Fight the New Drug (00:00)
Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us today on Consider Before Consuming. Can you…

Mike Lemon (00:04)
Thank you.

Fight the New Drug (00:05)
Can you start by telling us a little bit about your professional background, particularly your time in law enforcement, to really lead us into this conversation?

Mike Lemon (00:13)
Sure. So I’ve been in the law enforcement or internet crimes against children world since the mid nineties. started in 96 with the Bowling Green police department here in Kentucky, patrol for about six years. I was in a pretty high drug area. So I made a lot of drug arrests and really got into the investigative side of things. It really kind of sparked my fire of not just a lot of, for police, a lot of times we just kind of show up, fix problems and go to the next, next call. But I really enjoyed the kind of digging in and kind of figuring things out on the investigative side. And so that’s really what I want to do is be an investigator. And in 2002, I was, it wasn’t promotion, but I was selected as, as an investigator and pretty soon became their internet guy. Not because I really wanted to, but really because nobody else wanted to. So I was the newest detective. They’re like, who’s going to start doing these? And they’re like, nobody. Okay. Let me, you get it. And so at first it was more kind of a counterfeit checks, credit cards, that type of stuff.

But then pretty soon after, I started working a lot of internet crimes against children, cases. And that’s really where I found my passion. Because of all the cases I worked, those to me were the most important. know, their murders are very important as well. There’s no doubt about it. But there’s no other crime that, which when a child is victimized, they can turn to all kinds of different things, right? So when a child is victimized, they may turn to drugs, they may turn to…

you know, exploitation themselves or whatever, you get your house broke into, you’re not going to become a drug addict, you’re not going become an alcoholic. But that does change these kids’ lives. And so, I started really working a lot of these cases and started working with the Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force, and the State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. And I started working cases from all over the state and eventually all over the country and then eventually all over really the world from Alaska to Australia. And so we started working on some of these cases that really became kind of what I was known for, but really that’s really what my passion was. And then I retired in 2015 and I’d been taught to examine computers and cell phone by the US Secret Service back in 08. And so I was like, you know what, I’m ready to retire, but I’m not ready to stop. And so I started my company, which is Millstone Labs,

We wanted to be able to help these other agencies, small agencies, have the equipment, didn’t have the training and the ability to investigate these cases. And I was getting so many people calling me saying, I live in a different town, but this thing happened to my daughter on Facebook.

Mike Lemon (02:50)
And I called the local police and they said there’s nothing they can do. Is there something they can do? I was like, yes. Like, are they lying to us? They’re not lying. They don’t have the skill. They don’t have the training. They don’t have the ability to investigate those cases. Really, there’s nothing they can do. And so I started working kind of as an investigative consultant with about 24 other agencies across the state, helping them examine evidence and helping them investigate these cases to put these predators in prison. And did that for about three years. That was going well, but I was also getting called to come and speak to kids in, in parent groups, really kind of on the prevention side and got to the point to where I had to make a decision one way or the other. You know, I couldn’t have two different companies like that, do both full time and do it well. And I was actually, at our mission church, and I was praying. was like, just tell me what to do. I’ll do the both good options. Just tell me what to do. And I don’t know you want to call it a voice. I don’t want to call me whatever you want to call it. heard do what I prepared you for.

I was like, great. He kind of prepared me for both of these. You know, which one is it? And apparently you can’t ask follow up questions. So the next Monday, I went to work and I emailed 13 schools that I had trained for the last semester. And I said, hey, I’m thinking about doing this full time. Would you all want to do this again? 13, I think 11 within the end of that week. Said, yeah, I’ll booked a training. So within the next year, I totally switched from helping law enforcement find the bad guys to helping schools and parent groups really prevent these things from happening. And so I’ve done that since 2018. I had some trainers that helped me out along the way. And since then we trained about 300,000 students and parents and professionals with in-person. And then there’s, course, online, it’s a whole different ball game. But that’s what really kind of what I do now is help schools really prepare their kids to be online. Because so many times right now we don’t give them the skills to keep themselves safe.

You know, we expect them just to be able to make good decisions, but we don’t do that with a car, right? We give the kids a key. We don’t give the kids a key and say, luck to you. We make sure they understand the rules of the road. They get tested. They have some kind of probationary period, and eventually they can do it on their own. And so really, I’m helping parents figure out how to do the same thing, but with their kids and phones and games.

Fight the New Drug (05:15)
Yeah, it’s really great. And I mean, we’re so grateful for the work you are doing. I want to break down kind of the different pieces of this. So if we can, I do want to talk more about this prevention work you’re doing. But can we go back a little bit to your time in law enforcement and some of the cases you were encountering that really led you to focus online safety and things like sextortion, which we’ll talk quite a bit about today.

Tell us a little bit more about, mentioned some of the cases and some of the instances you were seeing, but what really kind of led to that focus and what was that experience like?

Mike Lemon (05:50)
So in the early part of it, we was mostly working peer-to-peer cases, which if you know what is, that’s file sharing. So the old days like Nabster and different things, they’re sharing maybe movies or maybe songs, but they’re also sharing child pornography. And so…

That was a lot of what I did in the beginning, because this was really before social media, before smartphones came out. So there wasn’t, it’s not as easy to send pictures and videos and files as it is today. But then as the smartphones came out, as social media really began to blow up, we started getting more and more of this. And at the beginning, was more kind of the same kind of guy who was doing the file sharing was now online trying to extort kids to get more pictures.

