Pictured above is one of our new billboard displays on Youth Internet Safety from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that includes our Task Force logo. We are now co-branded with the DHS for much of their material as we work to promote this national campaign called Know2Protect that can be accessed at: know2protect.gov . Our Task Force continues to provide professional speakers (such as those from Homeland Security Investigations, Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force/ICAC and other professionals from the private sector), give our own presentation - Not Our Children to audiences, have booth displays and participate in other events. Our primary goal is to educate communities on how to protect their minor loved ones and themselves, especially if they are minors, from the advances of sexual predators. A major focus of our work is on youth internet safety.

Projects to Protect Children from Sexual Predators

The Canyon County Anti-Trafficking Task Force, Inc (CCATTF) was born out of one woman’s eye-opening experience saving a very young woman from the grips of a captor one summer day in 2020 while walking in a city park. Learning that this young woman had been transported across the country from one state to another, drugged, abused and ultimately registered as a missing person was a cry for help that could not be ignored. The story of this experience shared with others has become a grassroots rallying cry to develop educational programs that would educate and equip citizens to protect themselves and others, particularly our most vulnerable population, our children, from sexual predators.

There are over 750,000 sexual predators online at any given moment of every day luring and coercing children from all socio-economic levels into unwittingly producing Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) through chat rooms, online gaming and social media apps. Approximately 20 new children appear on porn sites monthly with child internet pornography sales reaching $4.9 BILLION dollars annually. Only through education will our youth learn the warning signs of online strangers, how to avoid interaction with them and know when to ask a trusted adult for help. Our Mission Statement precisely defines what our Task Force is all about:

          With education our approach, protection and prevention our goal, we stand united as a community  to combat sex trafficking. 

In order to accomplish our goal we are committed to:

● Developing a professionally produced 15-20-minute video designed to provide children with some necessary life-saving education to stay safe online. Content will be sensitively designed to deliver appropriate, up-beat messages to students aged 8-13. The video will be presented by the School Resource Officers on campus, upon approval by school administration, staff, and parents. Our Task Force is working cooperatively with local law enforcement officers to provide this type of training video for them to use ASAP. They earnestly support the need for this tool, but their budgets do not allow for such an expenditure. Currently, no other resource provides this specific training video.

● Presenting our already developed informational parent workshop in area churches to alert, educate, and equip parents with necessary tools to help keep their kids safe. As a follow-up to this presentation, we will introduce on-going, detailed information/training through nationally recognized websites. This presentation will then be reformatted to address audiences within the general public. For this program we need portable tech equipment to deliver the PowerPoint.

● Continue holding public events to spread our message out to our community at large. The most prevailing comment we hear is, “Oh, that doesn’t happen here in Idaho.” BUT SEX TRAFFICKING IS ALIVE AND WELL IN IDAHO!

● Enlist the cooperation of local businesses to install public Wi-Fi safety filtering programs that block the exchange of pornographic material initiated by online sexual predators who aim to victimize minors accessing the internet while in public establishments.

The CCATTF is committed to making Idaho communities a role model for these programs that we believe will help change the trajectory of this horrific criminal activity now considered by professionals as a pandemic happening not only in our state but throughout our country.

The Canyon County Anti-Trafficking Task Force is now incorporated! Recently we became our own legal entity as a non-profit, educational organization. We have also received notice from the IRS that we are now a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

All donations will be distributed directly to The Canyon County Anti-Trafficking Task Force from this GiveSendGo campaign and is now tax deductible for the donor. Thank you for considering us and thank you for donating to this very important Community cause.