Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Live.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome to the host judiciary committee this Tuesday afternoon, January twenty seventh, and we're continuing to take testimony on page six two six, Baltic Boyerism and a disclosure of sexually explicit images of consent. And we're gonna start I'm gonna change the order a little bit. We're gonna start with Matthew Raymond from the Internet of Crimes and Children Task Force. If you could join us in nice to see you again. It's been a couple years, I think.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, think it has been.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: You didn't bring the dog. No, did not. So

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: you can identify yourself for the record and proceed. Thank you for being here.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Yeah, I'm Matthew Raymond. I'm a commander of the Vermont Internet Crimes and Children Task Force. We're a task force that we have one sole mission, that's to protect children, to prevent the victimization of children by people using the Internet and technology exploit. Typical cases are child sexual abuse material cases, lowering, enticement, and sex torture. That's what I'm going to talk about here. It was the sex torture piece of this law and how we deal with this all the time, unfortunately. So the the ICAC perspective or more ICAC perspective on the sextortion piece is I think everybody here probably already knows. I first of all, I need to apologize. I didn't get to watch any of the prior test. This is just an extremely busy time of year for us, and I don't get time to fit it in. So I apologize if I'm repeating what's already been said. Sextortion, from our perspective, is a very serious threat facing our nation's youth, and has resulted in over thirty suicides that we know nationwide. So historically, we saw sex based sextortion. So that were the victims were primarily young females. The conversations were long in nature, from days to months long. The perpetrators portrayed themselves as peers and engaged in grooming techniques, making gradual requests over time, sometimes providing gifts to the victims, gaining their confidence. The suspects were not aggressive until they received a child sexual abuse material, and then quickly turned and threatened to expose them if they didn't get more and more content. The sole purpose was more content. Usually, the suspects were US based, and we tracked it down and the rest of them. Then around 2019, we started seeing a switch. We still get those cases today, about the same amount we've always got them. But we started seeing financial based exclusion, which we've never seen before. And the victims then or now with that are primarily male. We're seeing ages 13 to 17 are the primary ages. They're very short in duration, maximum of hours. They progress very fast. The suspects always portray themselves as a female. The chats are extremely aggressive. They always ask for genital and face pictures in the same image because they can put the picture in that way. The requests come fast. The sole purpose is to obtain money. They usually ask for a lot of money in the beginning, and then they negotiate down to whatever they can get. They threatened to expose the child, offering screenshots of their friends list, saying this is who I'm gonna send it to. We know who your parents are, you know, based off their social media presence. And if they're paid, it doesn't stop. They just keep coming. Sometimes I'll take a two day break, and then I come right back at the victim. And we know that from contact with victims. So the suspects for financial based extortion are largely not US based. We're seeing a lot of copycat people that found out they can try to make money this time, And they get caught and arrested. The vast majority come from Nigeria, The Ivory Coast, The Philippines, and India, actually. However, again, we are seeing some US based actors now. Again, I call it kinda like, They found out they could make money that way. So with these foreign actors, some of them are actually organized gangs. And sometimes they have a US US based money mule assisting, and that's to get around restrictions on sending that companies have have put in because of so around so that started again, we were seeing it starting around 2019. And then by the time 2022 was here, these cases had ballooned in neck neck. I think they were reporting, like, a 300% increase in these these type of cases. So Vermont's been no exception to this. We've seen just a it just blow up with financial basics. We deal with them almost on a weekly basis now. Normally, we're having the victims here in Cremont. So you have to realize because there's no geographic boundaries such as crime, the perpetrators are in one place and the victim are another. Rarely are you ever gonna see it all in the community. So so again, we're dealing with victims on a weekly basis here in Vermont. We have had cases of the perpetrators here in Vermont. We have not had a a financial based one here, but we have had several over the years of the sexual based. We just had one, I think, three weeks ago. Just got got the person. So, you know, we always instruct there's we have handouts that we do that we provide. We have cards with a number of different things that we that we give out. We always give the same recommendations. Do not pay them. Paying them is not gonna solve the problem. It's just gonna get them coming back to you. It's kinda like interacting with a telemarketer. You just gonna get more. So we tell them stop all contact, block them, report them to the platform, not to delete the communication, preserve the whatever device they're on and contact the police reported to NECMAC to change their passwords on all their social media accounts because unfortunately, sometimes during extortion part, they actually extort them for their passwords to try to take over their accounts. And that's because then they can get into that friend group fast and extort many part people, Kinda like the daisy chain of extortion. And, you know, we on our education piece, we try to tell them to reach out to someone they trust, a parent or sibling. Many times, they're afraid to come to the police right away, not because of the police or something embarrassed. Again, it's not that they're worried about getting in trouble. They're more worried about people. That's very hard for them. So and then there's also, a secondary exploitation that can happen as there's these services popping up that that promise to investigate their cases or get their images taken down. And that's another scam on top of a scam that we're seeing. And we also refer them to neck necks, take it down to a few more familiar. It's a report if you've provided an image of yourself and pointed out there, you can report it to neck neck And it's really just providing the hash of the the image. And then they scour the Internet on the indexable part of the Internet for that to get it taken down anywhere that it might be. So that's basically what we're seeing in Vermont. Some on the sex based extortion, one of the worst examples in Vermont was a number of years ago, we had a case where So there are 61 ICACs nationwide. Some states have more than one because of their geographic size or population density. Vermont, of course, is small in both regards to we only have one statewide. But we all work together. Again, if there is a suspect in one state and a victim in another, we be co worker against. And then the state where the suspect resides is where we generally do the charge. But in this case, we had another ICAC contact us that they had arrested somebody and in going through their devices, they found evidence of sextortion that had occurred unfortunately three years prior. And they had the IP addresses, but you can't go to a service provider three years later, their logs are long gone to figure out who the subscriber is. So we had to go old school police work and figure out who this child was. It took us a few weeks, but we were able to locate her. And when we went there, it was incredibly sad. It had been three years and the parents couldn't understand what had happened. This was a three sport athlete that just dropped out of stopped participating. We got out of all social media, lost her friend groups, isolated herself, had severe depression. And what we ended up finding out was she had found that somebody online, you know, that made a really good connection. Unfortunately, these people are very good at grooming and got the first picture sent, I'd say consensually, but And then it quickly turned and the person became very aggressive, asking for more and more and worse content, which culminated unfortunately in her perpetrating on her sister, right, you guys, the hast. Until he moved on to somebody else. So it had created a train wreck of her life. Her sister's life fortunately were able to get her services, get her sister's services, and uncover this. Thankfully to the other ITEC as well for all the work they did on uncovering this. These crimes have real significance. We're seeing suicides nationwide. It's gonna make a train wreck in someone's life. And that brings me to the recommendations I would have on the I don't know if it's changed since what was introduced. That's what I have.

