This week, we hear from Kathryn Rifenbark, the Director for CyberTipline, Public Reports, in the Exploited Children Division (ECD) at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). In this talk from the 2024 CESE Summit, she shares about the impact of Sextortion on today’s young people and talks about a powerful new service that can be used to help.

Self-generated content is a normative behavior of today’s youth. But it can have a destructive impact when it’s non-consensually shared or when they have been blackmailed or coerced into producing it. Take It Down is a new, anonymous, and free service that can help prevent the spread of online sharing of nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit images or videos of those under the age of 18. This session will provide an overview of Take it Down, operated by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). Launched in December of 2022, participants will learn the amazing impact of this global program, how it works and how you can share this resource with children, victims, and families in your community.

Kathryn has worked at NCMEC for over 14 years, and in her current position, Kathryn is responsible for enhancing NCMEC’s efforts to improve resources for survivors of child sexual abuse material by liaising with law enforcement, victim service providers, and child serving professionals as well as managing the team who processes public CyberTipline reports. She received a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology and a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.

NCMEC’s Take It Down service: https://takeitdown.ncmec.org/
Learn more about NCMEC: https://www.missingkids.org/
Read the article “Sextortion: The Largest Blackmail Operation In Human History” https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/sextortion-the-largest-blackmail-operation-in-human-history/

In this episode, we get to hear from Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls for the United Nations. We were honored to have her join us to speak at the 2024 CESE Global Summit, and this session is titled “Beyond Consent: Prostitution, Pornography, and Human Rights” in which she looks at prostitution as sexual exploitation and a violation of the human right to dignity. She also looks specifically at pornography and other forms of technology facilitated forms of prostitution as she busts 7 myths about prostitution.

Reem Alsalem is an independent consultant on gender issues, the rights of refugees and migrants, transitional justice and humanitarian response. She has consulted extensively for United Nations departments, agencies and programmes such as UN-Women, OHCHR, UNICEF and IOM, as well as for non-governmental organizations, think tanks and academia. Previously, she worked as an international civil servant, serving with the UNHCR in thirteen countries. During her service, she has planned, implemented, and monitored programs that served to protect persons that were survivors of gender-based violence, particularly women and girls.

Read our blog article about Reem’s report to the U.N. and get a full copy here: https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/united-nations-must-adopt-report-that-tells-truth-about-prostitution/

Learn more about the issue of Prostitution and how it is a major form of sexual exploitation: https://endsexualexploitation.org/issues/prostitution/

Haley McNamara and Dani Pinter discuss the groundbreaking lawsuits against multiple pornography websites that were recently filed in Kansas. These cases are the first of their kind as the new Age Verification Law was allegedly violated when a minor was able to access sexually explicit content without any age verification efforts from multiple websites. Haley and Dani talk about the real people affected in this case as well as the larger effects of pornography on children.

Read the blog: https://bit.ly/KansasAVlawsuit

Read the New York Times article: https://nyti.ms/4msXL6R

Read about the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on Age Verification: https://bit.ly/3SM38Am

FREE Resource: The Most Dangerous Playground | View Resource: https://bit.ly/MostDangerousPlayground

Get Help from the NCOSE Law Center: https://sexualexploitationlawsuits.com/get-help

Lisa Thompson joins Haley McNamara to discuss the recent launch of a groundbreaking new report, Not a Fantasy: How the Pornography Industry Exploits Image-based Sexual Abuse in Real Life, which exposes how the pornography industry facilitates, normalizes, and profits from image-based sexual abuse (IBSA). Lisa shares her journey into this work to end sexual exploitation and how she was able to bring this report to life. Haley and Lisa chat through some of the details of the report as well, including 9 ways the pornography industry fuels IBSA.

