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DHS Says It Identified 311 New Child Sexual Exploitation Victims
After Forbes Reports AI Facial Recognition Push
Mary Whitfill Roeloffs, Forbes Staff
Updated Aug 9, 2023, 11:18am EDT
TOPLINE Federal investigators have used high-tech tools to identify over 300 apparent victims of child sexual exploitation in recent weeks, DHS Homeland Security Investigations said Wednesday—after Forbes first reported the unit was using powerful facial recognition technology to investigate scores of cases that had previously gone cold.
Authorities have made probable identifications of 311 children who appeared in sexually graphic materials, and “several” have been rescued from active abuse, in a mission called Operation Renewed Hope, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed.
Forbes first reported this week the government was using sophisticated artificial intelligence facial recognition tools like Clearview AI to both chase down new child exploitation leads and reopen investigations into years-old crimes, scanning more than 4.3 million images and videos to pick up on previously overlooked clues or identifying materials.
Federal officials did not confirm the use of Clearview AI or any other specific programs on Wednesday, instead saying they used “sophisticated investigative techniques,” including comparing leads found online to “records of unidentified children and offenders.”
Officials from the FBI, Homeland Security, Interpol, Europol and agencies as far away as Australia were able to identify adult abusers and their victims using machine learning, which gives investigators “a starting point” to use things like the species of birds singing in a video or native plants and animals that appear in the materials to narrow down a location, an official told NBC News.
Operation Renewed Hope—which began July 17—is the first of its kind to be conducted in the United States, and led to more than 100 probable identities and locations of abused children sent to domestic Homeland Security field offices and 25 partnering countries, and some arrests have already been made in the U.S. and Canada.
Sources told Forbes’ Thomas Brewster that one of the tools used to identify victims and abusers was Clearview AI—a sometimes controversial New York City-based company that claims to have a database of more than 30 billion images scraped from sites like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Millions of images were cropped to include only faces before they were uploaded to Clearview servers, an investigation on a scale that was previously impossible for federal investigators. Jim Cole, a former HSI child exploitation investigator, told Forbes facial recognition can't be used as probable cause, but can be used as leads that later result in an arrest. Child exploitation is just one example in which authorities are using AI to track down leads, with mixed results. A Detroit woman who was eight months pregnant when facial recognition incorrectly led police to her doorstep with charges of robbery and carjacking recently sued the city—the sixth such example of an incorrect ID. Georgia State University researchers last year found that police departments that use facial recognition technology disproportionately arrest Black people, and MIT researchers found several years ago that some algorithms have a much worse record identifying Black people than white. In every case of wrongful identification reported so far, the victim has been Black, according to Business Insider.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“Facial recognition can never be the basis for probable cause,” Cole told Forbes.
TANGENT
The news comes a week after the FBI announced a sweep of its own, called Operation Cross Country, had rescued more than 200 victims of sex trafficking in July and led to the identification or arrest of more than 60 suspected human traffickers.
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Sickening video shows cops rescue starved, beaten kids
locked in cages from Las Vegas horror house
By Marjorie Hernandez, NYPost
July 25, 2023 4:09pm Updated
Sickening video shows Las Vegas cops rescuing young children who were allegedly battered, starved and put in cages by their parents.
The accompanying video has been so pixelated to hide faces that it really reveals nothing, so I have not included it here.
One of the older children was beaten so badly that his father, Travis Doss, told Las Vegas Metropolitan Police he believed the 11-year-old was already dead, according to court transcripts obtained by TV station 8NewsNow.
The child said he was forced to share what little food he had with his siblings and that he had not eaten for days, a detective on the case recalled.
“He kept saying that he was always hungry and that’s why he stole, and then he said, ‘It’s food that’s in the trash, so how is that even stealing?’ ” the detective said, according to a grand jury transcript.
“And he kept saying that he needed big food because he was a big boy now and that he would have to share one large fry from McDonald’s with like all six kids and just that he was never really fed and that’s why he stole,” the cop recounted.
The detective told the jury that the child said he was locked in the cage “all day, every day.”
Video grabs from police body cam footage shown by KLAS shows Las Vegas Metro police rescuing six children a one-bedroom, one-bathroom extended-stay apartment near Flamingo Road and Valley View Boulevard. Travis Doss, 31, and Amanda Stamper, 33, were arrested and charged.
Travis Doss, 31, is accused of beating and starving his young children and putting them in animal cages.
Doss, who is the father to seven children, was indicted by a grand jury earlier this month on 40 charges including child abuse, according to court records viewed by The Post.
The disturbing cop bodycam footage initially shows officers entering the tiny, one-bedroom apartment where they found six kids — ages 2 to 11 — alone with two dogs. Two of the children, the 11-year-old boy and his 9-year-old brother, were crouched inside a padlocked cage normally used for pets.
Amanda Stamper, 33, also was arrested and charged with child abuse.
Amanda Stamper, who is the biological mother of the 2-year-old child and stepmother to the others, also was indicted and faces seven counts of child abuse.
This video grab shows the tiny apartment where six abused children were found, including two in a locked animal cage.
KLAS
The child told police his father had beaten him with cords, belts and a pan.
LVMPD bodycam footage showed the children initially refused to open the door to cops for 15 minutes because the kids were instructed not to open the door for strangers.
“We’re not hurt, we’re fine,” said one of the children in the video.
Doss is the father to seven children, while Stamper has one child but acts as a stepmother to the others.
Instagram
After a maintenance worker eventually convinced the child to open the door, cops found the children in the apartment with dogs.