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Yeah, we're

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: still working off of that.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Okay, okay. That's why I just want to make sure I was not wasting everybody's time. So the first thing I would change and, I've I've concentrated on the sextortion piece of this. So under twenty six zero six. On my printout, it's page nine of 14 that I'm on, where it actually starts to mean that no person shall knowingly disclose a visual image of an identifiable person. It has the words without the person's consent. If I don't I'm not needed in there because obviously if you're

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Oh, this is towards the bottom on line one. I'm on B1. Line eight? Oh, B1. Okay. Line eight, thank you. Line eight. Thank you.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: In front of me. Yeah.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay. So right.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Right. So without the person's consent, I think that's unneeded language and just one more. Everything you put in here is just one more element that we have to prove and we have to gather when we're investigating these things. I think it's obvious it's not if the intent is to harass, threaten, then it's never with consent. And then that repeats itself on line 21.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, we had caught that one. That's Oh,

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: okay. Sorry.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So thank you for pointing out if there was another spot where we needed to look at that. Okay. And

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: then on that same page under 14, making these two year misdemeanors you know, makes it very pretty ineffectual law actually because if, again, like I had testified to, that the perpetrators are actually in another state, we can't even extrovert to hold them accountable because you're making a law that's a misdemeanor, which is not useful for us. So I would increase the penalties. I mean, are really ruining people's lives. They should be a felony at a minimum. And, again, the sextortion piece, it repeats itself on page 10, line 17. A person who violates this shall make her for not more than two years. Again, that makes it a misdemeanor. Can you back up a little bit further

