or a video of a child, and they’re using that and they’re extorting or they’re blackmailing the child for more images or money. So typically what that looks like is…

They have the image or the video and they’re telling the kid, you know, unless you comply with these demands, which could be demands for money, demands for more videos or more pictures, I will do one of the following things. Sometimes the biggest one that we see is I will leak that nude image. I will send it out to your friends, your family, your teachers, and consider the impact on a child if that’s the threat, right? When kids, we talk about their perception with their peers. I mean, that is…

First and foremost, the most important thing to them. What I’ve learned in this job, and I’ve said it before, is that kids will fear their social death more than their actual physical death in these instances because of that perception. So the impact is very significant in terms of sextortion and how it comes, how it plays out.

[Scott Sterling] Luring is essentially the precursor that would take place prior to an extortive behavior. So the crime of luring does appear in the criminal code and that’s… that takes place when someone is communicating with someone underage with the intent of creating or having them send these materials. So if a predator is online, the act of them engaging with the youth online and saying, I would like you to send me these things. And if the purpose of that communication is to obtain nude imagery of them, that is the crime type.

Where they sort of divest themselves a little bit is sextortion we find is… Nowadays, it’s anybody. We don’t like lumping it in with cyberbullying per se, because I don’t think it gives it the proper attention it deserves, and people may get the wrong idea. Luring is essentially a part of the predator behavior, though, whereas extortion we’re seeing take place at all levels. Friends at school, teammates on hockey teams or sporting teams… they can engage in that behavior because it is this odd adjunct to bullying behavior, but it is certainly a bit beyond what we would consider normal bullying in that it is certainly, it has a criminality associated with it.

[Tania Johnson] So Scott, I mean, I think that that answers my next question is I think for so many parents, the immediate question is, but how would somebody get a hold of my child’s nude image? And what I’m hearing is that it could be anywhere at any time.

[Scott Sterling] Well, part of the end, and I certainly appreciate any of that. You’ve been very involved with us. You’ve seen the presentation that we give. And part of that is, unfortunately, some uncomfortable truths that parents may have to confront that we live in the future now. This is a different time than when we grew up. And it is a strange thing, but it is a true thing that…

Children interact with nude imagery and have experience with nude imagery of themselves that we didn’t possibly have the opportunity to. So it very well may be that a child is engaged in creating this material of themselves themselves because it is a part of the social landscape that currently exists. We understand that that’s a wild statement to say, but again, just because it’s wild does not mean that it isn’t true. So they could have created the material themselves.

If someone is threatening them or trying to coerce them into creating the material, that’s more of the luring/extortive behavior. And then eventually we get to see even some of the AI concerns that people have nowadays where AI does exist and it is possible to generate imagery of real people. Having said that, I mean, people have been cutting faces out of photos and putting them into magazines and pictures since the beginning. This is just the newest form of that.

So that’s why we try to push this messaging of, look, this is real, it’s out there, and how are we going to deal with it both as the police, as educators, as parents, as a society as a whole?

Moving Beyond Stranger Danger: Redefining Online Safety

[Tania Johnson] Hmm. Stephanie, what I think what I love about your and Scott’s message is that it really does change. Like when I was growing up, it was definitely the stranger danger message, a hundred percent. But really everything that you guys are saying to parents is we need to be more aware that that message no longer holds.

[Stephanie Bosch] And I think, you know what, like, some of it does transfer online and kids really are tuned in to when the manipulation is starting to happen. And we have to consider that not every single person on the internet is trying to hurt your kid or your children. The reality, like Scott was saying, is like kids are finding friends online, they’re finding communities. And when you think about a place like Alberta, which is a province in Canada, and you know, there’s a lot of really remote rural areas and communities.

You wonder about the kiddo who’s grown up with the same like 15, 20 kids from, you know, the time they were three, four years old and now they’re teenagers and they don’t fit in necessarily. They don’t have their group or their peers that they can connect to for a number of different reasons, be it their sexual identity or their gender identity. There’s all these different factors, right? So if you’re thinking about where are they finding their supports, I mean, kids are going online and they’re finding those supports and they’re finding those communities and they can be good.

