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Warning: This article contains discussion of child abuse which some readers may find distressing.
One staggering yet small detail allowed a dark web investigator to rescue a 12-year-old girl suffering from years of sexual abuse, yet that key clue didn't immediately manifest itself and instead took an incredible amount of work to decipher.
While not everything on the dark web has a nefarious intent, much of the content that you'll find is at the very least illegal in nature, if not explicitly harmful to others in its creation.
If you're unaware of what the term refers to, the 'dark web' is a version of the internet that is heavily encrypted and only accessible to those using software that masks and anonymizes the individual, ensuring that no activity can be tracked down to each user.
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It's typically used for people looking to buy things like drugs and weapons – and President Donald Trump recently pardoned the operator of one of the dark web's biggest marketplaces – but it's also a notorious home for horrific content involving sexual abuse, often involving children.
Greg Squire is one of the people tasked with rooting out and taking down this content, as he works for the US Department of Homeland Security Investigations, specifically in cases relating to material involving child sexual abuse.
One case early on in his career stuck out in particular though, as his efforts to track down a girl referred to as 'Lucy' were made possible thanks to one key detail he spotted during investigations.
As reported by the BBC, Squire had been attempting to track down Lucy for a while, but he and his team were largely getting nowhere. They managed to determine that she was somewhere in the United States due to the plugs and light sockets, but they weren't able to specify anything beyond that or even determine who she was.
Everything started to click, however, when they spotted something unusual with the sofa, as his team became aware that it was only sold regionally as opposed to nationwide, limiting the potential customer base to around 40,000 people.
From there he still had a mountain to climb, but he also noticed the exposed brick wall within the room, consulting the Brick Industry Association who were able to provide vital assistance.
With the help of brick salesman John Harp, they discovered that the masonry was a specific type of brick known as 'Flaming Alamo', and due to the heaviness it was unlikely that it traveled far from the manufacturing plant in the south west of the country.
Cross referencing that with the sofa sales, they were able to find images of Lucy on Facebook, which then led them to analyze houses associated with family members of the 12-year-old, which Harp's expertise was used to determine whether the brick was used.
"So we narrowed it down to [this] one address [...] and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence [...] information on schools," Squire explained.
What they discovered was that it was home to Lucy's mother's boyfriend, who was a convicted sex offender, and he was arrested by local Homeland Security agents within hours.
They discovered that he had been sexually abusing the young girl for six years in total, and he was eventually sentenced to over 70 years in prison for his crimes, all thanks to a key detail spotted by Squire and his team.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues or want to speak to someone in confidence regarding the welfare of a child, the Childhelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.