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the concept that if it's not a felony,

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: you can't extradite? Yeah, so like when we're flagging somebody in NCIC for an extraditable crime, then it depends on the rules of that state and the rules of our state on extraditing. And making it a felony is what makes them being able to be posted in NCIC and to pull it and verify the warrant get them. So misdemeanors generally are not extradited.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And this is a particular crime, just so I wanna make sure I understand

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: that more often than not, the perpetrator is not You're rarely gonna find the perpetrator. It's not you're not doing this to your neighbor. You know, it's somebody's fishing online and finding somebody that that you think of the population of the Internet, the random probability that both of them are not as very small. So I do this every day, and I I never see that. Our victims, in the case we just did, which was a sex based, sex abortion case last month, the the suspect was in Vermont, but the victim was in another state. The other thing you have to know is these are not one off. These are not one hit one. Okay? When you uncover somebody doing this, they're doing it to dozens, if not hundreds of kids. They just rinse and repeat. Both the sex based and the financial. These are people that are motivated out there, and they're doing it like it's their job. When we go through their computers, we see that. I've never seen somebody do this once. Yeah. We don't. Anytime that we're going through the devices, we're seeing just a repeat of the same exact language, multiple, multiple things. Are selling the images that they No. So it depends. So let me rarely are rarely are the sexual base extortions interested in the money or selling stuff. They're they're trading for more content. They use them kinda like trading cards for more content. And the financial base are not interested in the sexual aspect of this. They're doing it because they found a population. There's no nice way of saying this. But boys are dumb, unfortunately, when it comes to this. And you'll see 13 to 17 year old boys have an attractive person online asking them for this. And they boom, give it up in two seconds. They found a population they can exploit, unfortunately, very easily, and it's something that's extremely embarrassing. They you know, all the tools are right there for them. They know who their friend list is. They know

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: how to exploit them.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: So these kids are freaking out, and they they do anything they can to pay them because they think it's gonna stop. Stop it. And they that's what they're doing. And so if that's why we tell them, say no. Rarely rarely ever do we see them actually post the images or provide the images because they're not interested in it. They're interested in making money. When they realize they're not gonna make money to this person, they move on. We can't say it never happens, of course, because there's never any accidents in this stuff. But it's rare that they actually have a bandana to post your images and afterwards. They're just looking for the quick buck, and they go bomb. They had a flyer that I think you had a flyer. Yeah. We have different erases of them. I brought them so I didn't know the Type of thing. What's that? I'm sorry. I think you said the flyer is informative for the kids to do this. Don't do that. Right. Yeah. Oh, and we're doing education piece. Okay. That was my next question. Yeah. Okay. So education in the schools, I assume. Yeah, so we do education. We just went down and taught a piece of the academy for new police officers to understand us and to reach out for us if any of this happens. So typically, a sex torsion case happens in Vermont, they're passing it off to our if it involves children. And we have been involved in adult ones. We helped I helped a few years ago. I helped with a case where there was a guy on Snapchat. Kinda have to be careful because I'm not sure if that case has actually been adjudicated. So Is there any education the kids Yes. And then so then we do the yeah. Sorry. Got off Yeah. And those partners. Yeah. So we also provide education as well. So basically our ICAC runs off, we have like three different lights to our stool investigations, forensics, and then education. And I always used to say, we're never going to rest our way out of this. Education is the key. But unfortunately, things change over time. And I think it's a tool that's very important and we put a lot of effort into that. But we are seeing a lot of infant and toddler abuse now, which you can't educate your way out of. Purely arrest and remove is the only thing that's gonna solve that problem. Arrest and remove those individuals from the general population. People that are perpetrating outfits and toddlers is what I'm trying do. So, but the rest of the education, trying to protect children and teach them what they can do. It's not a just say no scenario, because unfortunately, if you look at the statistics on kids that have shared their intimate images online, it's staggering. But we teach them like once you've done it, if you've done, we teach them the dangers of don't do it because these are the actual dangers, these are things that they don't think about. But then if you have, these are what you can do, like neck backs, take it down, reporting what we can do to help them, what to do with your social media. What is it? The full spectrum of kids in school from kindergarten to seniors or? Obviously, it's content driven on what appropriate for what they're doing. Right. And we also contract with Prevent Child Abuse for Vermont to go into schools to get the message as well. That's my biggest thing, is increase the penalties on making felonies, because these are significant crimes that they shouldn't have proven.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Barbara, then Angela? Thank you. It's always great to be here. So I have two questions. One is, it sounds like the motive of what we were seeing for people who were engaged in revenge for not everything doesn't appear in this briefing effort. In those cases, sometimes it was somebody in state, sometimes it was someone that didn't move out of state, but there was definitely, like, were pissed and trying to but that's