In the video, the 11-year-old child said of his dad, “He hit my face in the cage because I was squished up trying to get out of the cage because I didn’t do anything and I was freaking out.”
One of the officers could be heard consoling a child, telling him, “You’re not a bad kid, this is just really a crappy situation. And we’re going to get you some help. This is not going to happen again.”
Instagram
Doss allegedly told police he had “no choice” when asked why he placed the children in the cage.
In his Instagram, Doss, who is a rapper who goes by the name “Trap Montana,” is seen rapping inside exotic cars, mansions and casinos on the famed Las Vegas Strip.
In posts from September 2020, he is seen with his children enjoying a beach day in Santa Monica, Calif. Another post from June 2019 shows Doss fishing with four of the children and Stamper smiling in the background.
Clark County prosecutors said Stamper was a prostitute working under Doss, adding that she knew her partner was abusing the children.
Stamper’s public defender said the mother also was a victim of Doss’ abuse. Stamper’s Instagram shows several provocative pictures of her in the nude and shots of her newborn baby from two years ago.
“If she had done anything, she would’ve been subjected to serious, serious abuse,” Stamper’s public defender said in June.
It would be interesting to know what happened to the first 5 kids' mother. It would also be interesting to know if drugs were involved. It's hard to imagine people so devoid of a conscience, or compassion, without drugs or alcohol being there to deaden their souls.
Alicia Navarro’s boyfriend Eddie Davis lost job after hurling
‘angry comments’ at coworkers: ex-colleague
By Steven Vago and David Propper
August 6, 2023 8:35am Updated
NYPost
The boyfriend of teenage runaway Alicia Navarro became more “aggressive and angry” over the last two years before being canned by Walmart, a former co-worker told The Post.
Eddie Davis, 36, lost his job as a night time stocker after he hurled “angry comments” toward other employees, the former colleague said this week.
“He would call younger guys names and stuff. I’m not sure of the names. He was being very aggressive,” said the coworker, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Davis had been living with Navarro, now 18, for at least a year in a Havre apartment, neighbors said, before the pair fled to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation this week.
The husky, bearded man was seen with Navarro in exclusive photos snapped by The Post both Tuesday and Thursday as they moved items into his mother’s trailer.
Navarro ran away from her Glendale, Arizona, home in 2019 just shy of her 15th birthday.
Eddie Davis, 36, the boyfriend of teenage runaway Alicia Navarro became more “aggressive and angry”
over the last two years before being canned by Walmart, a former co-worker told The Post.
Brigitte Stelzer for NY Post
She re-emerged at a Montana police station on July 23 saying she wanted authorities to take off her the missing persons list so she could get a driver’s license.
Not much is known about the relationship between Navarro and Davis, including how long the two have been living together.
But Davis over the last couple years grew “aggressive and angry,” his former coworker said.
“Within a year or two, his attitude has changed at work,” the employee said, estimating Davis worked at that Walmart location for more than five years.
Other sources said Davis had more recently worked at a local marijuana dispensary, but claimed he had lost his job there too.
The Walmart source also recalled how another worker said Davis was invited out to a bar “a while back” and asked if he wanted to bring his girlfriend.
But Davis denied Navarro was his girlfriend and claimed she was actually a younger relative.
“Eddie replied saying it was his niece not his girlfriend, and that she was too young,” the employee recounted his colleague telling him.
“They were using the cover…about it being his niece.”
Authorities raided the Havre apartment the two were living in on July 26 with police later confirming that a man was detained and questioned before being cut loose.
No arrest related to Navarro’s disappearance has been made and Davis has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
He is also not thought to be under suspicion by police, who have also made it clear that as an adult, Navarro can choose who she spends her time with and where she lives.
How can the police ignore the probability that it was Davis who facilitated Navarro's running away from home at 14? How can they not investigate whether they have been sleeping together since then? Davis' increasing irritability may have to do with his being frightened of having to take responsibility for the sexual abuse of a child.
Davis had been living with Navarro, now 18, for at least a year in a Havre apartment, neighbors said,
before the pair fled to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation this week.
Brigitte Stelzer
Once news about Davis and Navarro came to light, the Walmart employee said people at work have been talking about how well he hid his relationship with Navarro.
A neighbor previously told The Post Navarro referred to Davis as her uncle when she was looking for Davis near a post office in the days before she went to the police station.
“She was asking for directions. She looked scared,” Garrett Smith, 22, said last week, adding that it was clear she didn’t know her way around the area.
“She said she was walking with her uncle and got lost and she’s looking for 6th Street,” Smith said.
“I later found out that she was referring to him as her uncle.”
Ex-wife of former Utah County therapist arrested
in ritualistic child sex abuse investigation
Utah County Sheriff's Office
By: FOX 13 News
Posted at 1:49 PM, Aug 09, 2023 and last updated 1:08 PM, Aug 09, 2023
UTAH COUNTY, Utah - Nearly one year after a former Utah County therapist was arrested as part of an ongoing child sex abuse investigation, his ex-wife has also been arrested.
Rosie Hamblin was booked into jail Wednesday afternoon on one count of sodomy on a child.
Hamblin is the ex-wife of former therapist David Hamblin, who was arrested on multiple charges including rape of a child, two counts of sexual abuse of a child and three counts of sodomy on a child.
FOX 13 News previously reported that Hamblin once confessed to sexually assaulting at least one of his female family members in an undercover phone recording.
In 2022, FOX 13 News went to Rosie's home in Utah County to try and speak with her, but she declined to comment.
I guess she's out on bail.
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