Episode #47 Monsters online: Who is your child talking to?

Tonight on Investigation: Homicide, the focus turns to one of the most disturbing and complex fronts in modern law enforcement: Internet Crimes Against Children. The episode features Jay Houston, a veteran investigator who spent more than two decades confronting online child exploitation in Mississippi and around the world. Houston now serves as director of training for the Child Rescue Coalition, but his expertise was earned in the field. Houston served 24 years in law enforcement before retiring in 2021, spending more than half of his career with the Mississippi Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, where he rose from investigator to commander and earned multiple commendations. Since 2009, he has trained child exploitation investigators internationally for agencies including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, INTERPOL, Brazil’s Federal Police and Australia’s ARGOS task force, and has been qualified as an expert witness in child exploitation investigations and victim identification. In this episode, Houston talks with Therese Apel and Amanda Johansson about  how investigators identify predators who hide behind screens, locate victims across borders, and manage the emotional toll of work few people ever see. It is a rare look at how the men and women fighting online child exploitation do their jobs—and why it matters.   This episode is produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.