A lot of times, these new pictures are gold to them because especially these old school pedophiles, they’ve got gigabytes upon gigabytes of files. They’ve seen everything. So to get a new picture, it’s worth literally money. And so that was kind of where I started. But then we started seeing more and more of the extortion to get more pictures. So it wasn’t just to get one picture. Now is to get more pictures. And it wasn’t just the predators. It was…

other students doing this. It was people who went who maybe I’ve been doing the peer to peer, but they had the ability to actually meet kids, hundreds of kids just being on their phone. Like when I started in law enforcement, you know, we’d get the calls of there’s a kind of creepy old man down by the playground watching kids, right? Well, they don’t have to do that anymore. You know, they can just sit at home. Don’t worry about getting caught. Don’t worry about getting getting kind of seen by the people and be on their phone 24 seven.

Mike Lemon (07:35)
seen at hundreds and thousands of kids. so during that time, it started to change. don’t know, the peer to peer is still huge. There’s still a lot of the cases they’re working, but then really kind of the mid 2010s and even after I retired, the extortion really, really took off. And what we’re seeing now is, you know, back in around 2015, NCMEC around 180,000 cases of extortion reported to him. Now it’s almost 900,000, you know, in 2024.

So we’re seeing a huge increase. And you think about this, you’re 90, I just did a little math on this, you’re 900,000 divided by 50 states divided by 365 days a year, it’s around 50 cases a day per state. And it’s 50 kids. But here’s the big thing, most of those cases are never reported. And so I would say being very generous, one in 10, I’d say probably one in 20, one in maybe even 50, but one in 10. So really you’re looking at 500.

Mike Lemon (08:35)
to a thousand cases a day happening in just my state, your state, every state. And so this is really what we’ve seen is just really the explosion of sextortion because it’s becoming so easy to do. mean, they just have to have a smartphone internet connection.

Fight the New Drug (08:51)
Yeah, and for any of our listeners, you mentioned NCMEC the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is where these cases are that you’re referring to. no problem. Some of our listeners are a little bit less familiar with this, which is actually why it’s great that you’re here to help share this information. Sextortion is a term that, you know, many people know what extortion is. They understand to a degree what sexual exploitation is. We are learning increasingly how many, especially parents have no idea what sextortion really is and what it really looks like. Can you help for someone who’s never heard of this before explain what sextortion is?

Mike Lemon (09:29)
Sure. think Kentucky just passed a, since the sextortion law, which where you’ve been able to charge it, but you had to kind of, bring different charges together to make sextortion now it’s, it’s basically for sextortion do a great job, I think, of explaining it. And under that law, you have to have a real or an AI nude image of somebody, right? You got to threaten them to get something. So you have to have the image, then threaten them to either share that image, embarrass them, or use violence against them to get either more nude photos, have sex, pay money, or do anything against their will. And so with sextortion, it’s trying to get that picture, to use that picture to leverage them into giving you something. It could be money, could be meeting for sex, could be more pictures. And so that’s really, understand sextortion, is pretty simple. They’re extorting them for something. could be sex, money, more nudes, anything against their will, and what they’re using is the nude images.

Fight the New Drug (10:30)
Yeah, and increasingly we’re seeing that youth are being targeted in these instances. Can you tell us a little bit about what that really looks like in an online context today?

Mike Lemon (10:40)
Sure, so if you think about what I just talked about, the creepy old man down by the playground, right? Or any of the old school predators. They had to go through all these different hoops, jump all these different hurdles to get access to a child. Again, now they don’t have to. Now they can get online and target these kids and get them to send that first picture. Or with AI, they can just make the picture up now. And the problem is, really number one, think our kids are not prepared for this. I think around 60 % of the third graders that I’ve trained, well, I’ll ask them again, who has a phone, who has a tablet, who has games, right? Around 60 % will have phones right now. And you talk about phone and tablet and games, you’re almost at a hundred percent. And here’s the big problem is about 95 % of them have that phone game or tablet in their room at night. And so for a predator, all you got to do is get online at two in the morning.

Right? Mom and dad are sleeping, you know that. And so if you’re talking to a child, you contact the child, they accept your friend request or wherever the chat is going, you’re on games with them, whatever, you know mom and dad aren’t there. So they’re literally just left in the lines then for these predators. And so with more and more kids, I mean, we’re seeing, we’re going to schools, we see first graders, kindergartners have $2,000 iPhones. Or maybe mom and dad’s iPhone that they didn’t trade in.

Fight the New Drug (11:40)
Right.

Mike Lemon (12:08)
Right? So they’ve got these phones at such an early age with really no protection. Again, we prepare them to drive, but we don’t prepare them to keep themselves safe when they’re on mine.

Fight the New Drug (12:08)
Yeah, and I think that’s something that we’re seeing. So many individuals in this field have been screaming from the rooftops for years about the harms of technology and access to having increased access to the internet and all of these devices for younger and younger kids. And we really just see that there’s a gap in knowledge between what parents know is out there and believe is out there and what is actually happening.

One of the things we’re seeing with sextortion cases, we’ve seen reports that cases are on the rise, especially with young boys. And you mentioned the access to these devices and how easy it is for a predator to reach out to someone young, are kind of fueling these things. But are there additional things you can point to that are contributing to this really alarming increase in cases in sextortion?

Mike Lemon (12:58)
Mm-hmm, absolutely. think number one, think there’s kids, they’re not prepared. So they’re really sitting ducks for the predator. So it’s easy for them to contact the kids. Number two, and I haven’t seen a lot of this written in the media or talked about, but it’s really the money that’s bringing people in here. When you’re looking at lot of these cases, when they find the people who are doing these extortion cases, a lot of them are overseas.

