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Oprihory: The FBI’s Endangered Child Alert Program (or ECAP) has been hard at work for more than 20 years putting names to the faces of unknown people who may be involved in the sexual abuse of children and the production of child sexual abuse material.

The program is a collaborative effort between the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (or NCMEC).

On this episode of our podcast, we’ll learn why ECAP exists, how the program works, and how tips from the public can help us rescue child victims and bring those who seek to harm children to justice.

I’m Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory, and this is Inside the FBI.

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Oprihory: The FBI created the Endangered Child Alert Program in 2004.

ECAP works with the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs to publicize images of unknown adults whose faces and/or distinguishing characteristics appear in suspected child sexual abuse material (or CSAM). We refer to these adults as John or Jane Does.

ECAP focuses on identifying the adults who appear in CSAM, while a complementary FBI initiative—known as Operation Rescue Me—works to identify the child victims.

ECAP’s investigative process starts when an FBI field office or our partners at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children ask for help identifying an adult seen in CSAM.

Jurden: What that looks like is going through these images of child sexual abuse material and trying to identify where in the world that victim is.

Narrator: That’s Supervisory Special Agent Karen Jurden. She’s led the ECAP program for more than a decade.

The team also looks for identifiers—which can range from details of a person’s face to tattoos or other physical markings. It’s all in the hopes they can be used as clues in our hunt for the subject’s identity. By letting us know if any of these identifiers look familiar, the public can help us rescue victims and bring subjects to justice.

Jurden: If we have exhausted all our investigative efforts—using legal process, open-source checks, anything along those lines—we then take that image and then we'll introduce that to the Office of Public Affairs.

I will sit with them and say, “we want to seek the public's assistance to identify the subject in this video.” We also look to identify anybody who may know the victim. So, it could be a person of interest and not just the subject.

Oprihory: ECAP and the Bureau’s Office of Public Affairs create a poster featuring an image of the John or Jane Doe and publish it at fbi.gov/ecap. That’s fbi.gov/E-C-A-P. That webpage features a current list of subjects that the FBI is still working to identify.

From there, public affairs personnel at FBI Headquarters and in our field offices across the country push out those posters on official Bureau social media channels to reach a wide audience across the world.

Oprihory: If you recognize an individual featured on an ECAP poster, there are a number of ways to submit a tip to the FBI. You can...

Visit tips.fbi.gov;
Email RescueMe@fbi.gov;
Call 1-800-CALL-FBI, or 1-800-225-5324;
Contact a Crimes Against Children Investigator at your local FBI field office; or
Reach out to your nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate.
According to Jurden, the best ECAP tips include as many identifiers about the individual—like name and residence—as possible so that the FBI can conduct an investigation.

The webpage at fbi.gov/ecap also includes a link to a Seeking Information poster that features images of items that may assist in identifying locations where child victims may have been abused and where unidentified suspects might still be holding them.

Any information about where these photos may have been taken could help us bring another victim home and another offender to justice. If even a tiny detail of an item shown in a photo looks familiar or otherwise jogs your memory, we implore you to reach out to the FBI.

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Oprihory: ECAP’s full-court press strategy has led to the successful identification of almost 40 unknown individuals, to date.

Jurden: One of our successes was one that we recently launched. Within 48 hours, we were able to identify that subject based on the tips that we received from the public, which helped us out immensely.

I have four agents and three analysts, and they're exceptional and passionate about the program. And I'm hoping, down the line, we get bigger so that we can evolve and even work harder at finding more victims and finding these subjects, as well.

Our sole responsibility, in the grand scheme of things, is to save and rescue victims.

Oprihory: Visit fbi.gov/vcac—that’s fbi.gov/V-C-A-C—to learn more about the FBI’s efforts to investigate violent crimes against children, and resources you can use to help keep your children safe.

This has been another production of Inside the FBI. You can follow us on your favorite podcast player, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. You can also subscribe to email alerts about new episodes at fbi.gov/podcasts. I’m Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory from the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs. Thanks for listening.

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