Rise in child sex offences means race to stay ahead
Police and advocates grapple with ‘dramatic’ increase in their workload
The small girl cut EDMONTON through the crowd filling the Edmonton Law Courts foyer on a late July morning.
Instead of heading off to summer camp, to a lake, or the playground, the eight-year-old was going for lunch — a break after hours of waiting to testify at a trial of a 36-year-old man accused of sexually interfering with her when she was just five years old.
Despite the circumstances, the little girl smiled as she clutched the leash of a yellow Labrador retriever, one of three Zebra Child Protection Centre dogs who provide comfort to children testifying in court.
By mid-afternoon, after a number of attempts to postpone proceedings, the accused decided to plead guilty to interference and other allegations related to luring, communicating to facilitate child prostitution, and possessing and distributing child pornography.
Recently released 2016 policereported crime data from Statistics Canada shows that sexual violations against children and child pornography offences are both on the rise in Canada, and Alberta is no exception.
Nationally, there were 6,917 reported sexual violations of children in 2016, up from 5,256 in 2015. Canada-wide reported child pornography offences jumped to 6,245 incidents in 2016 from 4,380 incidents in 2015. In Alberta from 2015 to 2016, total sexual offences against children rose to 749 from 605, and child pornography related offences went to 367 from 279.
Statistics Canada attributes some of the increase to changes in legislation and the creation of new investigative resources, but noted both types of offences have been trending upward for several years.
The rise hasn’t gone unnoticed by Alberta agencies that investigate and prosecute these types of crimes, nor has the increasing crossover between child pornography and physical contact offences.
“At least half of our files involve contact offences against children, and that’s growing,” Crown prosecutor Keith Nicholls said in an interview at Edmonton Law Courts on Friday.
Nicholls said that in the three years he’s worked with the unit, which takes on all Alberta prosecutions north of Red Deer related to child pornography and online luring, there’s been a “dramatic” increase in the workload, although cases that are straightforward “downloader” files are becoming more rare.
Nicholls said prosecutors and police are also encountering ever bigger collection sizes, and offenders who encrypt files and mask IP addresses. Even as investigative techniques improve, he suspects there’s many more undetected offenders who are “one step ahead.” “It’s a very large pool,” he said. With more known offenders comes more victims.
There are currently 955 children being assisted by the Zebra Child Protection Centre, a multidisciplinary facility serving Edmonton and northern Alberta that supports children who are victims of abuse. The centre also works with police and government agencies to make investigations and court proceedings less traumatizing for young people.
Since opening in 2002, the centre’s caseload has increased by 740 per cent, according to lead child advocates Sam Dover and Kim Clark.
“We’ve seen a steady increase every year, and we unfortunately don’t anticipate that waning any time soon,” Clark said in an interview following the release of the Statistics Canada data.
However, the advocates said that while crime facilitated through the internet seems to be rising, some of the growth is actually a sign that cases previously unreported are now coming to light.
“The community is responding, and we’re letting people know that we won’t tolerate these actions and we will support these kids.”
Police officers whose work is based at the Zebra Centre saw a 10-per-cent increase in their file load between 2015 and 2016.
“We’re very busy but, unfortunately, it’s still under-reported,” Edmonton Police Service Sgt. Christa Laforce said when asked about her caseload.
She said that so far in 2017, the dozen police members working at the Zebra Centre have opened nearly 170 cases.
Although Laforce said the majority of the cases her team handles involve offenders known to the child, they do see cases that have begun through online communications that advanced to physical contact offences.
That crossover means the Zebra Centre often collaborates with the Internet Child Exploitation team, or ICE, a unit operated by the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT) that investigates crimes related to sexual exploitation of children online
ALERT Insp. Dave Dubnyk said the number of investigations handled by ICE has increased every year for seven years.
Anyone with suspicions that a child is being abused should contact police or Alberta’s child abuse hotline at 1-800-387-5437. Online exploitation can be reported at cybertip.ca. Children in need of counselling support can call the Kids Help Phone 24 hours each day at 1-800-668-6868.