And there were sees what I believe is because we have a huge group of people moving from the kind of traditional scams, right? So maybe Canadian lottery, maybe, you know, tax refund, maybe whatever it is, traditional scams moving into this field because it’s so easy to make money. They don’t have to send out 100,000 emails and spend two weeks talking to somebody to try to get their social security information, right? They can literally just create an account,

Mike Lemon (14:10)
find a picture online, find an AI picture of a girl, young girl, put it on there and start making money that same day. Because it’s not, mean, you see a lot of these cases, especially the ones we’ve unfortunately had several students who have ended their life, right? You’re talking about this is, you’re talking minutes or hours after meeting these people, this is happening. And even the ones who have, that hasn’t happened to them as far as the end of life, but they’ve, they’ve, they sent the money to them. We’re talking,

Fight the New Drug (14:19)
Right.

Mike Lemon (14:40)
You know, you can make a hundred thousand of dollars within an hour with one person compared to wait, trying to make that over weeks with somebody else. And so it’s such a huge, huge influx, I believe of traditional scammers, professional scammers, professional companies moving in this field from overseas. That’s one of the big reasons we’re seeing a huge increase in this. Number three is really, I think it’s porn is we’re sexualizing our children

Mike Lemon (15:07)
at such a young age that sending a nude photo is not that big a deal. Right. I don’t tell me schools I’ve talked to that they’ve had incidents where, first, second, third graders are being shown porn every day, uh, by, you know, sixth, seventh graders riding the bus together. And so they’re just seeing this, this porn all the time. You can go on social media and find us talking to, uh, a mom the other day and she’s like, well, I don’t, you know, I really monitor what my kids watch. Cause I don’t want them to see this adult material. You know, I was like, what are they on?

TikTok and Instagram. I’m like, you’re to see everything that you’re going to see in a porn out there and they’re going to have links to the, to their, uh, their sites. And so, you know, we’re so over sexualized. Our children are so over sexual at such a young age that it becomes normal, you know, sending a nude photo to somebody isn’t even that unusual, right? You’re looking at studies we’ve, we’ve seen and we’ve, we’ve been a part of with high school. You’re looking at on 60, 70 % of the kids have sent one in the last year.

It’s just if they’re asked for it, right? In the middle school, you’re at 30 to 50%. And so it’s nothing to actually ask for pictures, not unusual. And so actually sending them is not unusual. And so I think the other thing, the fourth thing I think is really something we haven’t seen, but it’s been happening more and more in the last few years, and that’s other students. We don’t think of predators as being a classmate.

Mike Lemon (16:32)
But in many times it is, probably majority of the times at this point, it’s actually other students who are trying to, may not be forcing them like full extortion, send this to me or whatever, but they’re going to get the pictures and they’re going to send it off to other people who may do that. So I think those big things, is one, they’re not prepared, two, is the money that’s able to make out of this area. And then our children are so sexualized through porn. And then the last one is other students.

Fight the New Drug (16:57)
Yeah, and there’s so many layers to everything you just said. Something we often remind parents of and so many don’t know is that when when youth are taking nudes, they’re creating self generated child pornography legally by definition and disseminating it when they’re sending it to each other. And so they’re perpetuating this problem in schools by sending this to each other. And it starts with these trusted classmates in some instances when it’s something that is self-generated and shared. And in other instances, it’s someone using a nudifying app and creating deep fakes or utilizing AI to create these images. And they can have similar effects in terms of the harm. So when these things do spin out of control and really escalate in ways that young people aren’t expecting when they take that image initially or when they send it.

That’s where we’ve really seen some of these cases evolve in pretty extreme ways. We present in schools all of the time and something we hear often is the problem with sexting and that it’s kind of spinning out of control and a lot of schools and parents don’t really know what to do. And so I think addressing all of these things is so important and then also being aware of this additional criminal aspect, right? It’s not just the peer component. It’s not just kids being kids or doing things that their peers are doing, but there’s also this group of predators who are making a lot of money off of extorting young people in these ways. Can you share any cases you’ve seen or stories or examples that really illustrate sextortion, how it typically begins and escalates?

And you mentioned in a matter of minutes or hours howhow severely these can escalate. Can you share some stories to help individuals who aren’t as familiar?

Mike Lemon (18:46)
Sure. About maybe 30 minutes from where I’m sitting today, there was a young man, Eli Heacock, and he was a high school student. He was living a good life, didn’t have, you wasn’t depressed, wasn’t suicidal, wasn’t, you know, suicide was not something that you would think about when you, you, you talked to him or talk about him.

He was on social media and met somebody and did nothing wrong, hundreds of wrong. Like you’re talking about the deep fakes to AI. He met somebody that was using an AI nude photo of him and started saying, you know, we’re going to start sending this out to your friends. They want it. think it was $3,000. And he didn’t have it. He tried paying them a couple of hundred, the best he could. And basically didn’t have any more than that. And they, there’s these again.

These in my mind, these are professionals, right? These aren’t, the old school pedophiles, right? These are people who are high pressure salespeople essentially, and they’re going to stay on them. I saw a study a couple of weeks ago that like 25 % of the people who are extorted, receive over 12 months. think it was almost 19 contacts a day for like two weeks.
We’re talking, we’re not talking about, you know, wanting, you know, give us this. No, okay. I’m going to go away. This is something that’s going to be over and over and over and not going to stop for a lot of these kids. so, uh, unfortunately, you know, Eli got so distraught about other people seeing this picture and what could happen to his, to his image, to his, you know, to his future and, and really, you know, really just didn’t see a way out. He ended up taking his life 45 minutes.

