• Globally, the number of “cyber tips” about child exploitation have skyrocketed from eight million to 36 million since 2016.
• In New Zealand, the numbers increased from 1333 to 19,865 over the same time period.
• This year, Herald reporter Jared Savage spent time with the Customs team which investigates child sex abuse material in New Zealand as part of a documentary, Unmasking the Monsters, which screens on TVNZ at 7.30pm tomorrow night.

Pinned to the lapel of Simon Peterson’s suit jacket is a little badge of a native wasp.

The black hunting wasp, or Priocnemis monachus, is renowned for its ability to track, then subdue with a paralysing sting, much larger spiders as prey.

“We thought that was reflective of our team and what we do,” said Peterson of adopting the native wasp as a symbol.

“We’re small, nobody knows about us, and we hunt spiders.”

Peterson is in charge of the Child Exploitation Operations Team (CEOT), an investigative unit within Customs which prosecutes “spiders” sharing sexual photographs and videos of children online.

While high-profile murders and drug busts hog the crime headlines in New Zealand, the painstaking work of CEOT (and their partners at police and Internal Affairs) often flies under the radar.

The public might be blissfully ignorant about child sex abuse material (CSAM), perhaps because the depraved content is too hard to read about – the problem has exploded in recent years.

By law, social media networks in the United States must alert the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) of any sexual imagery of children uploaded to their platforms.

Those tips are then shared with law enforcement around the world.

In 2016, there were more than eight million referrals globally and 1333 were sent to New Zealand agencies to be investigated.

Last year, those figures had skyrocketed to 36 million and 19, 865 respectively.

Those numbers are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg, given the common use of encrypted messages and also the anonymity of the dark web.

“I don’t want to scare people, but it is a lot more prevalent than what most people think,” Peterson says.

“It’s not just a problem for the rest of the world – it’s an issue that has come to New Zealand and it’s not going to go away.

“People don’t want to talk about it; it’s pretty uncomfortable to talk about. But if we keep it in the shadows, then we’re not doing enough to protect the kids coming up behind us.”

Simon Peterson is in charge of the Child Exploitation and Operations Team at Customs. Photo / Greenstone TV

Earlier this year, I spent time with Peterson and his team for a documentary, Unmasking the Monsters, to delve into the fascinating – and frankly abhorrent – online world they investigate.

The landscape of child sex material has changed beyond recognition over the past 25 years.

Once upon a time, Customs officials at the border might’ve stopped travellers and searched their luggage to find physical material – magazines, video tapes, DVDs, or perhaps computer hard drives – with sexual images of children.

The creation of the internet and the rapid expansion of technology means today, anyone can now film abuse on their smartphone, then easily share images and video online with like-minded predators around the world.

Not only is there exponentially more content readily available, as shown by the NCMEC reports, but the imagery investigated by Customs today is also far more extreme in nature.

“In the old days of magazines, we’d see a lot of material … of children in sexualised [poses],” says Peterson.

“Nowadays, we’re having to deal with some really dark stuff online... children being raped, infants, some really horrible stuff involving animals and violence.

“That abuse is being captured specifically so it can be shared.”

Wading through the morass of sexual deviancy – sometimes thousands of images – takes its toll on staff, Peterson says. Not everybody can do the job.

The recruitment process is thorough and new investigators are paired up in a “buddy” system, as well as given “mitigation” strategies to ease the mental load.

On a daily basis, it can be as simple as playing music or a television show as a background distraction from the horror on their computer screens.

Sometimes they just have to get up and leave the office.

No one is allowed to work on cases from home (in order to maintain safe spaces) and staff must attend therapy sessions with psychologists every three months to check their mental health.

There are also regular bonding sessions to blow off steam (they learned how to throw axes on one outing) and help foster a tight-knit camaraderie, where everyone is looking out for each other.

Building the CEOT culture has become the focus of Kesta Dennison, the team’s self-described “mama bear”, who says their whānaungatanga [sense of family connection] is “priceless” with regard to everyone’s wellbeing.

“Every search warrant we do, we do see something more terrible than before. And you experience it with this group of people,” Dennison says.

“It’s really hard to explain unless you feel it... you’re part of a family. Once you burn your soul with a group of people, you’ll always have a connection.

“And this work will burn your soul.”

Kesta Dennison, a supervising officer, with another member of the Customs child exploitation team. She says the work will "burn your soul". Photo / Greenstone TV

It was Brent James Ruddell’s garish tattoos which gave him away. On July 18, 2019, the tree worker from Kerikeri sent a message on Snapchat of a child being sexually abused.

The 35-year-old sent another similar message the same day.

As required by US law, the social media platform referred the messages to the NCMEC cyber tip line, which in turn sent a report to New Zealand agencies in October that year.

Customs is not the only Government department which investigates child sex material.

The Department of Internal Affairs and the police also have ringfenced teams of investigators, and the three agencies work together to triage incoming cases.

