exposing online predation
What is project stonefish?
Bark discovered an alarming number of heartbreaking situations in which children were actively being groomed, exploited, and abused by online predators. In 2018 Bark alerted the FBI to the actions of 99 child predators, in 2019 that number grew to well over 300. We wanted to explain online grooming to a generation of parents who didn’t experience the danger of it themselves. The numbers alone, while informative, are easy to detach from emotionally.
In an effort to tell the human side of the story a small group of 5 employees worked under Roo Powell to expose the dangers that children face online. We called this endeavor "Project Stonefish," and we never could have expected what happened next.
The big idea
We would create social media personas for multiple young girls online and populate the accounts with normal teen content, use popular hashtags on their posts, create backstories, and even fictional friends in order to create believable teen personas that online predators might be tempted to interact with. If contacted by a predator we would document all of the interactions for law enforcement and collect valuable data that we could use to enhance our detection algorithms. We would then report on what we learned in order to spread awareness about the dangers lurking in the shadows of the internet.
How I helped
Makeup
Using makeup and photography lighting to subtly reshape bone structure I was able to add youthful roundness to the cheeks, and cover-up identifying marks. From there we would use lighting, costuming, and body language to take a strong base photo that could be brought into photoshop for digital editing.
Photo editing
The digital editing process was far more detailed than just smoothing skin or doing some traditional beauty touch-ups. I would take away muscle tone in arms and legs to achieve a believable 15-year-old body, narrow the shoulders, reshape the neck, lighten lines in joints and knuckles and more to create a believable photo.
Research
I didn’t just help out with the visual side of the project. I would use my research skills to create all of the verifiable details of our characters’ lives. Things like addresses, schools, churches, schedules of extracurricular activities. I also made sure that our photos were accurate down to the last detail. If we took a photo outside I would make sure the weather patterns and plant life matched our characters’ location.
File Handoff to Law Enforcement
Our contacts in law enforcement needed as much information as possible to conduct their investigations and make arrests. This required meticulous attention to detail while organizing the hundreds of screenshots of DM’s on multiple platforms, photos, even video and audio files that each predator would send to us.
The Results
Over the life of the project, we turned over screenshots of conversations with almost 100 predators to law enforcement. Because of our work, some of these predators are currently awaiting trial on charges like sexual exploitation of children and the transfer of obscene material to minors among others.
In order to get the story of our experiences out to the public, Roo published a Medium article under the pseudonym of Sloane Ryan in December of 2019. The response was immediate and overwhelming. Thousands of people reached out asking how they could help protect children, they thanked us for the work we were doing and they shared horror stories about their families’ experiences with predation. Press outlets also began reaching out and our work was featured on Good Morning America and Nightline News.
The work resulted in the Roo created S.O.S.A. (Safe from online sex abuse foundation) and the continued work of the organization on the Max docuseries, "Undercover Underage."