Fight the New Drug (20:08)
Right.

Mike Lemon (20:29)
45 minutes from accepting that friend request and starting that conversation till his life’s over. Right? This is what we’re putting our children up against. There are no contests for these people. The old predators, maybe they could kind of outwit them because honestly a lot of them are not the smartest people in the world that I’ve met. I’m sure there are some very smart pedophiles, but the ones that we catch, we’re not the smartest ones. These people are professionals, and our kids don’t stand a chance against them.

Fight the New Drug (21:01)
Yeah, we, for any of our listeners who has haven’t heard this, we had the opportunity to speak with Eli’s parents. They were so courageous in joining us on the podcast at such a difficult time for them. And it was really important to them to share his story because they didn’t know that this was something that that happened. You know, he was a kid who, as you’ve described, had had a great support system and a lot of good things in his life and this worst case scenario happened and they joined us to help share that story and unfortunately, you know, there are too many other stories like this with individuals who’ve experienced something similar and so again, we’re grateful for you being here today with us to help share this and bring awareness to this with parents and educators and those who interact with youth and young people as well and this is something we need to continue, especially with advancements in technology, we need to continue to bring awareness to so that we can combat this issue and address it adequately. Are there any changes in how law enforcement is approaching sex-dortion cases now versus when you started your career?

Mike Lemon (22:12)
I think there’s a big difference, just because it’s more understood now. Again, when the sex extortion really started happening in kind of the late 2010s is when I was kind of ending my career, right? Or middle 2010s. And I was getting so many calls from people, I was already doing this stuff with the law enforcement. had a Facebook page and talking about this stuff as well. And so was getting calls from parents and they, again, the officers say there’s nothing we can do.

Or the worst one for me is, it happened on Facebook. They’re probably overseas and nothing we’re going to do. They even try to do anything. But today, there’s been much better education. think the fact is it’s so like what you’re doing in bringing awareness to this. think that helps immensely because more officers, more administrators see this like we have got to take, we got to do something about this. And there’s more ICAC investigators, Interact Crimes Against Children investigators. When I left, it was me.

And now I think there’s two or three who investigate these these crimes. So at least there’s more people to do it And again, the laws are finally catching up. Like I we just mean we’re 2025 sextortion has been around like That the level we’re seeing for over a decade We’re just now getting these laws in specific to this which I it happens laws are always behind technology

Fight the New Drug (23:18)
Right. And, you know, there is so much work to be done with legislation that can help, you know, protect kids and regulate these illegal activities. And there’s also work to be done to change cultural attitudes and perceptions. Right. You mentioned the normalization of pornography being something that’s feeling this. And that’s part of why we’re doing the work we’re doing to help individuals make educated and informed decisions to decide not to normalize pornography, to be part of the change and part of the solution rather than perpetuating this problem that is fueling so many others that are connected. It’s great to hear about these changes in law enforcement. For parents who are just learning about this or educators or caregivers, what are some red flags that they should be aware of when it comes to potential sextortion threats?

Mike Lemon (24:04)
Mm-hmm.

I think a sudden change is a big part of that. And you, if your child suddenly, is becoming isolated, not talking to their friends, not, not hanging out with who they hung out with before, maybe some signs of some depression, but you don’t know why they haven’t, as far as you know, they haven’t been through some situation where, know, they haven’t, maybe their friend moved away or maybe, you know, they moved or, you know, lost somebody. mean, then you understand that, but if there’s not something like that going on and all of a they started showing signs of depression.

They’re not wanting to be online like they did before. They don’t want you to want to touch their phone or maybe they’re you’re missing money. This is is a big one I think when you start missing money your credit card you start getting weird accounts weird charges on your credit card maybe you can see if they have their own card and you start seeing weird one. I was talking to a school counselor.

And she said her son was 15. had a job. was, had his own money, but it was a account attached to her. And then one day she started seeing like $50 go out and then like $200 go out and then like $300 go out. And so she went to him and was like, where’s this money going? And at first he said, well, you know, I got this friend, he’s having a hard time. He’s trying to help him out. And she’s like, well, I’m grateful that, you you’re wanting to help somebody out, but stop it.

Fight the New Drug (25:34)
Yeah.

Mike Lemon (25:48)
There’s a limit to this. It was like $600 gone almost and we need, you don’t need to be doing this. If he needs help, we can find a different way. He’s like, okay, I won’t do it anymore. Next day, like $500 went out. Then she went back to me, finally broke down and said, you know, this is, this is what happened. And what happened to him was I think is probably the most, I guess, way these things happen. And what happened to him was he was on, I think it was using Instagram and using Instagram.

There’s he’s talking to somebody he thought was a girl. It was a girl and he, uh, she said, Hey, come over to a Snapchat. So they go to Snapchat and then she asked for a nude photos that I’ll send you one of you sent me one. And he didn’t want to do that. She’s well, how about a, a, uh, how about getting on a video? So you’re all right. So he got on a video. They both got naked, did their thing. And then when the video ended, he got a screenshot of the video because he didn’t notice was, well, she had her phone in front of her. There’s a camera off off to the side and is recording the whole thing. And so she recorded the whole thing that had her. I’m it just hers, other people. And then started asking for money, demanding money. And first he said no. And then they sent him a screenshot of a group chat of his friends and says, give us this money or we’re going start sending this picture out to these people.