So it’s not inherently wrong or bad, it’s just different and something we didn’t grow up with. But of course it comes with its own set of risks. But that’s why it’s important to teach those behaviors, right? Things to look out for because you’re right, you can pretend to be anyone online. So how do we navigate that as parents?

[Scott Sterling] That is also important and one of the core principles of our messaging is at some point, we maybe have to take a step back as the grownups in all of this and get off our high horses just a little bit.

There are plenty of behaviors that as police, as parents, as teachers, we don’t want people to engage in. But they do. And we are very limited sometimes that we can’t stop it from happening in the first place. So what do we do? Where are we best served? And certainly, I think within this space, having these difficult discussions about online exploitation, sending nudes, taking images of themselves, kids are doing this.

People didn’t want kids going out and drinking at bush parties, but they did. There’s all kinds of behaviors that we know are illegal. We frown upon them, but yet as a society, there’s also a level of acceptance where as some sort of rite of passage, it’s kind of been agreed that this is behavior that can take place. So what do we do about that? Well, I think we have to take this stance of let’s get over ourselves and at least just talk about it, not from the viewpoint that they are wholesale wrong.

But from safety, what can we do to make sure that if they choose to engage in this behaviour despite our best efforts of not wanting them to, that they do so in a safe manner and more importantly than anything, if something goes wrong, they can come to you for help and you’ve created this relationship where they’re able to speak with you about these things.

Creating Open Lines of Communication

[Tania Johnson] It’s huge. I’m really hearing from you guys that the message to our kids is it’s safe to come to me. We need to be having open conversations about sending nudes because I think the reality is that more and more kids are doing it. So if we kind of push it away and say, don’t tell us about that, don’t do it, we’re creating a distance that isn’t safe with our kids.

[Stephanie Bosch] And we know that these conversations are hard, like having a conversation with your child about sex, like they don’t want to do it. It’s awkward for you to do it, but it’s the first thing—we have to start doing that. But we also have to consider that it’s more of a holistic approach now. It’s not just the sex talk anymore because we have to incorporate what that looks like online. So sending nude images, connecting with maybe new people and forming romantic relationships with people online—it has to be all part of the same conversation.

And even further to that, like Scott mentioned earlier, now we have to talk about AI as being part of that as well. So it’s not just a one-and-done conversation, and it’s going to be uncomfortable for everyone involved, but it’s so important for those conversations to be ongoing because things change. As kids grow up and they mature, their relationships are going to evolve as well.

[Scott Sterling] It’s also important too that for your listeners—like go easy on yourselves. This is new for every single person on the planet.

When we talk about the conversations that need to be had, one of the concepts we introduce is the responsibility that you hold with someone else’s nude image. If someone chooses to share that with you, you hold a moral, ethical, legal responsibility for that image. That’s insane as parents because that’s not something that we were taught. It didn’t exist. So it’s okay to give yourselves a bit of grace and say, look, this is out of my depth, this is wild, I’m not really sure what to do. That’s okay, because it is that new and we’re introducing concepts that there weren’t even precedent for before.

How do you speak to your child about their responsibility with someone else’s nude image? Do the best you can, really, but as long as you’re having the talk, that’s the important part. And I certainly agree with Steph with the holistic approach.

Historically, the police have instructed in an abstinence-based model—bad, bad, never, don’t do the thing. It doesn’t always work. So what’s more important, that we show up, say bad, bad, never—or we show up and say, look, despite our best efforts, you may. How can you make sure that you’re going to be safe, and who can you identify that you can turn to if things go wrong? That’s the most important thing as parents. We need to make sure that they’re going to be okay.

[Tania Johnson] I think that’s beautiful. I love that. And I love that conversation around identifying who are your safe keepers. It doesn’t necessarily have to be mom. I’ve got two little girls. It doesn’t have to be mom, but who could you go to if things do go sideways?

[Scott & Stephanie] Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that like, we just haven’t talked about it as a society. And it’s almost like we’re in this weird time where people just want permission to talk about it because it’s been this taboo thing. So we see that when we’re in schools, when we have these engagements, we see a lot of parents nodding their heads or really agreeing with the things that we’re saying about having the conversations. So yeah, it’s definitely something that has—it’s not new. It’s just…

We need to start talking about it so it becomes more normalized so we can all work together to have the conversations and make it easier for the kids to come to us.