Learn more and download the FREE report: https://NotAFantasy.org

Learn more about Image-Based Sexual Abuse: https://EndSexualExploitation.org/IBSA

The Take It Down Act has passed congress! As it heads to the president’s desk for signing, Haley McNamara sits down with Eleanor Gaetan (VP and Director of Public Policy at NCOSE) to discuss what this law does, why it’s needed, and what’s next on the horizon for protecting kids online. They also discuss the momentum we are seeing at the state level for the Safer Devices for Kids Act, which requires device manufacturers to have safety settings ON by default.

Contact us here: public@ncose.com
Read more about the TAKE IT DOWN Act passing: EndSexualExploitation.org blog
Learn about the Safer Devices for Kids Act: EndSexualExploitation.org/Device-Protection-Bill

Watch the video version of this podcast episode here: https://youtu.be/BiI8YQ05kX4

Tim Estes joins Haley for this week’s episode to discuss the launch of an incredible new platform: AngelQ. Among his many other accomplishments, Tim is the CEO and Founder of Angel AI. He chats with Haley about how AngelQ got started and what parents can do with this tool. They also discuss the recent report of a disturbing conversation that journalists from the Wall Street Journal were able to generate from the Meta AI chat service. This just emphasizes the need for smart and safe AI tools like the one that Tim and the team at AngelQ have created.

AngelQ is an AI-driven tool that creates safe and curated experiences for kids and gives parents peace of mind. It’s more than just a safety tool – AngelQ is designed to encourage and inspire kids as they use the internet to learn, have fun, and then hop offline to explore the world around them.

Tim Estes is based in Nashville, TN, with his wife of 10 years, Jalayne Tradler, and their two boys. He is the Founder of Authentic Capital, and serves on the board for a number of organizations including Nashville Innovation Studio, Replica Cyber/Grey Market Labs, and Mission Link Next. Tim has also been involved with a number of legislative efforts including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and he is a regular event speaker and podcast guest on issues around emerging technology, A.I., and protecting kids online.

Get a discount on your AngelQ subscription by signing up for our newsletter: EndSexualExploitation.org/AngelQ-SignUp

Visit the AngelQ website: www.AngelQ.ai

Haley McNamara and Dani Pinter sit down with Melinda Tankard Reist, Co-Founder and Movement Director of Collective Shout, for a discussion around the recent successful campaign to remove a sexually violent game called “No Mercy” from Steam. Melinda describes how the game allows players to sexually assault your family members and rewards you for doing so. In less than a week, this campaign garnered over 70,000 signatures and over 3,000 emails sent to the CEO of Valve to remove this game. Despite the backlash and threats, Melinda and the team at Collective Shout continue their work to protect women and children from objectification and sexualization.

Melinda is an author, speaker, media commentator and campaigner. She is best known for her work addressing sexualization, objectification, harms of pornography, sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence against women. Melinda is author/editor of seven books (no. 8 on boundary-setting for girls forthcoming 2025). She co-founded Collective Shout for a world free of sexploitation 15 years ago, and is Movement Director. Melinda is an Ambassador for World Vision Australia, Compassion Australia, Hagar NZ and the youth mentoring body the Raise Foundation. She is also Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Culture and Ethics, Notre Dame University, Sydney and named in the Who’s Who of Australian Women and the World Who’s Who of Women. In 2024 she was the recipient of the ‘Global Impact Award’ presented at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation [CESE] Global Summit in Washington DC.

“Children being the targets of this deepfake technology is our worst nightmare”

Haley and Dani discuss the current state of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology in the realm of sexual exploitation. Overwhelmingly, these tools are used for pornographic material, and 10% of teenagers have reported being aware of deepfake pornography depicting someone they know. They also dig into how this leads to desensitization towards sexualizing children and overwhelming law enforcement.

-- Urge your representatives to pass the TAKE IT DOWN Act: https://advocacy.charityengine.net/Default.aspx?isid=2355

-- Urge Apple and Google to have better policies for A.I. apps:
https://endsexualexploitation.org/AI-Deepfake-Apps

Watch the video version of this episode here: https://youtu.be/uItdvTL3pIU