That’s where the $50 went. All right, now great, now $200. I can’t get $200. Well, they send us one. They end up sending one. There’s a big difference between old school predators and these people is they will send these nude photographs because they don’t care about getting caught. Most of them, again, are overseas. And they’re not really worried about the chance of law enforcement finding them. It’s very difficult. And so they’ll send it out. That’s where the $200 went. And they said, well, just send us $300 more. We’ll be done.

Mike Lemon (27:44)
All right, sends 300. Next day, you know, we want 500 more or it’s going to happen. And so that’s, you know, they, start low and they just get, just send us one time and you’re done. And then it just keeps going.

Fight the New Drug (27:49)
Right. And for a young person who doesn’t have those kind of resources, these threats are really significant, right? The fear of being caught in something that they think they did something wrong and it will escalate even if it’s not their fault. If a child is being targeted, what are the most important steps to take right away for a parent or a caregiver or someone who learns about a situation like this happening?

Mike Lemon (28:20)
Number one, I tell people when they call me, this has happened with my son, what should we do? Number one is always stop communicating. Are they gonna, they said if you stop communicating, we’re gonna send something, are they gonna send it? Probably. But here’s the thing, if you don’t stop at some point, they’re gonna send it eventually. So you’ve got to stop right up front. And the good thing, if there’s a good thing in this, is these are business people, right? These people are about money.

And so if they know they’re going to waste time with you, when they can do this to somebody else who’s going to send them money, they’re going to eventually go to somebody else or eventually will leave you alone. but you have to just have that hard stop of stop communicating no more. You know, if you want to, you know, block your account, unfortunately, you know, most of these people who are doing this, these extorters are, they’re going on one account or one social media platform. They’re moving to a different one.

And so maybe like, you know, Snapchat could be, discord could be WhatsApp. They’re moving into a place where it’s harder to monitor or maybe it like Snapchat once it’s deleted, it’s gone. Right. And so, but they’re doing that to say if it happens on Instagram and they move to Snapchat, well, you can’t go to Instagram and say, Hey, this person extorted me. Cause they’re going to look at this, your communication. Like there’s no extortion on

Mike Lemon (29:47)
So can keep that profile up. So they’re very smart about that. And so, but you’ve got to stop communicating, block them, whatever you need to do. And then number two is this for young person is to tell somebody you’ve got to get help. You know, there’s a lot of embarrassment, you know, the, maybe they’re thinking they’re going to get in trouble. Maybe they’ve been threatened. If you don’t do this, I’m going to call the FBI and you’re going to go to prison for sending a nude photo. but you’ve got to tell somebody cause you’ve got to get help with this. Cause keeping this by yourself is super isolating. All right.

Mike Lemon (30:17)
And then the third one is we got to keep the evidence because things again, if it’s Snapchat again, there’s only a certain amount of time you may have that. But if your WhatsApp and it’s encrypted, you delete it all, it’s gone. So we got to keep that evidence to find out who these people are. And the fourth thing is we really have to preach to our children that, you know, if this happens to you, you know, you got to know it’s going to affect you. Tomorrow is going to be different going to school than it ever has been before.

While it may affect you, it does not have to define you. It doesn’t have to define who you are and define your future. You’re gonna get through this. You’re gonna move on. You’re gonna learn from this. And the reality is it’s gonna be somebody else’s turn, because it’s happening so many times. But somebody else is gonna be on that hot seat. And eventually they’re gonna figure it out what happened to you. And you can live the life that you want to live. Because a lot of kids just don’t see that there’s any future because of the, really the place that they’re in when this is going on at two in the morning and they’re by themselves.

Fight the New Drug (31:17)
Right. What are the biggest barriers that are preventing youth from coming forward when they’ve been targeted?

Mike Lemon (31:24)
I think embarrassment is number one. They’re embarrassed that this picture’s out there, whether it’s real or not, they’re embarrassed they fell for it. And they think about what’s gonna happen if this gets out, how am I gonna go to school? How am I gonna maybe go on my sports team or whatever it is? What are they gonna say? I’m gonna walk down the hallway and everyone’s gonna be laughing at me and it’s gonna happen forever. That’s a huge one. You know, they may fear that they may face criminal charges. You know, had a dad talk to me about his son who was

Uh, son was 17 or 18 and his son was talking to another girl who was like 17 or 18 and about, you know, they sent pictures, they’d done all these different things. And then someone got on her, the girl’s account and said, listen, I’m her dad. She’s not 17. She’s 12. And you’re to be going to prison because you, she got pictures of 12 year old and you’re asking for pictures. And he was freaking out that he’s going to be going to prison.

And he started paying the dad so he doesn’t, doesn’t tell, right? It’s just another example of what they do. But you know, they will threaten the kids. Have you sent this nude photo? You’re going to go to jail. So fear of charge, criminal charges, and then really just the continued threats that are keep coming. They don’t know how to handle that. Again, if you’re getting, you you think about the spam phone calls you get every day, you get really annoyed with those, right? If each one of those spam phone calls was them threatening you.

Mike Lemon (32:50)
And or sending saying, check with your friend here. We just sent the picture to them. You know, it’s that constant, constant worry. and so they just don’t want to tell cause they’re afraid what’s going to happen to them.

Fight the New Drug (32:57)
Right. So what are some practical tools or habits that families can create or use at home to help create a safer online environment and an environment where if a child is targeted, they’re prepared to come forward. They know what to do.