Why Kids Don’t Tell & What To Do If Their Image Is Shared

[Tania Johnson] Steph and Scott, what do you think are the primary reasons why kids don’t go to their parents? Because any parent—me—I’m like, I’d really hope that my girls would come to me and talk to me, but maybe they wouldn’t. What do you think stops kids from going to their parents?

[Stephanie Bosch] Kind of just based off of what I just said. I mean, like we haven’t been talking about it, but we do know that there’s tons of shame and embarrassment around talking to your parents around, you know, “Hey, I have a nude image out there. I took a nude image.” And I think historically it’s because we’ve told kids like, “You shouldn’t have sent the nude in the first place. Like why would you ever do that?” So automatically there’s this inference that they are to blame, right? And that is—that’s horrible. We haven’t done these kids justice. It’s not their fault that they’ve been taken advantage of, right?

I think because of that shame and the embarrassment, it’s the barrier to them even speaking to an adult. But then further to that, the consequences, right? I mean, we know how connected kids are to their phones because of their social lives and how integrated it is. So the fear of having their phone taken away might be the thing that creates a barrier for them not reporting. So they would much rather settle with taking the abuse and having that torment than having their phone taken away because their Snapstreak matters that much more to them. So this is just a number of reasons why we know kids don’t report.

And even anecdotally in some of the investigations that I’ve done and the complainants that have said, “I just thought my parents would be mad. I didn’t want them to think less of me.” And it’s just because we’re not having the conversations. So we’re huge proponents of… This is preventable. Sextortion, luring—it’s all preventable and it could be just as simple as ongoing conversation so that they know like, “Hey, this is a hard thing but if it happens, we will support you, it is not your fault.”

[Tania Johnson] That’s big, that’s big. And you know, I think for so many parents, it feels like the phone is the harm. So my child was harmed through their phone. Let me take away the thing that was harming them. But you’re also taking away their lifeline, as you guys just said.

Okay. So a parent finds out that their child’s nude image has actually been leaked. What are the first few steps that we’re doing? What are we doing in that instance?

[Scott Sterling] First and foremost, don’t panic. No situation has ever been made better by the introduction of panic. Because that’s going to dictate a lot of what happens next. Kids are not stupid. They can read us very, very well. And if you go into full meltdown mode because you found out this information, you trigger that thing that we just talked about, where they’re immediately going to see that you’re having this emotional reaction to something. Am I part of the problem? Did I do something wrong?

So stay calm. That’s your obligation as the parent in this and your sole focus at that point becomes to support your child. Now, in receiving a disclosure, there could be a couple of different ways that this goes. Based on the example, I’m going to assume that it was the non-consensual leaking of their image.

That can go two ways then. So is this an image that they had provided consensually to someone and then that person has now sent it on? Or is this an extortion example where someone was forcing them to create these images and they have sent it out through that mechanism? It may seem like a small detail, but it is important. Regardless, don’t panic. Support the child first. Your next option is immediately call the police. This is what we’re here for. This is what we do.

For some simple things to think of, we would ask, don’t delete things on your phone. The contents of that phone is evidence at that point of a criminal investigation. So I much prefer that you don’t destroy that evidence. There are certain things you can do such as blocking offending accounts. So if they are being extorted by someone, you can certainly have the child take agency of themselves—if them hitting the block button and making it so that that contact ends—if that’s a powerful moment for them, certainly we agree with that. You can do that, but just don’t delete. Call the police. We can certainly help you. That’s really your best first bet.

The investigation and the police procedures, we will deal with that angle. What I would ask parents more than anything is just realize the importance of your reaction to this in being able to provide the support.

If it’s the other example—so let’s say they’ve provided a nude image consensually to someone and that has now gone like wildfire through the school—the response is the same. Your job is to support them. We will conduct the investigation differently. There’ll be some different things and the outcomes may vary, but just be there for the kid. That’s what we need. We have resource documents that certainly we can provide as well if you want to include them as part of this, where there’s tremendous resources online from child forensic interviewers who are much better qualified than us to say here’s how you best receive information.

