{"id":8764,"date":"2023-11-29T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.childrescue.org.nz\/?p=8764"},"modified":"2023-11-21T06:51:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T17:51:19","slug":"the-girl-behind-the-green-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.childrescue.org.nz\/blog\/the-girl-behind-the-green-gate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Girl Behind the Green Gate"},"content":{"rendered":"
Back in October 2021, one of Caleb\u2019s Thai informants reached out. The informant said that he\u2019d been contacted by a child trafficker through a dating site, and the criminal was offering live sex videos with very young children. Once Caleb\u2019s team fact-checked the information, he went undercover.<\/span><\/p>\n Under a false identity, Caleb joined the dating platform. He didn\u2019t have to wait long before the trafficker started sending him unsolicited messages. The trafficker, who we\u2019ll call TJ, sent Caleb horrifying videos of children being sexually abused, some of them as young as two years old, as a \u201cpreview\u201d of the type of material he could provide via livestream.<\/span><\/p>\n Appalled by what he was seeing, Caleb started building a case. He noticed a distinctive building in the background of one video that let him know that the perpetrator was calling from the Philippines. From there, Caleb began the gruelling, heartbreaking work of poring over the videos for clues, all while maintaining seemingly friendly contact with the trafficker so TJ wouldn\u2019t grow suspicious.<\/span><\/p>\n As months passed, Caleb worked on other cases and rescued other children but never stopped trying to locate this particular trafficker. Without ever purchasing or even asking for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), Caleb played the part of an interested but uncommitted customer.<\/span><\/p>\n As time passed, some of the children became familiar. One particular little girl named Chelsea was offered again and again. Caleb learned that she was only 3 years old. His heart burned every time the bright-eyed, innocent child was offered for a live-streaming sex show. He longed to see the dear girl freed from the horrors she was facing.<\/span><\/p>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n Photos of Chelsea the perpetrator sent to Caleb<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Soon, Caleb discovered why she was offered so often: Chelsea was TJ\u2019s neighbour. He learned that besides suffering abuse from TJ, the child\u2019s mother was both complicit and occasionally involved in the recorded abuse. Under an onslaught of thousands of messages from TJ in his relentless attempts to exploit the child, Caleb resolutely built his case.<\/span><\/p>\n Caleb spent hundreds of hours examining TJ\u2019s burner Facebook page. He looked into every contact, every friend of a friend, until something caught his eye. An image from a person <\/span>three connections away<\/span><\/i> from TJ\u2019s page stopped Caleb cold. The profile picture showed a woman who lived in a poorer district of a major city. And standing next to her was a little girl. \u201cHer daughter’s face looked very familiar to me straight away,\u201d Caleb recalled.<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019d found Chelsea.<\/b><\/p>\n Armed with the mother\u2019s public profile page, Caleb brought his research to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Filipino equivalent of the\u00a0New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS). Because the NBI has collaborated with Destiny Rescue in the past, they agreed to start the paperwork to build a legal case. In the meantime, they encouraged Caleb to continue his investigation. There wasn\u2019t much information on the Facebook page, and the team still needed an actionable address to perform a raid.<\/span><\/p>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
A link to reality<\/span><\/h2>\n