Sex crimes against children, including an explosion of online sextortion, are on the rise in Niagara

May 21 was a busy day for the Niagara Regional Police Service. And a disturbing one for families across the region. 

The NRPS announced the culmination of three different investigations and charges that were laid against three different men for various sexual crimes against children.

A 29-year-old, trainer and manual osteopath, Nicholas Edward Jackson of St. Catharines was charged with making child pornography, possession of child pornography and 24 counts of voyeurism after allegations that some of his patients were being secretly video-taped while getting undressed at the physical wellness centre where he worked on contract. 

Jackson was initially arrested on March 17 after NRPS were contacted by members of the wellness facility in the Martindale area of St. Catharines. At the time, he was charged with voyeurism and distributing an intimate image. Further voyeurism charges were laid on May 3, followed by the child pornography charges announced on May 21. 

While the investigation remains ongoing, NRPS detectives believe they have been able to identify all affected victims. “Patients of the facility who have not been contacted by detectives are not considered victims,” a press release clarified.

The same day, NRPS arrested 31-year-old Nygel Kovacs of Niagara Falls, charging him with sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching following an investigation into allegations he assaulted a young woman, now 16, over a 10-year period between 2014 and 2024 when he was her babysitter. Police are concerned there could be more victims as the investigation revealed Kovacs had babysat other children during the span of the alleged offences he was charged for. 

Finally, detectives in Niagara Police’s Internet Child Exploitation Unit announced on May 21 they had charged Justin Murray Lee, a 49-year-old from Welland with a number of offences, including two counts each of possession and making child pornography, as well as accessing and making child pornography available and voyeurism.

“Online platforms that enable users to engage with minors, and to create, share, or store child sexual abuse material (CSAM) are prevalent,” the NRPS press release details. “Offenders who attempt to lure children while hiding behind anonymous accounts can and will be identified and held accountable.”

The charges laid against these three men have not been tested in court.

The flurry of disturbing criminal counts came after a report delivered to Niagara’s police services board in March that detailed how online child exploitation crimes similar to those allegedly committed by Jackson and Murray Lee are on the rise in the region.

Referrals from the RCMP’s Operational Child Exploitation Analysis Network (OCEAN), which triages potential cases of CSAM and exploitation and shares them with police in the responding jurisdictions, remains “very high” and “are the primary contributor to the ICE Unit workload” the report highlights.

NRPS referrals from OCEAN increased for the second straight year in 2024 with 265, up from 249 in 2023 and 246 in 2022. These referrals led to 110 investigations into CSAM and child luring across Niagara.

This is in addition to the tips received from Crime Stoppers and Cypterip, the national crisis line operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P). The majority of these cases are related to “sextortion”, a crime that involves online criminals blackmailing youth, mostly young men, into sharing intimate images of themselves, then demanding money to prevent the images from being shared online. 

“Such incidents tend to originate in overseas countries and involve international organized criminal networks, which causes many investigative and prosecutorial challenges,” the report explains. 

Despite the disturbing nature of the report, it received no discussion among members at the March 27 police board meeting. 

Police across North America are dealing with an alarming increase in sextortion crime, which has already led to many teenagers in the United States and Canada dying by suicide. 

As previously reported by The Pointer, since the end of 2021, data from the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation show the number of reports of sextortion has increased 18,000 percent—from 139 cases in the fourth quarter of 2021 to more than 26,000 in 2023. 

The explosion of sextortion cases are stretching police agencies across North America thin. They must carry out complex, interjurisdictional investigations to hold offenders accountable.

(National Centre on Sexual Exploitation) 

To deal with the rapidly growing workload, NRPS added an additional ICE investigator in 2023, bringing the unit’s complement to four specially trained officers. Currently, two of them are trained to conduct undercover luring investigations. An additional officer is set to receive the training to carry out these proactive investigations in 2025. It takes approximately two years to fully train an ICE investigator, the report notes.

These investigations can be costly, and take considerable amounts of time due to the increasing size of electronic CSAM collections. In one case investigated by NRPS, the collection consisted of more than 750,000 images and 50,000 videos of varying lengths. All of these must be viewed by investigators.

A public service announcement posted on social media by Niagara Police earlier this month.

(NRPS)

While not explicitly laid out in the NRPS report, it’s clear the additional investigator added to bolster the ICE unit’s complement in 2023 has created results. 

The number of arrests and charges have increased drastically year over year. Arrests doubled to 32 last year (up from 16 the year prior) and the number of charges laid has surged 123 percent from 52 to 116 in 2024.

This mirrors a trend observed by police agencies across Canada. According to data from Statistics Canada, incidents of police reported online sexual offences against children, and online child pornography offences increased 217 percent between 2014 and 2022. 

“In other words, the overall rate of this crime has more than tripled since 2014, from 50 incidents to 160 incidents per 100,000 children and youth. This significant increase since 2014 could reflect an actual increase in this type of crime, increased resources and training for police to better detect and understand (online child sexual exploitation), or a combination of both,” the Statistics Canada report underscores. 

Online sexual exploitation of children has been rapidly increasing since 2014, either due to the ease of committing this crime on anonymous online platforms, increased awareness, or both.

(Statistics Canada) 

NRPS conducts both proactive and reactive investigations, but experts have noted that even with such an approach, the data gathered by police may not provide a full picture of these crimes. 

Surveys show only a small portion of victims of all types of sexual crimes come forward to police; this number decreases drastically when the crime involves a child. 

According to a 2024 report from Statistics Canada, because of low reporting rates “it is difficult to quantify the true prevalence of online child sexual exploitation in Canada using only police-reported statistics.” 

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