Dark Horse Global launched investigations in January of 2020. Within two months, our field operations came to an abrupt halt as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread around the world, disrupting all facets of daily life from the United States to Europe, Southeast Asia to India, and the Middle East to Australia. There was virtually nowhere on the planet that wasn’t impacted in some way, which included the countries of Latin America, and subsequently DH2 (Dark Horse 2), our team operating in that part of the world.
The government in our country of operation took swift action, and all international travel was shut down, as well as local interstate travel, both by ground and air. Moreover, like here in the United States, all non-essential businesses were closed, and police were strictly monitoring civilian movement in public places. Arguably, one of the positive outcomes of the COVID virus was the closure of brothels and places where victims were being trafficked and sold, and that the movement of pedophiles and other perpetrators who had previously freely roamed to buy children, had been significantly diminished. And, while this was good, it didn’t mean the commercial sexual exploitation of victims had ended, it simply meant the location of exploitation had moved. Instead of walking into a brothel or sex club to buy sex, these men were logging into private social media chat rooms and paying to watch traffickers live stream rape their victims. And, while this was not a new form of exploitation, the volume of this type of exploitation exploded in light of COVID and the restrictions it imposed.
This change in tactic didn’t take our team members by surprise, as they had already been working online investigations as a part of their standard case building protocol. However, the unforeseen impact of the virus necessitated a larger change in our investigative practices; namely that we moved to an online-only, cyber investigative operation, until our teams would be allowed to move freely in the field once again.
The DH2 team is highly skilled and adept at cyber investigations and over the course of the following 6 months was running 19 active investigations, building cases on dozens of traffickers and victims. Traffickers had gone into overdrive selling victims for online exploitation as well as coordinating with the men brave enough to venture out in public in an attempt to evade police in hopes of buying a child for sex. As we built our cases, we worked side-by-side with our national law enforcement partners to identify the individuals and locations where these crimes were taking place.
Over the first few months, DH2 had definitively identified 182 web cam sex studios in the capital city alone, where traffickers were sexually exploiting young girls online to a viewing audience of varying size.
Over time, our team worked with police and ran surveillance on multiple locations and obtained evidence of minors being delivered to the locations at specific times of the day for their online exploitation.
Once enough evidence was gathered, our law enforcement partners planned and executed a rescue operation, rescuing a 16 year old girl and arresting the two traffickers who had been live streaming her abuse online. The traffickers are currently in prison waiting for their day in court, and the young girl was supported by social workers as she was evaluated and safely returned home after her rescue. She will continue to need follow-up and effective care in support of her restoration.
It’s hard to succinctly and effectively distill months of hard work and effort into a short post, but at the end of the day, a victim has been rescued, and her perpetrators are in prison, unable to do any more harm to other children. We celebrate this first rescue and realize that it would not be possible without people like you. Thank you for partnering with us; together we are bringing liberty to the oppressed and justice to the oppressor.