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: No, not on the financial based stuff. So on the sex based stuff, they're using it just to exploit them for worse and worse content. And unfortunately, they'll get an image and then threaten to expose that and then tell them to do worse and worse stuff. It usually goes from images to videos, and then they'll ask if they have animals at home, if they have siblings at home, and it gets very dark very fast. And these kids feel like they have no way out, and then and then they do, unfortunately, around the sex. The kids are the victims. It's not their fault. They're being exploited by them.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: So it's great that you're doing prevention education efforts. One of the things that I am going to advocate for is whatever way we can support expanding prevention and education efforts. And I'm wondering, do you have a lot of demand for doing it?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: We do. So we used to do, that's why we started, I started contracting with Provencia Abuse, Vermont years ago, because we were getting inundated with CyroTips and we have a backlog now that's, you know, unfortunate. We just don't have enough people to do the job at this point because in the last calendar year, I think it was 1,700 and something cyber tips that we received. So we have the at attorney general's officers myself and I have four full time employees. It started with myself. So we're light years ahead of where we were. But everybody else that does it does it as a part time, you know, job. We have federal, state, county, and local officers, but they only can do it when they have the time, which is becoming less and less for everybody because as you know, like there's a shortage everywhere.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Is the contract with PCA be, like, a pretty small contract? Like, is that something?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: It is. They and and it they basically run out of money from us probably more before three thirds of the year is out, but luckily, they continue to do the job and provide us with their statistics for what they're doing even after that. That's great, but I wish I could fully fund it, but we just we operate off a grant from OJJDP and that is funded by Congress. And then there's five service providers that get taken off the top. And then the 61 ICACS, it gets algorithm divides it up. And of course, we're a small state with a population that's smaller than most suburbs. That's two of the first parts of the algorithm, drops our amount of funding considerably.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: And do you know, maybe we have them in, if they do pre and post testing to see if they're effective in changing behavior?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Yeah, so no, we don't like And it's hard to do for a variety of reasons, because of the embarrassment involved. So it is hard to get reliable probabilities, statistics, I mean, from population.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: you so much for being here and for all the work you're doing. Thanks. It's been really difficult work. Two additional amendments that we may be considering that I just wanted to hear your quick take on, if possible. One was adding a provision that would grant a specific immunity to kids, anyone who's willing to come forward and share what's happening to them so that they are protected from prosecution, the creation of the materials?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: So I would have no objection to immunity for the victims because that's what they are in this. But I'm I'm not I'm not necessarily sure it's needed. Mean, we're we're we're when we instruct other officers on how to investigate these or that no one's ever contemplating charging a kid. They're the victim here. Yeah. So again, I would have no problems with it, but I'm not really sure that anybody would

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: wrong to charge the two think the thought behind it is probably twofold. One, ensure they wouldn't be charged, but also maybe to have one other thing to say to kids. Would be very confusing.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: The biggest problem is their embarrassment. So I get a lot that come through NCMEC where the kids have been online, they're afraid to tell their parents. They're afraid to tell a sibling. So they get online, they're trying to figure out how do it, and they find the NECMAC portal, and they make a report through there.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: The National Center for Misinformation.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Yeah. National. Sorry. Yeah. I should have said that. Thank you for pointing that out. Yeah, so they run the cyber tip line. The cyber tip line is any electronic service provider that any, that finds any child exploitation is mandated by federal law to report it to NCMEC. And then anybody can report through NCMEC. And so they have both an online portal and a phone number. So we've had kids do both call in or report it online. Of course, then we track their IP address back to their house and we go find them not, again, not to get them in trouble, but to provide help and make sure that they're not gonna hurt themselves or and to be able to track back the perpetrator. And again, when we do, unfortunately, a lot of times, we track them back to overseas. Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, or the So hotspots for

