alumni/heroes

IYAVAR CHETTY (Kinsa Alumni)
Coordinator for SAPS-FCS and NPA-SOCA for KINSA Training Program

"Following the training session on the investigation of computer-facilitated offences against children for a team of senior South African police and prosecution officers, organised and coordinated in Toronto, Canada by the Kids Internet Safety Alliance (KINSA), the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit (FCS) of the South African Police Services acknowledged the critical value and importance of KINSA’s expertise and experience in enhancing the capacity of South Africa’s law enforcement agencies in dealing effectively with computer-facilitated offences against children in South Africa.

FCS is anxious to ensure close and ongoing cooperation with KINSA, especially given that it has been tasked with ensuring that the specialised child protection units of the South African Police Services in all provinces are properly trained on an ongoing basis to deal with the growing problem of the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. FCS is also anxious to introduce KINSA’s expertise and experience in the rescue and protection of children from online predators to other African countries, particularly in the Southern African region, to ensure that Africa does not become a safe-haven for online child predators.

FCS, therefore, fully supports the establishment of a KINSA office in South Africa to facilitate its training programme which is of critical value in responding to the abuse of rapidly-advancing and converging technology for the abuse and exploitation of children."ing patrons of Kinsa. In just a few short years, Kinsa has established itself as a world-respected leader in the battle to find, rescue and heal child victims of abuse whose images are shared on the Internet. A number of very influential business leaders, child protection advocates, members of the legal profession and politicians also have agreed to join Kinsa and to help realize its vision to create a global safety net that protects every child everywhere from online exploitation. There are an estimated 1 million images involving over 50,000 different children circulating on the internet today. To date, 2,000 children have been identified and rescued. There is more work to be done.

JULIAN SHER (Kinsa Hero)
Author of One Child at a Time: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators

"Kinsa plays a vital role in educating the public, politicians and police about something most of us would prefer to ignore: the dangers of sexual predators on the Internet.
Kinsa is helping to protect our children and make the web safe for all - a tough challenge that deserves our support."

SOUTH AFRICAN BRIGADIER GENERAL, Brigadier (Adv) Felicia A. Ntshangase (Kinsa Alumni 2010)
Section Head: Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offenses Unit (FCS) South African Police Service

“We have learned so much. We cannot wait to share this information with the National Police Commissioner. We really want to put what we have learned into practice.
We are in the process of re-establishing the Family Violence and Child Protection Units and Parliament has given us until March 31, 2011 to make sure the Units are fully operational. So our visit to Canada for Kinsa training comes at just the right time for us to make sure that our police officers are properly trained in this aspect of policing”.

Romanian Officer (Kinsa Hero 2007)

"I wanted to thank you very much for everything and to say that was excellent experience for me. I hope that in the future we can be friends and more...to collaborate in this matter. Having this long time travel back to home I was thinking over and over again about child exploitation. I`m between afraid of knowing more about this and my strong desire to do something about it.

For the first time I realise about the victims and I have the strong feeling that I have something to do about it. So I want to do more and better. And I know that I will got all your support to do it. Because until know I didn`t know almost nothing about it. Step by step I want to do more and more.

First of all I want to know how much child exploitations is present in Romania, then to gather forces to fight it and maybe get some organisation to help the victims later. But for these steps I will need your help...software, advices and maybe things that I lost now from my mind."

Joseph Shanampota - National Coordinator, Community Safety Unit, Zambia

"On December 8 - 10, 2010 my office, the Community Safety Unit, the office of Child Protection Unit and Plan International went to North Western Province of Zambia to conduct training to Law enforcement officers and Social Welfare officers on child protection. One of the objectives of the training was to share and discuss the good practices for child protection for the children in that particular Province. The participants of this training were 35 police officers and 5 social welfare officers.

In this programme I was requested to present a paper entitled Sharing of the Kinsa Experience. This presentation made participants be aware that in our country Zambia there is Porn Child Image in our internet. This presentation brought touching emotions discussion. At the end of the discussion it was resolved that there is need to lobby for resources so that this shame and hidden crime can be investigated in the Country. "

Dawn Coleman, South Africa

"I never realized the extent of the problem of child pornography in our country until we attended the course. I was amazed to see that people from small little towns in my province were involved in exchanging child abuse images. As a result of this I have persuaded the Provincial Human Trafficking / Prostitution / Pornography and Brothels task team in KwaZulu - Natal that we need to focus more attention as a forum on child pornography in our province next year.

This will involve creating awareness material and doing “prevention” work to warn people of the dangers of the internet but will also involve us training role players in the province on how to deal with these matters properly. A unique feature of the Canadian response is that once an offender has been arrested then all children that have been in contact with the offender are interviewed as possible victims. I have advised investigating officers subsequently to try and interview as many children as possible who came into contact with the accused.

The training also increased my knowledge of the offender and their characteristics which will assist me to guide investigators who are less experienced in recognizing stages of grooming where there are multiple victims for example."

Dorothy Chingaipe, Malawi

"The training has helped not only me but all the children of Malawi. Most of the Children I have interviewed could be free to reveal their problems easily because of the tips I got from the training.

Upon reaching here we publicised our report, all the NGOs dealing with child protection read the report and some are coming up to see how they can help to roll out the project. We also had an audience with our National Community Policing Coordinator who welcomed the idea and assured us that he will organise a meeting with all Officer -in charge for stations and

Community Policing Coordinators for stations which are in all the Districts of the Country. to share and see how we can have a way forward.

I have already visited 12 schools to sensitise the children on how they can be on the safest side. I have visited five villages to sensitize parents who like sending their children to work in town because these are the children who can be easily victimized because of their vulnerability.

I have been transferred to the Regional Office now and it’s my belief that rolling out the project can be easier than at the station level."

Kessie Gounder, South Africa

"Thank you for your assistance and the excellent training. Best wishes to all of you over the festive season.

Your organization has assisted me in ensuring better service are given to victims. I belong to the Sexual Offences Unit in Phoenix, Durban. Personally I will always be motivated to assist victims of sexual abuse. Your commitment to the fight against this type of crime inspires me.

I have been conducting child pornography investigations over the past four years. I am aware that the SAPS are considering opening up a unit in 2011 to deal with child pornography. We have to deal with the budgets and equipment issues as any government organization.

By the way, I have had at least nine convictions in my cases (child porn) over the past four years. (Investigations have started before the training)

I am hoping in 2011 more will be done towards policing of child pornography. Your training will be put to excellent use. "

Rev. Daison Simukonde, Zambia Police Service

"Let me first of all thank you for the knowledge I acquired which is bearing much fruit in as far as sensitising the communities is concerned . We have spoken to more than 300 children at the Olympic Youth Development Center were they meet to participate in various sports disciplines. We have spoken to them on various issues such as Child Trafficking, Sexual abuse and I have also made them aware of the characteristics of the paedophiles and so far I have seen that with this knowledge you imparted we are definitely going to make a difference in this year 2011.

In December,2010 we held the workshop sponsored by Plan International for Police Officers and Social Welfare Officers in one of the fastest growing town Solwezi which has two big mines located in the North-western part of Zambia. We included the topic on Computer Facilitated Sexual Crimes which Mr. Shanampota shared and they were very excited and we shall continue in other provinces as well and I hope we shall achieve our goals. God bless you and I wish you a prosperous 2011."