As the police, I would prefer that you just don’t ask. Support. We have interviewers who will speak to the child. We will get the information that we need. Your job at that point is not to question, to investigate, to try and dig this out in the open. Your job is just to support. That’s what I need you to do.

[Tania Johnson] Beautiful. Is there anything you would add to that? I think Scott covered it beautifully, but anything you would add?

[Stephanie Bosch] Yeah, no, I mean, we get the question all the time too about the schools. I think depending on the situation, it would be appropriate to let the school know because they might take action on their end as well. But certainly, like, first and foremost, support the child because they may or may not want you to do something about it. And that’s another complicating factor that you have to consider in terms of weighing their safety over everything.

[Tania Johnson] I love that note too about don’t delete because I think so many parents automatically want to just erase things. I want to shift angles slightly here and ask about kind of online luring through games or platforms. Could you talk to us about how that sometimes works?

[Stephanie Bosch] Yeah, I mean, what we know about it is kids are spending time online. So it’s realistic to think that offenders are going to go to where the kids are, right? They have access to children there. So what that kind of looks like is, I mean, it’s that grooming, luring process where they’re building rapport through open platforms. And it really doesn’t matter what the site is, because it could happen anywhere. But as an example, something like Roblox, you know, there’s open game chats there.

So just having conversation with kids and then asking them to go to a secondary app, like a closed application like Snapchat or Instagram—those are kind of like the steps that are taken online because then they can kind of isolate that child. They can control the conversation. And then the grooming begins, right? All the manipulation starts and it happens in a place that’s kind of closed doors. It’s not out in the open.

What Apps Are Safe? & When Should Kids Get Phones?

[Tania Johnson] So, and I know sometimes parents are immediately—in your presentations that I’ve been in—the two questions I hear always are: What apps should my child not be on? And then the other question that always comes up is: When should my child get a phone? Those are the two that come up every time. So I know that’s a whole lot of parents right now who are gonna ask you about the apps.

[Scott Sterling] Well, quite simply put, there is no such thing as a bad app. There is just the bad behavior that occurs on any given app. Roblox is a tremendously popular game now. Six months from now, it may not be. But the behaviors will not change. So it’s irrelevant what the platform is. What was once Club Penguin becomes Roblox, Roblox is Fortnite, Fortnite becomes whatever is next. So the platform doesn’t matter.

It’s the behaviors that matter. And that’s the conversations that need to be had. So responsible digital citizenship, the difference between online friends and real life friends, the difference between online acquaintances, real life acquaintances, what is acceptable information to share about yourself online? Is it ever okay to share photos of yourself online?

We do have to balance and make sure that we don’t fear monger at the same time, because as Steph said, kids have a lot of evidence to the contrary. The world is not full of pedophiles online all the time and predators trying to get them. They are meeting kids online. They are having meaningful interactions. They’re forming friendships online.

So the conversation can’t be, which playground are you at? The conversation needs to be, how do we behave at a playground? And if someone does something at that playground that makes you uncomfortable, makes you unsure, makes you scared, what is your response to that? Because the playground will always change. It’ll never be the same.

We can then delineate into texting apps, what is acceptable use for communication apps, so your Snapchats, your WhatsApps, your Messengers. What are okay communications to have there? And the parallels are the same as in real life. How do you conduct yourself if you’re visiting grandma’s house? What’s okay to say? How do you behave?

It all translates from the real world to the digital world, but you can’t speak specifically about a particular app. You need to talk about the behaviors. So then we segue into the question of, okay, well, when do I, A, let my kid onto these platforms and what do we do about it?

First and foremost, I’ll steal Steph’s line: it’s never too early and never too late to have the conversations about this. But we have no answer for you about what age should you do this. I don’t know. Certainly given who I’m speaking to at the Institute of Child Psychology, are there long-term studies on this yet? I don’t think there are because long-term hasn’t happened. We’re still very much in the beginnings of this.

The anecdote that I use is very simple though for this. And your listeners and watchers can ask themselves: who among you have put your kids into swimming lessons? And the question there becomes why? Well, it’s quite simple. If your child encounters the water and they are not prepared with the tools to deal with it, they can die. So what do we do?