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: the second thing that we're considering adding or digging into a little bit is this trying to capture the money mules as well. You have any thoughts on that, the importance of that, and maybe mechanism?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: So typically when we are tracking down a money mule on one of these, we're going to charge them federally, to be honest with you, because the teeth much more, and they're, again, these are not one hit wonders, they're operating in multiple states. So it's just instead of trying to do a series of prosecutions against here in New York, California, we would charge them and pick a district, the US district and charge them federally.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Okay.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: So I'm not You have to realize that most of the time we're dealing with the victims here in Brooklyn and the perpetrators elsewhere if it's financially based. Again, not saying that, somebody's not gonna try it from Vermont, a lot of times we're just dealing with the victims.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Okay, so that hasn't been, we heard testimony from an investigator in Michigan who was saying that that had been, he ran into that frustration that he found him. He definitely couldn't reach into other countries, but then they identified six people in The United States who were facilitating the money Yeah,

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: that's to get around some of the restrictions that were put in place to try to protect everybody. They supernatant put somebody, usually a foreign national over here in The US, from their wherever they're from, and then operating here to get the money and then send it to them. So but again, I know that they people heard the Ryan LaLonde story from California. I don't know about that at all. It's a horrendous piece.

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Right.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: It was very quick, sextortion. Actually, we have some of the presentation material here on it. It went really fast. Unfortunately, he was a give me a second. They and they actually got a money case. The

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: We were talking about the Jordan Damay case, which I

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: would be familiar with.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Yeah. So I mean, here's one this is one thing. This is a thing, one is too many, these are eight different, unfortunately, children that committed suicide based off of this, and Last was unfortunately one of them and it was a case it was a California IAC that did this case and he was a boy scout agricultural student and association there applying for college and no problems, no history of mental illness, no issues at all. And unfortunately, it was seemed like a normal night. He went to his bedroom at 09:30 in the evening. His brother had seen him seen that his light was on around midnight, which was abnormal. And then the brother left to go to school at 07:30 in the morning, and what he didn't notice is he actually under his brother hanging out a bedroom window. He'd hung himself out of his window that night. So his parents had to, unfortunately, untie him from he hung himself with a bed post out the window. One's outside trying to hold him up, the other's trying to get him down. Unfortunately, he'd been long past. He'd done it the night before. And, this is a student active in school, boy scout, and not on college trips. You know? But no one can understand why he did this at first and that someone was blackmailing him. He had left some notes to his his parents, which included investigators, and they called the ICAC, luckily right away, got there and got into his phones and were able to start doing preservation letters and tracking it down across the Internet. And they found it went it went very fast. That was very once they got the images from him, the the chatter went started demanding $5,000. He was gonna expose his photos. He's telling him that that they they have no he doesn't have any way to pay him. He's begging, and it's very incredibly sad, texts back and forth about he's just begging, please don't do this, you're ruining my life. And he sees no way out, was that he feel like he could talk to anybody, Just horrendous stories like that. That's why I say these crimes should not be a two year mystic. This should be a significant felony.

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Yeah. Just probably not right now, but at some point, I'd love to talk with you about your thoughts on holding the social media platforms accountable and that they're facilitating this straight up, that the access they grant, and they know what is happening. And so I'd love to hear from your perspective, when the time is right, some ways to get that accountability as well. For

