Steinbach man charged with luring children as Manitoba RCMP search for additional victims
Tyson Vandenbosch used Snapchat account with username 'drifting_ty101,' police say
A Steinbach man has been charged with luring two children, but police believe there are several other victims who have not yet been identified.
Tyson Vandenbosch, 20, was arrested on Sunday and charged with two counts of luring a child in connection with sexual online communication with minors, RCMP said in a Tuesday news release.
Police say they have not been able to identify several victims found during an analysis of data taken from devices that they seized from Vandenbosch.
Vandenbosch used a Snapchat account with the username "drifting_ty101," RCMP say, releasing an image of his Snapchat avatar in hopes it might advance their investigation.
Snapchat is at the forefront of incidents of luring and sextortion of children, according to Stephen Sauer, director of Cybertip.ca, the national tip line for reporting child exploitation at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
The centre accepts reports from the public related to online sexual exploitation incidents, and works toward getting supports in place, forwarding reports on to law enforcement and ensuring that companies like Snapchat are held accountable.
He isn't surprised by the news out of southern Manitoba.
"This is just one of many, many sexually exploitative incidents that occur for youth on a platform like Snapchat. Unfortunately, we see a lot of reports of kids being communicated with by adults on the platform or by youth, and individuals who are out there targeting them to sexually exploit them in some way," Sauer said.
"From our perspective, Snapchat is a significant problem in this space."
Over the past few years, Sauer said 74 per cent of the incidents related to sextortion are connected to Snapchat or Instagram.
"Two major social media platforms that do not put enough in the way of protections for youth," he said.
The centre's tip line has also seen a jump of 760 per cent in reports of luring children over the last five years. Many of those instances are related to extortion but there are some situations where kids are being asked for sexual pictures of themselves by the offenders targeting them, he added.
The centre is getting close to 3,000 reports per year related to kids being exploited through luring.
One of the biggest dangers is that offenders have 24/7 access to kids and they can become relentless in their communication, Sauer said.
"What we need to see is more regulation. We need to see companies held accountable for what's happening on their platforms, and we need them to do more to create space for children — and sometimes that's at the cost of their profits," he said.
"This should be a requirement that they keep users safe on their platforms."
Anyone with information about Vandenbosch can contact the RCMP's internet child exploitation unit at 204-984-3129.
With files from Zubina Ahmed and Nathan Liewicki