Well, we created swimming lessons and they’re great. We start young and then we make it a very positive environment. They play games, they build skills, they build confidence. Why would we not apply that model to this?

There are competing schools of thought by way of examples. So Australia has legislation that kids under the age of 16 can’t access social media. They may be correct. I would contend though that—okay, so at 16, they’re allowed to go in the water now? Have we given them the tools to navigate this?

So what age should they be allowed on this? I don’t know. And I don’t know that there is a correct answer to this. From my seat, I would say it’s never too early to start the conversations and start building those tools though. Because you won’t have control all the time over where they are. Your household rules may be that they can’t go on Roblox. So they may go to their friend’s house and play Roblox all day.

If you’ve equipped them with those tools, they are prepared to meet the scenario as it occurs.

[Tania Johnson] Beautiful. I love it. And you know what I love about that, Scott and Steph, is that we take away the focus on the phone as per se and more about the conversations and about that citizenship.

[Stephanie Bosch] Yeah, no, absolutely. And even just to add to Scott’s point, like as a parent now, like I have a four-year-old turning five-year-old and this is on my mind all of the time. And certainly it’s not to the level of me speaking to her about online friendships. She’s five. She obviously doesn’t have a device, but it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot since joining the unit because I mean, you know, we’re having conversations at her level about things that are going to apply one day.

So the example is, you know, last Christmas she asked me for a phone at bedtime and that totally shocked me. My four-year-old was asking me for a cell phone, but it’s perfectly understandable because all she sees is mom with the phone all the time. It’s very normal for her to see me with a cell phone—to have that.

And when I asked her, you know, “Honey, why do you want a cell phone?” her response was, “You know, my friend has a cell phone.” And I’m thinking, okay, well maybe it’s just that her friend has a different relationship with her parent’s cell phone. And that’s why this conversation was had amongst two four-year-olds, right?

But I mean, you know, these conversations can start that early. And it doesn’t mean I’m gonna be giving my daughter a phone, but you’re laying that foundation, you’re laying the framework for one day, you know, when they have access to a tablet and they’re watching YouTube or they’re doing something, they know that it’s kind of that slow boil. You’ve had these conversations, it’s normal to them. It’s not just one day when they’re 16, here you go, good luck, right?

Final Words: Don’t Wait—Start the Conversations Now

[Tania Johnson] Beautiful. Scott and Steph, any finishing words for everybody listening out there, for all of our parents listening?

[Stephanie Bosch] I mean, I know we drive this home a lot—just have the conversations. I know that they’re tough and I know that there’s no easy way to do it. But just try not to fear monger this. I think you just need to lean in and be vulnerable and have them because, for kids, it’s so hard for them to talk about this and we owe it to them to make it that much easier.

[Scott Sterling] From the policing side, I need your help. This is something that as a parent, you can have a meaningful impact on. You may not be able to help me with what we traditionally consider the investigations in the ICE unit—so the guy in the basement trading child sexual abuse material. But you can help me with the child luring and the extortion. And I truly mean that because it starts here.

This is not something that we will fix. But if we do a better job now with our kids, they will have the tools to raise their kids in maybe a more positive environment where they have these conversations more easily. And that’s when we’re going to start to really see the change. But the burden is on us right now to get it right and do a better job than we have been. And we understand it’s awkward and maybe contrary to some of your parenting styles to this point, but this is something you can do to help me and make a meaningful difference in the future of child exploitation. And I really need you to do it.

[Tania Johnson] Scott, Steph—such a powerful message and so, so clear. Crystal clear. Like there’s no ambiguity around what actually needs to happen. Thank you so much.

[Scott & Stephanie] Well, thank you. You’re very welcome.

Join Us on the Journey: We would love to continue to walk with you on your parenting and professional journey. Whether you’re looking to enroll in a single course, join our free summit, or sign up for our professional or parenting membership, we have something for everyone. And if you haven’t joined us yet, our Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and weekly newsletters are full of free resources and quick tips. Links can be found in the show notes. Together, let’s raise a generation of children who don’t need to recover from their childhood.