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: considering the penalty for these and considering extradition from other states, I know they vary depending on the state and what is considered a penalty and all that. Are there particular states that we're seeing copycat individuals in particularly that we could look at what their extradition laws are so that we can ensure that whatever we're considering for a penalty, we're at least educating ourselves on what the situation is. Right, so if you I mean, just because you make a maximum penalty higher doesn't mean that it's going be sentenced like that. We have on the books now for a lot of our child sexual abuse material laws, it's five years and then ten years and then depending on which statute it is, but rarely do we see them sentenced to that. So I mean, I wouldn't see why you would make this like a ten year follow-up date right off the bat. Again, it's not gonna, everybody's not gonna, it's gonna be situational dependent, it has to be adjudicated, and the judge has to summon some hearing. So it doesn't mean that's what they're getting. You're not setting a mandatory minimum, but the maximum should not be two years. And that's my opinion. So, Herb, I'm just curious, are there particular states where you're seeing copycat individuals that we can look at there? Yeah. They've chopped up just in random states. It's not it's not there's not Like an r l r. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. So Any other questions? Yeah, just one. Tom, I think you had mentioned 1,700 tips a year now, is that what you said? Yes, we were up to. And I remember it before COVID, it was like four or 500 maybe. So when I took over the CyberTip line a long time ago now, we were getting like six, seven tips a month. I think last month I got 195. How many were you when you first started? Like six a month. Yeah. So I think in the first year, if I look, if I'm going up memory now, so I don't hold many accountable for this. But I think the first year that we took over the cyber tip line, there was like a 135 cyber tips that year. And now, like I said, it's in calendar year. Of course, you're gonna see three different sets of stats from us, and that's because we get our federal, we operate off of federal grants. So we have federal fiscal that we have to report for that. And then each year, we're asked for a state fiscal report for the legislature. And then many times everybody's asked for calendar year stats. So last calendar year, that's the last stats I just actually composed. So, I'll take it all I can remember. But in the calendar year of 2025, it was like seventeen forty nine, I think, seventeen forty nine cyber tips. And again, that's all child exploitation cyber tips, dealing with either lowering enticement, child sexual abuse material, sex torture. I think you also said the numbers are up this time of year is because people are inside. So we spikes throughout the year and this time of year for some reason we always see a spike. Impossible to really say what the causation is, but I think in Northeastern States, yeah, people are spending a lot more time in inside online, less to do outside, especially recently with the cold and lots of snow. So we definitely do see an increase each time of year. And there's a lot of other things that go into that, right? Like, think about in 2011, how many platforms there were online and think about how many there are now. Think about how many things exist today that you can put an app on your phone for that weren't there five years ago. So every time there's more applications, there's more accessibility if kids are on there too, perpetrate on kids on that and then it's going to create more cyber tips. So they just they just continue to grow up. I know it's already been said, but just to thank you for what you do. So I'm gonna guess that you're probably one of the longer tenured ICAC investigators in the country because I can't believe I I know it's not a job that people keep for a lot of years because of what you do, what you hear, what you see, and just kudos to kudos to you for for what you do, especially for how long you've been. Yeah. I am one of the if not at this point, the longest standing ICAC commander left at the ICAC commander. We meet quarterly with all the other ICAC commanders, and most of them are that have been for a long time are gone now. But everybody's got a fill limit on this. We've had some outstanding investigators that only lasted a few years. They just couldn't take the content, which there's no bad thoughts on that because everybody's got a fill in on this. To me, it's every time we we rescue dozens and dozens of kids. And every time we rescue a kid that wasn't crying out for abuse, but a cyber tip led us to them, we got us removed from that situation and got them a better life. That's why it gives it gives that kid a better chance at life. We all know that long term victims of this, unfortunately, have had some real train wrecks of lives. And the faster we can get to them, the faster we can get them services, the better outcomes they're gonna have for the rest of their life. To me, that's the most rewarding thing. I've done everything in law enforcement from homicides to arson to investigated it all at this point. And this to me is darkest area, but it's the most rewarding because it has the best chance of better outcomes for kids.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I was wondering if you've had any like data the aggressor in this or

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: common biographical data. For the suspects?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: For the suspect, personal nutrition.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: So for sex based extortion, it can be anything from juveniles all the way up to unlimited age. And for the financial ones, I actually don't because a lot of times, again, track it across to Nigeria and then people would arrest them. So early on when it was really ballooning, there were two task force form, one for Nigeria and one for the Ivory Coast. One was assigned to the FBI and one was assigned to Homeland Security. And Homeland Security went over and I get them confused at this point who had which area, so I apologize for that. But homeless security actually went over and made a series of arrests and extradited people and brought them back here, which was great. So we would investigate them up until that point. And then we had a single point of contact where we would package the case up and say, we had all the victim information, examination of the victim devices, interviewed the victim, tracked back through the IP where it originated in either by the coast or Nigeria, and to what location over there, and then packaged it up and handed it off to the task force to continue the work over there. And they were aggregating stuff and finding commonality, all the victims. Again, when someone's doing this, they're doing it on a mass scale usually. Rarely, I've I've never seen them somebody extort somebody a single time, either sex based or financial based or not continue to do it with multiple multiple. It's usually lots. We're talking hundreds.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And so your victims could be red cross chalked up to whatever they find. Yeah,

