A new short documentary released by the Ontario Provincial Police is shedding light on what it says is one of the most disturbing and fast-growing threats facing children: online sexual exploitation.
Titled ”Protecting Innocence,” the film opens with the story of a mother and daughter who bravely speak out about their experience dealing with online abuse.
The video, which can be found on YouTube, is part of a wider effort under Ontario’s Provincial Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) program, which is raising awareness about a crisis law enforcement says is escalating rapidly.
According to Det. Staff Sgt. Tim Brown, who leads the ICE strategy team, children today face risks that extend far beyond their physical environment.
“Children have no safety net on the internet,” Brown said. “Protecting them is our most fundamental responsibility as a society.”
While internet and phone usage has become standard among younger kids, it also provides predators with unprecedented access to minors.
The OPP says they are seeing more offenders exploiting social media, gaming platforms and messaging apps to communicate with children, often posing as peers to gain trust.
In 2024 alone, there were 2,717 incidents of child luring reported to Cybertips, a national tipline for reporting online sexual exploitation of children.
Brown also told Global News that new technology, particularly artificial intelligence, is making it easier for offenders to generate synthetic child sexual abuse material.
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Even though the images themselves may not depict real victims, it is still illegal under Canadian law.
Brown said AI-generated content is complicating investigations, creating fake victims and adding to the spread of child abuse material online.
“Creating deepfakes has been around forever,” he said. “But what AI has enabled is being able to do that easier, faster, in a more seamless way.”
“It can also lead our investigators down a bit of a rabbit hole if we’re trying to identify a child that doesn’t actually exist.”
The technology is now being used to digitally alter real images of children, sometimes taken from public social media profiles or innocent online posts, to create fabricated and explicit content.
“That would be the first way where we’re seeing it crop up in our investigations recently,” Brown said.
Brown emphasized that parents need to play an active role.
“There is certainly a community responsibility, and a parent’s responsibility to be aware of what’s going on with their kids,” he said.
He encouraged parents to regularly check privacy settings on their children’s devices, talk openly about safe online behaviour, and learn how to recognize signs of grooming or exploitation. Simple steps like monitoring apps and online communication can make a significant difference.
“We need parents to be on guard for their kids,” he emphasized.
For investigators, the mission to protect children is also deeply personal.
“We’re all parents or grandparents — in some cases, we’re uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters. We all have kids in our lives,” said Brown.
“Some of us have been face-to-face with this type of abuse and exploitation. There’s a very human element involved in this for us as investigators.”
The urgency of this issue is reflected in the numbers.
In 2024, Ontario accounted for 24 per cent of all online child sexual exploitation reports processed by Cybertip.ca, with more than 6,300 incidents reported in the province. Of those, more than 1,000 cases were forwarded to police for further investigation.
Recent efforts from multiple police districts across Ontario are also exposing just how widespread the problem is.
Project Orchard, the most recent OPP-led operation, resulted in 67 criminal investigations, 46 search warrants, and the identification of nine child victims.
Officers seized 313 electronic devices and laid 199 charges against individuals involved in online exploitation.
Brown says these operations are just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
The ICE strategy continues to encourage parents and community members to report concerns through Cybertip.ca and stay informed about the risks children face online.
However, the message from police is clear: safeguarding children is a shared responsibility.
“We really are in this fight together,” Brown said.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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