The FBI’s Child Sexual Abuse Efforts Are As Half-Assed As Its Counterterrorism Efforts

The FBI keeps telling anyone who will listen that it wants more responsibilities. Despite having failed to end organized crime or to even slightly diminish the power of international drug cartels, the FBI is always asking for more to do, especially if it means more funding and surveillance powers.

It set itself up to be an integral part of the national security apparatus by putting its manpower and expertise to work locating and arresting potential terrorists. But that work seemed too difficult, so the FBI soon started satisfying itself by assigning agents to laptops and urging them to radicalize the most ignorant or needy people they might run across online in order to set them up with 25-year minimum sentences.

This lack of effort has carried over to its work on the child sexual abuse front. Child sexual abuse and terrorism are the things cited by FBI directors as the reason encryption must be abolished now. But this abuse and terrorism are the things the FBI is worst at handling. We’re well aware of the FBI’s abhorrent habit of congratulating itself for talking people into becoming terrorists. On the other end of that spectrum is another problem the FBI isn’t handling well — one that seems more tied to the FBI’s apparent lack of interest, rather than the supposed “obstacles” (which always means encryption) agents face when investigating these cases.

The FBI should be doing better handling child sexual abuse reports. After all, it was recently successfully sued by several victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by US Gymnastics team doctor, Larry Nassar. You’d think that would have been a wake-up call. But as a recent report [PDF] by the DOJ Inspector General’s office points out, the agency is still mostly asleep at the wheel.

In a review brought on by the FBI’s failures to promptly investigate Nassar, the inspector general found serious problems persist that run the risk of child sexual abuse allegations falling through the cracks as overworked agents juggle dozens of cases at a time. In one case, a victim was abused for 15 months after the FBI first received a tip about a registered sex offender, the report said.

And that’s not an outlier. There’s more detailed in the report which shows child sexual abuse reports are being backburnered regularly, despite the FBI’s public claims (again, often associated with calls to end encryption) that this is one of the crimes it really, truly, and deeply cares about.

But all the care in the world is useless when that alleged “care” doesn’t extend to basic things like allocating more manpower and resources to handle this problem. The FBI obviously knows the problem needs more of both. But it has decided to do less with less, which sends the signal the FBI doesn’t care as much about this problem as it publicly claims to.

Even while acknowledging errors, the FBI cited the “overwhelming” burden on agents tasked with investigating crimes against children given the conduct involved, an influx in tips flooding in to law enforcement, increased use of encrypted technology to conceal the offenses and budget cuts.

Citing one agent who was juggling about 60 investigations, the inspector general said special agents “must constantly triage their caseload.”

So, the FBI obviously is aware of the problem. It doesn’t have enough people assigned to handle these cases. And it should have made some adjustments after being sued for handling the Nassar case so poorly. But its responses blame everyone else for things only the FBI can control: agents and their workloads.

So far, the FBI has made zero changes. The Inspector General’s recommendations include stunningly obvious things like this:

[we] recommend that the FBI develop an enterprise-wide strategy that addresses the rising number of CAC/HT [Crimes Against Children/Human Trafficking] cases and ensures CAC/HT agents have appropriate support and resources to manage their assigned caseloads.

This is an issue the FBI should have addressed long ago. Instead, it has chosen to bury over-worked investigators in cases — something that has obviously resulted in the extension of abuse of children and human trafficking victims.

Considering this wing of the FBI is overbooked and understaffed, it hardly makes sense that the FBI and DOJ would spend so much time complaining about the potential downturn in social media service reports forwarded to it by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NMCEC). The supposed vanishing of these reports was integral to the FBI’s anti-encryption agitation, backed by claims that things like the addition of end-to-end encryption to Facebook’s Messenger service would allow perpetrators of child sexual abuse to go undetected and/or unpunished.

But it’s clear from this report there’s a good chance these criminals will go undetected or unpunished even without the addition of encryption. And while some agents and offices are attempting to make a dent in the millions of NMCEC tips the FBI receives, the FBI — as a whole — still isn’t treating this problem seriously.

[W]e found that the number of CAC/HT cases (Assessments and predicated investigations) opened and leads set by the FBI has increased. Fifteen field offices proposed realigning Funded Staffing Levels (FSL) between programs and increasing the number of Special Agents dedicated to the CAC/HT threat by 19 in FY 2023. Only one of these requests, for one agent, was approved. Seven field offices appealed the decision to deny the realignment, but none of these appeals were successful.

If the FBI was taking this as seriously as it claims it is, changes would have already been made. Instead, crimes against children are treated as less important than other agent activities, a lot of which are focused on two wars the FBI can’t possibly win: the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. While children continue to be victimized, FBI agents are talking people into committing terrorist acts and assisting multiple levels of law enforcement in drug war efforts that seem to be more focused on how much property can be seized, rather than anything that might actually deter the flow of drugs into the country.

The FBI needs to do better. Not only does it under-deliver, but it can scarcely be bothered to over-promise unless there’s funding on the line. Americans are paying for this subpar level of service. And everything in this report indicates the FBI just doesn’t care enough about the problem to actually do anything to solve it.