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: So the one we just did here, we're still going through the divorce. That takes a long time. And we're uncovering victims. And then we have to package a case up and then we have a portal that we can provide it to the other ICACs. And then the other ICAC then has to go out and find that victim, because we have the suspect here. So it's incredibly in that work, because it's going down a rabbit hole, multiple victims. Of course, there's a point of diminishing return on the criminality piece where they're not gonna get a longer sentence, but that's not our focus. Our focus is victims. So why we're trying to find out the victims isn't to add more and more years, although from what I see they deserve it. We're just trying to get to the victims, get them services faster, we get them services, the better outcomes they're gonna have. Did you testify in here last year too? I've testified both in the Senate here numerous times, so I get them confused in my age response. So where I'm going with

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: this, and I apologize if I miss it being late, but are are cases up this year over last year?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Yeah. A lot.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: A lot. Yeah.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Yeah. They just keep going up every year.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: And and last year what'd have? Three people or do you have four people last year?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: So last year, if I remember when we had everybody, last year we had four people and myself. Yeah. And you're still maintaining that, but you need more. Yeah. We're we this point can't triage all the pieces that we're.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: And does does agency of digital services, does that reflect on you guys at all? Does that help at all to Yes.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: No. So we don't we actually have our own servers because we have child sexual abuse material on it. We also had we ran an operation, chat operation where people came to a house saying they were going to engage in sex with like a 13 year old. And unfortunately, we had a manager from ADS show up, it was a three year old in the back seat in the car seat to have sex with a 13 year old. This is several years ago, the person was arrested and no longer in the state of basically. I think we originally charged them federally and he's still held for a state. So no, we can't have somebody else have access to this stuff. That person would have seen it was operation, would have avoided detection and would be arming kids today. So no, we don't use ADS for any of our infrastructure. We do it all ourselves.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: That totally makes sense.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Gone through background checks, you know, they've not gone through all the stuff that we had to do to get to where we are.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: That totally makes sense to me, but my next question just knocked the hell out of me with a three year old. Sorry. Does no. It's reality. I mean, we need I'm quite sure I asked this question last time you were here, but we're constantly we're always behind on what's happening on the Internet. We're never gonna get ahead of it. I mean, can't think as devious as what those minds are thinking unless you've got some dark minds that then maybe maybe you do which work good if we do, I guess. But how do we get ahead of how how do we how do we even begin to get this under control?

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: It's it's a we're not gonna be able do it alone. I mean, Vermont has made huge changes in this. The Cloud Act that was passed nationally, that was that was started because we actually sued Google, and we sued Microsoft based off not them not providing content search warrants, and that get it changed nationally for everybody. So we have made huge changes just from little over long. But what it's gonna take is going way off script here, but tech companies have a lot of the keys to control this and to temper down a lot of this themselves if they would put the resources and time

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: and So the so the tech companies you've been after and and lack of better word, had have a little bit bit of success with them. When you're dealing with the with the other states in these and extradition or whatever it's called, working together with them and all that stuff, do you find most states are are you're all working together? Yeah. I will say

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: in law enforcement, this is probably the tightest knit collective that I've ever worked with. Everybody does it. I mean, it's a real dark place to work and you do it because it's not something you do because you wanted a nine to five and no weekend job, because these come in all the time. You do it because you care about saving kids. And so, and everybody has the same thought process. So there are 61 ICACs across the country, there's 5,400 law enforcement officers involved between the affiliates and the lead agencies.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: There's only 61 ICAC and the whole

