FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (7News) — Inside Homeland Security Investigations’ Cyber Crime Center in Fairfax, Virginia, analysts and investigators know they can’t rescue every child who’s being sexually exploited online or arrest every adult who preys on children.
The scope of the problem is simply too big.
In 2024, the CyberTipline monitored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received 20.5 million reports from tech companies of suspected online child sexual exploitation. Those companies are mandated reporters under federal law. Investigators can’t possibly keep up with the sheer volume of reports.
That’s where Kate Kennedy and her team come in.
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In April 2024, Kennedy spearheaded the launch of the Department of Homeland Security’s Know2Protect Campaign.
The national public awareness campaign aimed at educating parents and teens on what they can do to ensure kids remain safe from online exploitation and abuse includes a series of PSA’s and roughly 150 online resources.
Kennedy also helped overhaul HSI’s Project iGuardian training program, which provides in-person and virtual presentations for school groups, parents and teens.
“We believe it’s a preventable crime, so we need to take advantage of the opportunity to educate the public” Kennedy told 7News in a recent interview.
For Kennedy, who worked as a political journalist out of college before transitioning to a public relations firm, the work is personal.
Hired by HSI in 2011 as a strategic communications advisor, in 2017, Kennedy’s former brother-in-law was arrested for the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material. The arrest was based on an investigation led by the New Jersey Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
“It rocked and shattered my family. He served time in state prison, but I wanted more justice,” Kennedy said.
In early 2023, when the opportunity to lead the Know2Protect campaign came along, Kennedy knew she couldn’t say ‘No.’
“Leading this campaign allows me to do my best to prevent this crime from impacting other families,” she said.
She admits the task is daunting due to the range of online threats children and teens face today:
- In 2023, tech companies reported 4,700 CyberTips of AI-generated child sexual abuse material to NCMEC. Last year, that number jumped to 1.5 million.
- From 2023 to 2024, reports of online enticement of minors shot up 192%.
- Over that same period, reports of sadistic online exploitation increased more than 200%, as teens reported self-harm, cutting and suicide instigated by online predators and violent groups.
“Sometimes you start to learn about this and it’s so overwhelming and it’s so dark and truly depressing, then you realize, actually, we can beat this,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy and her team have created more than 150 resources for parents and children accessible through the Website Know2Protect.gov.
Among the resources is a basic starting point for families: an internet safety checklist, which, among other things, encourages parents to ensure their kids set all apps, games, and devices to private and limit the followers they have online to friends and family they know in real life.
“Think about all of the training we give kids before we put them behind the wheel of a car: driver’s ed, months of a driver’s permit, having to drive with an adult,” Kennedy said, “Yet we give them a phone for the first time with zero guardrails. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Know2Protect.gov also provides the template for a family online safety agreement, a contract of sorts between parents and their kids, that includes conditions like: “We will talk before downloading new apps. We will also talk about how to safely use new apps, like not leaving an app to chat privately with someone or meeting someone in person.”
Parents, she added, should look out for warning signs that their child is being targeted online.
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“One of the number one signs is withdrawal. Is your kid or teen not participating in school events or even family discussions the way they used to? Are they spending a lot of time in their room? Is there a change in their appetite and their behavior? Those types of indicators could possibly lead to something happening online that made them feel uncomfortable,” Kennedy said.
She told 7News the results of the Know2Protect campaign and HSI’s Project iGuardian training program can now be measured in the form of real-world results.
“We’ve had over 158 disclosures leading to more than 115 investigations, so that’s kids coming forward after sitting through a school assembly where an HSI special agent comes in and presents Project iGuardian, and they oftentimes come forward right after the presentation and disclose. ‘Something happened to me, something happened to a friend.’ We take their information and many times these are leading to actual active investigations,” Kennedy said.
In her dream scenario, Project iGuardian would be part of every school’s educational program and Know2Protect.gov a utilized resource for every parent and teen with an online presence.
“When we wait for a CyberTip lead to come to us, we’re playing, we’re on defense,” Kennedy said. “We are here to help educate people where they’re at, where they consume information about this threat, and to understand how to combat it themselves.”
The danger is more pervasive than you might think.
In April 2025, the non-profit THORN.org released the results of a survey of 1,200 young people, aged 13 to 20. Thirty-six percent of respondents said that before turning 18 years old, they’d received solicitations for sexual images from online-only contacts.
The stakes could not be higher.
“The FBI is tracking at least 36 suicides, teenage boys who have taken their life because of a financial sextortion predator,” Kennedy said. “Sometimes they are taking their lives within hours of contact. That conversation starts out flirty and innocent and fun and it takes a very dark turn quickly.”
Which is why it was surprising to learn the size of Kennedy’s team. It consists of Kennedy, two other full-time staffers and what she described as “a very small contract support team.”
Neither Kennedy nor the other two full-time employees were paid during the recent partial government shutdown. Despite that, Kennedy told 7News, the work continued.
“We won’t stop. We’re not going to stop. This is the most righteous work there is.”
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