315 – Keeping Our Children Safe Online, with Susan Kennedy

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Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Susan Kennedy as the two discuss the importance of keeping our children safe online.

Susan Kennedy

Susan Kennedy joined the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2018.  At NCMEC, Susan leads NCMEC’s prevention, outreach, training, and partnership programs. Previously Susan was the Director of Programs at the Center for Alexandria’s Children where she conducted child forensic interviews, coordinated the Child Advocacy Center program, and oversaw a community-based primary prevention program for children aged zero to five and their caregivers. She earned her Bachelors’ degree in Psychology from The College of William & Mary and a Master of Education degree in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University.  

Key Points

• The National Center for Missing and Exploited children is the nation’s largest and most influential child protection program, and creates vital resources for children and those who keep them safe. 
• In 2023, NCMEC’s Cyber Tip Line received 36.2 million reports of suspected child exploitation. 
• Reports of online enticements have almost doubled from 2022 to 2023, observing an increase of more than 300% from 2021 to 2023. 
• An important part of the policy agenda is to equip local, state, and national agencies with equivalent technology that has enabled offenders. 
• There has been a shift in sextortion where now, offenders target teenage boys and are financially motivated. 

Resource

• NCMEC
• 48 – International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children
• NCMEC CyberTipline
• NCMEC Impact Page
• NetSmartz

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14

You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode #315: “Keeping Our Children Safe Online” with Susan Kennedy. My name is Sandie Morgan and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Our guest today is Susan Kennedy. She joins us from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where she leads their Prevention, Outreach, Training and Partnership programs. Previously, Susan was Director of Programs at the Center for Alexandria’s Children, where she conducted child forensic interviews, coordinated the child advocacy center program, and oversaw a community based, primary prevention program for children aged zero to five and their caregivers. She’s earned her degrees from the College of William and Mary, and from Harvard University, I am so glad to welcome you here, Susan, and there are so many things in your bio that make me want to go back and ask, but we can’t do that, we have a job to do today.

Susan Kennedy 1:39

Yes, thank you so much for having me, and I’m excited to talk about all the things we have to talk about today.

Sandra Morgan 1:44

Well, let’s talk first about NCMEC, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the strengthened value of being a public-private partnership with the FBI.

Susan Kennedy 1:59

Sure, so NCMEC, for those of you who may not be familiar, the National Center for Missing Exploited Children, is the nation’s largest and most influential child protection organization. We really see ourselves as leading the fight to protect children, creating vital resources for them, and for the people who keep them safe. So we’re going to talk about a range of issues today. I think most relevant probably for our conversation, is the work that we do around the cyber tip line. So receiving reports of child sexual exploitation online, as well as providing services for victims, for law enforcement, including the FBI, as you mentioned, around child sex trafficking cases as well. So we are a nonprofit, but we have very strong work and partnerships with law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, but also other federal agencies, and local law enforcement. Really, that’s because what we do is we are receiving information from the public, from law enforcement, from internet platforms, and working with law enforcement. Law enforcement are the ones who are going to investigate those cases, who are going to figure out what happened, who needs help, how they can hold people accountable, and make us all safer. It’s really law enforcement that has to do that work and that does do that work, so we really see ourselves as lending a helping hand to those agencies and providing some resources that might not be possible without that private support as well.

Sandra Morgan 3:16

I remember the first time I had an NCMEC guest on this show, I think it was Ernie Allen, one of the cofounders. Just beginning to understand the significance of the work of finding missing children, and then now bringing decades of that work to the issue of online exploitation, it feels like a really different approach and we need new and different tools. So let’s dive into our theme for this episode and talk about the way to keep our children safe online. I love your background in prevention and forensics with children. I’m pretty interested in the recent congressional hearings, because that tells me that there is a response to the growing public concerns and that we are going to begin to see better policy, stronger policy, I’m not exactly sure what how I want to term that. But can you give us an overview of NCMEC’s view of online safety from a policy perspective?

Susan Kennedy 4:53

Yeah, absolutely. So I would start by saying the National Center, as I mentioned, runs what we call the Cyber Tip Line, which is a program authorized by Congress, that receives reports of child sexual exploitation, again, from the public, from law enforcement, from victims themselves, from these internet safety platforms. Teally what we’ve seen, unfortunately, is a continued increase in reports of that cyber tip line. Last year, in 2023, we received 36.2 million reports of suspected child exploitation....