Mike Lemon (33:18)
Uh, number one is prepare, prepare, prepare. You’ve got, you’ve got to prepare your child for if this happens. Right? Again, we got to prepare them. If they come to a four way stop or a red light, I mean, they know what to do. They get into an accident. They know what to do. Same thing with this. We’ve got, they’ve got to be prepared to avoid it. But then if they actually fall for it, something happens, they made a mistake, just screwed up. I’m going to prepare for what to do next. And that all comes down to educating your kids.

with the skills to keep themselves safe. And so talking to them about, you know, this is what happens, how this works, warning signs and what to do if something does happen. You know, kids, really, they once they understand it, they can be very, very perceptive of things. Like for my kids, I’ve got five of my own and I got two sets of twins. I a twin 13 year olds, 11 year old twin, nine year old.

And they’re online and they’ve I’ve, trained them the same training I do in schools. I’ve done with them. Like if you want to get the, they don’t, they’re not fully online. They’re not, there’s definitely not social media. that’s not happening, but you know, they play like Minecraft, a couple of games like that. And I have it set up to where they’re not playing with everybody and they can’t communicate with other people, except some certain friends, but they’ve been to that training and they know they can, so they come to me and the dad, get this, you know, it’s funny, but,

Mike Lemon (34:46)
You know, it was good. then they came to me, dad, this, this, this thing came up and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. You know, I don’t know what they’re, who this person is trying to talk to me. like, they shouldn’t be able to talk to you with way I’ve set up. So I went over there and it was a pop-up. Right. It was an ad popped up like, no, don’t worry about that. But you know, they’re at least thinking about this. This isn’t right. And what am I supposed to do? And so we’ve got to train the kids. Not only that this is what happens, but what happens after the bad happens.

Fight the New Drug (34:59)
Right. And I love the metaphor of preparing to drive, right? Because so many parents, you know, they learn to drive when they’re teenagers, they got their license, they’re out in the world, they’ve been driving for a long time, But something that’s really different is, you know, the rules of the road are largely similar and operating vehicles are just similar, but vehicles are different. And the speeds we can travel are different and parents have to continue to adopt to learn the environment that their kids are gonna drive in. And this is something, your example of your kid coming to you and you’re saying, well, with the way I’ve set it up, that shouldn’t be possible. You had to still learn, there’s a pop-up. You, who’s arguably one of the most prepared parents out there to navigate this and,

Fight the New Drug (35:57)
and prepared devices, you know, there are still things that are outside of your control that you’re learning. Okay, within this context, there are pop ups, there are other ways for people to connect. So I think that’s something that we really see that gap in knowledge with parents, even even the best, you know, the parents with the best intentions who have all the quote unquote, the right things, they have the filters they have. But if they don’t continue to stay educated on what’s really happening, then they will fall behind and their kids will fall behind as well and not be prepared.

Mike Lemon (36:27)
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I tell parents is don’t go any further than you’re ready. Doesn’t matter what your kids want. It doesn’t matter what game they want or social media app they want or what kind of phone they want. If you’re not ready for that and you don’t feel comfortable saying, know, I understand, you know, like for the Minecraft, I’ve set up there, I pay for a server. So it’s a private server

Mike Lemon (36:49)
that my kids are on, that they can invite their friends on, that I can see who they are and who’s on there. And they use my Zoom, so they’re all talking, I can hear it, there’s no headphones, there’s no… So I know at that point, that’s as far as I was willing to go when they went to the online gaming piece. And the big problem is, like you said, is it’s so hard to keep up with things. if a parent is not willing to… to learn that are just over their head. Like my wife, she is an incredibly smart person. She’s a psychiatric nurse practitioner. She’s graduated in like, I think, secondary class at Vanderbilt, incredibly intelligent, but technology, she has zero interest in. And so, and she’s like, if it wasn’t for you, these kids wouldn’t have anything technology wise. you know what? That’s okay. Cause I’m telling you right now that there’s going to be a wave of kids who grew up in this whose parents said no, or not now, or later.

Mike Lemon (37:47)
who turn into adults and have their own kids and go back to mom and dad and say thank you. Thank you for not putting me into that because I’ve seen what happened to all my friends.

Fight the New Drug (37:53)
Yeah, and you know, we’re even seeing some teenagers now who are staying behind that curve because their parents are educated, because they’ve had these conversations and they’re grateful for it now, you know, along the way. And it is a tough thing to not be the one with all the devices with your friends. But, you know, if if they don’t have adequate support in it, it’s.

Fight the New Drug (38:16)
it’s not something they can easily navigate in the world that we’re currently in today. And you know, we’re talking about the limited scope of harms specific to sexual exploitation and pornography, but there is a broader scope as well, right? And there are so many things for parents to consider and there are resources out there to help parents. So I would love to talk a little bit about the work you’re doing with Cyber Safe School. If you can tell us kind of about that work generally, and then I have some more specific questions I would love to ask, but tell us a bit about that.

Mike Lemon (38:21)
Absolutely. Sure. So the whole goal of CyberSafe School is to prepare kids to be online. Whether we have video trainings down to pre-k to second, I can’t train down that low. I’ve tried that several times and it doesn’t go well. You got about five minutes, 10 minutes, literally a groom of about 50 or 60 second graders sitting down in the gym and they’re all spinning on their butts.

And I was like, this is the last time I’m doing down the second grade, third grade seems to be fine. But, know, in, different ways to do it for those kids need to understand just a few basics, right? Third, you know, kind of late middle elementary school, they need to learn what we call the red flag. These are the danger signs. You know, we, can’t give the kids everything is just too much for them. But if you can teach them, this is a danger sign. Like you, you know, we talk about you, walk down to a, to a beat, a boardwalk, you get to a beach, you look up, there’s a red flag on the pole.

