Over the past few years, online child exploitation lurched over the horizon as a horrifically formidable monster on the sex trafficking landscape. Global estimates of how many children were affected exploded by orders of magnitude, and police found themselves wholly unequipped to face the beast. 

In response, Destiny Rescue, in partnership with an intelligence services firm, developed the Scientia Program, a groundbreaking combination of cutting-edge technology and expert investigators. The team is led by Matt Valentine, a former detective with over 15 years of experience tracking down traffickers and the kids they exploit.

Since its inception, this team has become a vital resource for law enforcement agencies in their battle against the online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC). Today, we want to highlight a few of their accomplishments in the last calendar year.

Over 50 children rescued from traffickers

Like the rest of Destiny Rescue, the Scientia team’s primary concern is seeing children rescued from sexual exploitation. In 2024, our team collaborated with law enforcement on 13 cases to rescue 53 children, and 17 young adults, and arrest 14 offenders. 

In OSEC cases, each investigation is unique and complex, requiring creative tactics to get to the perpetrator. 

 In one case, agents posed as delivery workers to confirm a trafficker’s address. In another, an agent pretended to be a Western predator thousands of miles away, keeping the perpetrator on the phone as police prepared to storm her home. 

After rescuing a target child, the team often finds evidence on the perpetrator’s devices that reveal hundreds more abused children. In order to identify and rescue those other kids, agents must go over thousands and thousands of horrific child abuse images and videos. Though it’s the worst part of their job, the team is also uniquely qualified for the task: each is a registered Interpol Content Assessor. Despite their unique training, the team wanted a more efficient way to comb through all those disturbing images to identify hurting children. This need led to the creation of Project VISTA. 

Project VISTA

The Scientia team knew that spending months sifting through terabytes of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) wasn’t the best use of their time, not to mention the emotional toll it would take on them. So they created The VISTA (Victim Identification & Safety Through Analysis) Hub to fill the gap.

The Scientia team carefully developed a software suite that drastically limits the need for human interaction with CSAM while performing the investigative grunt work much faster. 

AI-empowered tools work in tandem with powerful open-source intelligence (OSINT) software to ascertain the source of the illicit material. The end result: real names and locations for kids depicted in CSAM! Armed with actionable information, police and rescuers can then locate and rescue suffering children.

The program is currently analyzing over 300,000 CSAM files depicting Thai victims. The team hopes that Project VISTA will soon lead to freedom for dozens of nameless, suffering children.

Legislation for freedom

The OSEC problem is massive, spanning countries and often involving complex criminal networks shrouded in online anonymity. While every child we rescue counts as a victory of inestimable worth, systemic change requires action on a larger scale.

To that end, Matt and the Scientia team have worked with the Thai government to help protect children at the national level. Matt gave a presentation to the Thailand Parliament at the Thai government’s request to discuss anti-grooming laws. His input helped influence sweeping laws that, at the time of writing, were in their final stages of ratification. 

The team also presented to the Thailand Law Change Committee, offering their expertise for cyber safety law amendments. While these laws are in an earlier stage of deliberation, we hope that their adoption will help keep thousands of children safe online. 

In addition, the Scientia team also spoke before the Australian Government about responding to cybercrime, the New Zealand Counter Trafficking Initiative to combat organised trafficking and the Bali Process, a multinational counter-human trafficking initiative for all of Southeast Asia.

Training Frontline Personnel

On top of everything else, the Scientia team dedicated hundreds of hours to facilitating training sessions for law enforcement officers, other NGOs, frontline workers and community leaders. The team trained 562 people across four countries last year.

A large portion of the training was focused on helping police locate OSEC victims and catch their offenders. The team traveled to dozens of law enforcement headquarters and equipped them to turn the tables on traffickers. The training was so successful that some departments actually called the team back to help them take down traffickers they’d discovered using the new techniques!

The Scientia team also taught NGOs and community leaders vital trauma-informed practices for those who work closely with survivors. In fact, the team developed its own “first aid” trauma curriculum to help first responders meet the immediate needs of survivors with compassion and sensitivity while prioritizing their dignity.

Moving forward

OSEC is a rapidly emerging threat to children. The internet has put innumerable kids at risk of exploitation without ever even meeting their trafficker in person. At the same time, criminals hide behind online anonymity to avoid getting caught by police. Their tactics are evolving as quickly as the technology they utilize.

But we’re not letting them get ahead.

The sheer volume of projects that this team completed this year, in addition to rescuing kids, is incredible. We couldn’t list everything they’ve accomplished in this quick update, but we’re beyond proud of all that they’ve done for exploited children so far. Next year, we hope to detail even more of the fruits of these ongoing efforts.

The Scientia team has accomplished so much because of donors like you. They’re adept at making a little go a long way, but we need your help to continue these life-changing initiatives. Please consider making a donation to support the efforts of the Scientia team and all of our other dedicated teams around the world. 

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