Because Snapchat doesn’t store information on servers in New Zealand, any data transmitted between users must leave and re-enter the country.

Technically, Ruddell was exporting objectionable material across the border, which means the NCMEC report landed with Customs to be investigated.

Operation Blackhawk, the investigation into Ruddell, soon identified him through the clues in the NCMEC cyber tip, and the following month Peterson’s team executed a search warrant at his rental address.

Ruddell was a “clean-skin” without a previous criminal record, and confessed to sending the two child sex images back in July, which were deemed relatively low-level in the scheme of things.

But he adamantly denied ever sexually abusing children himself.

“He would never do that, [had] never done that, just liked looking at pictures,” said senior investigator Gareth Davis, recalling the discussion with Ruddell when he was arrested.

However, Customs also seized an HP laptop and a Samsung mobile phone during the raid.

A forensic examination of the electronic devices found 76 videos and two images of child sex abuse on the laptop, another 279 images and 10 videos on the phone.

But Davis found something else on the phone.

Disguised as an innocuous Spark app was a secure vault with 36 individually named folders.

Inside the folders were a total of 832 images and 70 videos depicting the sexual abuse of children.

A man could be seen raping children in some of the disturbing files. He never showed his face, or uttered a word, but Davis noticed some distinctive tattoos on his torso.

Brent Ruddell had taken numerous photographs of himself naked on his phone, providing Davis with an extensive catalogue of tattoos to compare with the sex offender in the videos.

Misplaced vanity was the key to unmasking another monster.

Ruddell wasn’t just collecting child sex abuse material, he was creating it himself.

The next step was to urgently find the victims.

Over the course of the next week, Taskforce Ruru – a joint team of specialists from police, the Department of Internal Affairs and Customs – worked relentlessly to identify five children abused by Ruddell.

They were between 3 and 6 years old.

The offending had taken place over three years, between 2016 and 2019, after Ruddell had groomed their mothers, sometimes through dating apps like Tinder, then offered to babysit.

Ruddell was arrested again, and eventually pleaded guilty to 72 charges of offences relating to objectionable publications, drug use, unlawful sexual connection with children, and abduction for sex.

Twelve months later, he was sentenced in the High Court at Whangārei to 15 years and five months in prison.

Family members of the victims spoke at the hearing, describing Ruddell as a “calculated predator” who portrayed himself as a loving family man to get close to their children.

“My daughter wrapped her little arms around your legs, looked up to you and said she loved you,” one mother told Ruddell in court. “I replay this day over and over, every day.”

Brent James Ruddell in the High Court at Whangārei. He was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison due to his sexual offences against children, some of which he filmed. Photo / Michael Cunningham

In terms of removing children from harm in New Zealand, Operation Blackhawk is considered to be the most successful investigation in CEOT history.

But it was still harrowing to listen to the terrible impact Ruddell had on so many lives, said Davis – not just the victims themselves but also the guilt-ridden mothers who trusted him.

“There was a sort of common thread between all of them … They all recalled a red flag, but brushed it off, for whatever reason.”

Parents should trust their gut instincts, says Peterson, but also be vigilant for risk where none might seem obvious.

There is no typical profile for child sex material offenders, young and old, although nearly all are male.

Outwardly, many lead successful lives with children of their own, run businesses or have professional careers, as well as being actively involved in their communities.

Those same upstanding citizens also lead secret lives online, sharing perverse material which most people would find impossible to understand.

“It’s terrifying how they can operate in such an evil way in one world,” says Kesta Dennison, “and then operate in another world as a high-functioning family man.”

To help prevent online grooming, Peterson encouraged parents to take an active interest in the digital worlds their children live in – even if that means learning how to play Fortnite or Roblox – in order to understand the potential risks.

It’s an approach endorsed by Tim Houston and Detective Senior Sergeant Kepal Richards, who manage child sex material investigation teams at Internal Affairs and New Zealand Police, respectively.

Checking the websites and apps their children visit, as well as tweaking privacy and parental controls, are recommended. But the internet is everywhere, and Richards understands it can be difficult for parents to control access.

“Our advice is to have open conversations with your children, to explain the dangers of the internet and encourage a relationship where they feel safe to talk if something untoward does happen to them,” Richards says. “Then report it.”

It’s a scary world. But the trio also wanted to reassure the public that their investigative teams are skilful and committed, even in the face of ongoing revolution of technology which makes their job harder.

End-to-end encryption and ever-increasing storage space (meaning even more child abuse files to investigate) will continue to be a problem, although child sex images created by AI are expected to be the next threat.

There’s one more thing everyone interviewed by the Herald wanted people to understand: child sex abuse material should not be referred to as “child porn”, which implies consent.

“These are real children whose worst moments in their lives have been captured and thrown on the internet for someone’s sexual gratification,” Houston says. “This isn’t a victimless crime.”

Jared Savage covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006 and has won a dozen journalism awards in that time, including twice being named Reporter of the Year. He is also the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.