Mike Lemon (39:40)
You may look out and it seems to be fine, but you know, something is maybe a rip current. can’t see whatever it is. You know, there’s danger in there. And if we can just teach them, these are the danger signs. When you see one of these, this is what you do. Right. Whether it’s stop communication, whether it’s talk to mom and dad, whatever it is, we go through a bunch of different things, but just giving them that ability. And then really for the middle and high school, we teach them how what they’re doing on social media will impact their future.

You know, we talk about sextortion and stuff too, because that’s more of the kind of the personal future, but also, you know, if they want to go to school, if they want to go get a job, what they’re doing on social media is going to have a huge impact. And especially with the AI tools, which there’s out there right now. I mean, every picture, you pictures, you may be in the background of a picture somewhere at a party or whatever. It’s not even on your, your account. They’re able to find that.

And so we really hit home with them about how what you’re posting, what you’re sharing, what you’re sending is, is can affect your future. So we want to prepare them so they’re not victims and take that stigma away of being safe. All right. It’s, know, not, not doing the things other people are doing online. Guess what? It’s smart. You’re doing, you’re being smart. And the last one we do is we really educate the parents and being a, I’ve done around 250 parent trainings.

And getting parents to show up, especially since COVID is about impossible. So we have moved to an online challenge.

Fight the New Drug (41:04)
Yeah.

Mike Lemon (41:09)
And we’ve gone from an average of two to three parents to average around 60 to over 200 parents and be able to do this. And literally they just, anytime in a week, they watch the video, they fill out a form once it’s over. And then the schools can see that they have taken the video. And in that we have three things really for the parents. We teach them the dangers, real life dangers with stories. I’m telling a lot of stories here, but that’s the way I teach is cause stories are rememberable. You’re not gonna remember a slide.

Mike Lemon (41:39)
We teach them the dangers, we teach them the consequences, really the mental health consequences. And then we give them a simple plan. parent with no technical ability can go home that night with these three things we give them and they can keep their kids safer than they’ve ever been before. And that’s really the plan.

Fight the New Drug (41:39)
Yeah, it’s really a great program. And as we’re talking about sextortion so much today, I want to ask specifically how does CyberSafe School help students and schools respond after sextortion incidents have occurred?

Mike Lemon (42:12)
I get a lot of phone calls, lots of phone calls and you know each school is a little different just depending on where they’re at and number one you know we want to make sure the child’s Number two, we to make sure the parents are there to support the child as best they can. We’ve seen unfortunately so many times the child gets extorted and the mom and dad are just on them which makes it worse because this is going to be over at some point right and if it happens again you think they’re gonna come tell mom and dad?

No, not going to happen, right? And so then we go through, know, who can you contact? Because again, so even it’s got better, still not every agency has an Internet crimes against children detective or even in maybe in the county. And so they’re calling them and saying, you know, well, we don’t have anybody. So I still have contacts throughout the state. So I’m giving them, it’s called to this person call here or I call them for them and help them start working through that process.

Fight the New Drug (42:44)
Yeah, that’s incredible. You are really, and throughout your career, you’ve really seen some of the darkest, you know, most difficult things. Seeing right now you’re getting a lot of calls, that’s something you continue to deal with.

Do you find hope in the change you do see from, you know, as parents are becoming educated and as young people are being empowered and prepared adequately

Mike Lemon (43:29)
There is, but there’s gotta be much bigger changes. I’ll get on my soap box for a second, but we’ve got to give parents easy ways to control what their kids are doing. And there’s got to be, we’ll call it the one app, right?

Mike Lemon (43:45)
So parents need to be able to say, all right, I pull up my app. put my child in there. This is their email. This is a birthday. This is their information. Right. And I do that from all five of my kids. And then for all five of them, can say across all platforms, gaming, social media, uh, just any internet site. I want them to be able to do this or don’t do that. want them to be able to communicate with friends. Yes. Communicate with anyone. No.

Right. And whatever it is. And then when they sign up for tick tock, then they don’t have to figure out tick tock’s parental controls. They sign up and boom, it’s done. They sign up for Instagram. Boom. It’s done. It’s the same across all platforms because, and I understand, you know, social media has got to make money, but, and I’ll be honest with you. If, if the law of, had to be 13 years old was enforced, I think all social media would shut down the next day. They’d be done.

Mike Lemon (44:42)
because they lose half or more of their subscribers if they actually, did that. And I think they’d be gone. So we’ve got to be able to give parents easy ways to protect their children because trying to figure out tick tock, fortnight, you know, discord, all these different things, they’re not going to do it because they didn’t go through it. They didn’t, you know, like you talk, we’re talking about driving, right?

They were taught to drive. Now they have the experience driving. They can teach your child to drive. Well, they didn’t drive during this. They even at the car, their driving is different. The phone that they see is totally different than the phone that their child’s seen on the same app. And so we’ve got to be able to give them parents control, That would give me a lot of hope.

Fight the New Drug (45:12)
Yeah. So there’s still a lot of work to be done. know, there are a lot of great people doing great work and bringing awareness to these issues, but there is a lot of work to be done. and, you know, parents, I think sometimes feel like they don’t have any power because everything is so complicated and difficult. But there’s a lot of power in collective parent voices, right? If enough parents are speaking up saying, hey,

Mike Lemon (45:29)
Absolutely.

