Federal authorities this week announced a national campaign aimed at protecting children from online sexual predators.
As part of the Project iGuardian, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and local law enforcement authorities will visit schools and youth groups in Georgia and across the nation to advise children and their parents how to avoid the predators. ICE is teaming up with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for the effort.
Last year, ICE officials logged nearly a million hours working child sexual exploitation cases and opened more than 4,000 investigations.
Brock Nicholson, the special agent in charge in Atlanta for ICE’s homeland security investigations, said online sexual predation and the distribution and production of child pornography are almost at “epidemic” levels in his area of operations: Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
“As focused as we are on investigating these crimes,” he said, “we want to do whatever we can to help prevent… [them] before they become the tragedies that we often encounter.”
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