Elkhart Police helping to combat child exploitation through ICAC Task Force

ELKHART, Ind. -- Captain Denise Houser with the Elkhart Police Department says , including her, six members of the Elkhart Police Department are members of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force.

She says the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is a network of national, federal, state, tribal, and local agencies that work together to fight against child exploitation crimes.

Houser says four Elkhart officers were trained last month, and the Elkhart Police Department has been part of the task force for less than a year. She says ICAC provides training for officers who join the task force.

Houser hopes they can take on more in the future and do proactive or undercover investigations as well. 

"Right now, my ICAC investigators are primarily patrol officers that have taken this on because they have a passion for helping children and they have a passion for combating these horrific crimes. I'm hoping to have a dedicated unit, a dedicated ICAC investigative unit that will be able to take on more. Right now, some of our tips are being worked by Indiana State Police, because we just can't take all of them on," said Houser.

According to Houser, the cases are labor-intensive and time-consuming. She says Elkhart police only take the ones that are in Elkhart County, though some cases can be multi-jurisdictional.

Captain Houser says the Indiana State Police commander is in charge of Indiana’s task force.

She says tips come in from internet providers, community members, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and different agencies. Then, they get distributed to agencies corresponding to the area.

"The internet is a wonderful thing, and it's also an evil thing, right? I mean, children are easy to prey upon in the internet world, and it's very sad how easy it is for these predators to get in contact with our children through apps such as TikTok, Facebook and Snap. And a lot of the predators just sit on these websites and just wait for a child that they can contact and try to prey upon," said Houser.

Houser says they've had multiple cases where a child thinks they are talking to a friend or someone their age. Then, the person gets the child to send photos, exploits them, and asks for money.  

“They develop a rapport with the child, and they groom them. It's very disturbing, the stuff that we've investigated, the stuff that we've discovered during these investigations, how prolific the problem is. You know, back in the day, ‘stranger danger’ was just the man in the white van with the puppy. But now, it's so much easier for them to prey upon children without even leaving a footprint, without being in front of them. Children don't know who they're talking to when they're talking to people online,” said Houser. “We've had multiple cases where we had a 12-year-old who thought he was talking to a 13-year-old female, and it ended up being some man in Nigeria, and somehow he elicits–and he gets that boy to send pictures of himself by sharing pictures in his repertoire, or whatever— he's sharing pictures of a female. But that's not who this young boy is talking to, and then the next thing you know, he's exploiting the child and making the child pay money, or he's going to send all those pictures to his friends and family.”

Houser says it is so important to protect children.

"I just know that some of the child sex crimes are some of the most horrific crimes that we deal with in the detective bureau. Just knowing those things that are coming in and seeing those cases, it's devastating, really, what kind of trauma it causes to a child. So, as I've seen that and witnessed it, it just became more important to me to try to do something to combat that, and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force gives us another opportunity and another means of trying to combat what our children are facing in the internet world," said Houser.

She says she wants more agencies in the area to join the ICAC task force.


'Operation Guardian Angel' was a statewide initiative to catch predators within Indiana in August, spearheaded by the Indiana state police. Houser says Elkhart police worked about five or six of these tips, and the rest were worked on by ISP and other agencies.


Below are the statistics from that initiative provided to ABC57 by Captain Houser:

Investigations
Reactive Investigations Resulting from Citizen Complaints or CyberTips: 252
Proactive Investigations: 36
Number of CyberTips Received for August: 2,233
Number of CyberTips Received between January and August 2025: 16,124

Arrests
Total Arrests: 48
Identified as Hands-on Offenders: 14
Number of Arrestees who were also a Registered Sex Offender: 6

Child Victims Identified
Children Rescued from On-going Abuse: 14
'Newly Identified Children with Images: 31
Newly Identified Children without Images: 26


Houser also gave some tips for parents to keep children safe online, including: 
-develop a relationship with your child, communicate openly about what they are doing online
-make sure they understand the danger of being online
-make sure they know not to share any photos of themselves online
-use parental controls on various apps. Some have features for family sharing.
-have passwords to children’s devices, monitor use


Here are some resources from the Indiana ICAC task force website, including a link to report child exploitation.