Fight the New Drug (45:51)
We need these things to change. We need these resources. Change does happen. And we see that, and we are fueled by that hope and also agree that there is a lot of work to be done and we will continue to do it right alongside you and so many others in this movement as well. I did want to ask you, you mentioned things are so complicated, and I know we’ve talked quite a bit about social media specifically. For parents who have kids who are interested in gaming,

I think that’s where there is also a pretty big gap. A lot of parents themselves are using social media, but aren’t using necessarily the gaming platforms that their kids are using. What are some of the biggest hurdles you see with those platforms and what is kind of your best advice to parents in terms of navigating that with their kids who are interested in that?

Mike Lemon (46:39)
Gaming to me is is more dangerous than social media and that’s from investigators perspective because The bad guys know that if they’re sending a message on Instagram or even snapchat You know could be could be screenshot could be whatever or could be on some server some but it’s it’s evidence There’s gonna be evidence right? But when you’re on the gaming system, and you got one of these on and you’re talking that’s not recorded

So you can say, do, you can say, Hey, go to this website, Hey, whatever. And none of that’s recorded. So evidence-wise, you’re going to, you’re not going to get nearly as much off a game as you would through social media. so, excuse me, understand that first is that gaming is in all actual is more dangerous than, social media. And, but you, again, you know, you’ve a couple of things is you just don’t go with, if, if you’re here’s the problem I see.

is that kids get a game and then another game and another game, another game, another game, another game, right? And my kids do it too. As soon as they get permission, they go in maybe a different, different type of Minecraft. It’s a week later, like, want to go to the next one. like, Nope, not going to do it. And parents have to be comfortable saying no, not because I don’t love you, not because I don’t want you to have fun, but because I’m not ready.

Fight the New Drug (48:01)
Yeah.

Mike Lemon (48:02)
Let me research it. Let me look into it. And like for me, a lot of times what I’ll do is, uh, one of my older boys are like, all right, you can go to that, play it for a day. You know, we make sure the setup. there’s not, there’s not chatting, uh, and play it for a day and come back. Let me know. And then, okay, is it all right? Yeah. And then, all right. So then give them some responsibility too. Right. Cause now that whichever brother it is now, like, Oh, I’m kind of taking care of my younger brothers, making sure they’re safe.

And so then I’ll sit, all right, let’s, let’s play it and I’ll watch him play it. And so then once I’m, I feel like then we can, we can kind of spread it out. And so just don’t go further than you’re ready for. And it’s okay to say no. Cause again, if they don’t get a game now and it’s next week or it’s next month, or maybe even next year, it’s okay. It’s okay.

Fight the New Drug (48:50)
Yeah.

I really like the way that you framed so much of this is not kind of a, parents have to learn everything they need, put the filters on, and then give their kid a phone, and then it’s check we’re done. There are check marks along the way every step of the way require effort from parents to stay involved and to stay educated, you know, maybe it’s a yes to one step, but it’s a not yet to the next step until we can adequately prepare. And I think that’s such a great way for parents to look at this and kind of a bite size approach to something that can feel so daunting and so large. So I think that’s that’s great advice. Is there anything else we haven’t already talked about today that you think or whenever you share it with parents, they’re the most shocked to learn or they had no idea that, you know, these were things that could happen online or ways that predators could approach their children.

Mike Lemon (49:46)
I think I just understand and there, there is no safe, there’s no a hundred percent safe. You know, there’s no easy button to hit a whisper was hit an easy button. Boom. You’re safe. That’d be awesome. Uh, but you know, we, we, we’ve had predators on the Bible app. We had prior, if there’s children there and there’s able to communicate, there’s going to be predators. And so just to understand that there’s no, I thought this was safe. There, there’s no safe. There’s a continuum safer. Maybe the safest, but there is no safe. again, I keep things very simple because I’m not by growing up, I’m not a techie and learned this stuff. I had to learn it because I had to do it. And when my kids want to get online, I’ve been in this field for at that point, maybe 15 years or so.

Mike Lemon (50:31)
It was a hurdle for me. I’m like, how do I got to do? You know, we got a, I got a router, we got computer, you know, a game. got to figure all this stuff out. It was hard for me. And I’ve been in this game a long time, but I’m not a network person and I’m not a parental control expert at that time. I’ve learned a lot since then. but there are people who are, and so find those people or contact me. I can get you in touch with them and, you know, just don’t go further than you are ready.

Mike Lemon (50:58)
Because if you’re not ready, they’re definitely not ready.

Fight the New Drug (51:00)
Yeah, very well said.

I want to thank you so much for your time. I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing. If parents do want to learn more about the work that you’re doing and or get in touch with you, we will put information in the show notes. But do you want to share any resources as well?

Mike Lemon (51:17)
Sure, we have a newsletter that we put out to threats, new trends, and we go over an app or a game every month, myself and Officer Gomez. And we really deep dive in it so parents understand that game, how to keep kids safe and the really dangers that are involved with it. So they know, again, better. Make sure you know before you go. And you can just go to cybersafeschool.org, forward slash newsletter, or we have a Facebook group, Cyber Safe Families.

Fight the New Drug (51:46)
Amazing. Thank you so much. to all of our listeners, I encourage you to engage with these resources. encourage you parents, educators, caregivers to learn more about this issue, work with us to prepare youth to better navigate this world. For any of our listeners who are interested in hearing more episodes like this, please be sure to like and subscribe. is a reminder that Fight the New Drug is a nonprofit educating on the harms of pornography and related issues.

and it’s linked to all forms of sexual exploitation. So again, we wanna thank you, Mike, for joining us on the podcast today to help shine a light on these issues. And we look forward to seeing the progress we’re able to make in this movement together.

Mike Lemon (52:18)
You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Fight the New Drug (52:27)
Thank you.