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: ICACs, United meaning like Vermont ICAC is one of the 60 others. Yeah. And then there's a lead agency for each ICAC. So in Vermont, the lead agency is the Attorney General's Office. And then there's affiliate agencies that sign agreements to operate under the same rules, because we have to have everybody operate in the same way so that cases can be. There's, we've, the 61 ICAC Committers adopt these rules so that cases can be transferred easily between all the ICACs, everything, everybody's doing everything the same way in the correct way.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Thank you for what you do.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I have a couple of questions I want to dig down just a little bit more to make sure I understand this. So with respect to ICAC, and I'm looking at the language, we have B1 is when somebody has actually disclosed the thing and B2 is a threat to disclose images. So is most of your

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: work done in the B1 realm where there's actually been disclosures? No, so rarely are they disclosing anything. So both sides. So again, you kind of got to think of this in two different buckets and two different motivators of why you're doing this. One is sex based. They're just looking for content. The other is money based. They don't care about the content, they're just looking for money. They almost never share them out because it's just more liability for them, right? Because especially if it's kids, they're sharing child sexual abuse, is real, just distributing, that can get them serious time. So they're really just in for the quick hit of how they're just trying to get as much money from this kid as possible, and then they're gonna come back, try to get more money. So they're not really giving the photos of anywhere or the images, videos, the files anywhere. And then the sex based ones, they're not disclosing them out to the greater public or anything. If they do disclose them, they're using them as trading cards, trading material with other like minded pedophiles to get their content. But by and large, most of them aren't trading with anybody. They're just keeping the material. They're using it for sexual gratification or to get money, But they're not actually providing an outing. And that was one of the weaknesses I saw with this was the five year there was a five year penalty in here somewhere. That was for actual actually providing the images out, which rarely happens. It's it's the threat is is is they threatened to to put the images out to either get more content or to get money, but they don't actually do it. Right. By and large, most of the time. Okay. So And we can never use never in this because as soon as I say that, I'll go back and get a case where they do. But but it's it's very, very lit. Say it's like an instance. The

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: need for the felony is really on page 10, slide seventeen, eighteen. That's where we have a misdemeanor. If that's related to the threat.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Yeah, so no person shall threaten, so then it would be page 10, line 17, I guess, 17 Yeah, and so

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the reason I say is that I'm looking at B1, and it's kind of interesting with B1, if there's a disclosure, it doesn't sound like that happens that much in any The intent is kind of interesting because that provision started from our so called revenge porn that somebody has disclosed an image really to harm and harass. But we also have in here intimidate, threaten or coerce. And I guess that could happen in the so called revenge porn scenario as well. Part of the reason why the So if that's not the provision that we're worried about extraditing people, it sounds like it's No,

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: it's a lot of one. Again, we're doing all the victim work here and then they're in another state. We've had luck where all the other states are charging them. But if we had a case where where we did want to charge, then this would be problematic. Right. And I just think for what they're causing, the harm that they're causing these kids, should not be a two year Just on the threats for equity purposes, I just don't think that makes sense.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So looking really at B2 is what Yes. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you again for what you do and for being a witness. Always good to hear from you. Always great testimony on a not very uplifting subject. Yeah. No, that's absolutely fine. It's what we do in here. So, Dominica, if you can join us, thank you for being here as well, our Chief of the Criminal Division of the Attorney General's Office. Nice to see you again.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Nice to

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: see you too. Thank you for, again, taking up these conversations. They're so important. And as you heard, Commander Raymond, they impact so many that you will never know. I did have the benefit of watching some of the previous testimony, really impactful of Walker's father and Riley's mother. The thing that really struck first of all, there's in working with victims, a lot of times, it's very hard to effectively communicate loss. Effectively, take something that is one of the most painful things you could ever imagine and be able to talk about it and to be able to get to a place where you use the memory of what happened in a more positive light. I was really struck by how wonderful they were in communicating what happened to them and their mission to talk to everyone about what happened. I found what what you've heard too and and just my work in this area as well, you heard how fast it happens. Right? Like, sex crimes in general, they're crimes of silence. They happen in rooms. They're alone. It's a very isolating thing. And this crime is no different. These sextortion cases, as you heard, take places in wounds overnight very quickly. And it is a crime of leveraging fear and shame. Right? And I thought it was really interesting when I think it was Walker's father who talked about we know how to talk about drinking with our kids. We know how to talk about drugs. We do that whole thing where we say, you are so much more important to me than the fact that you got drunk or your friends get drunk. Before you get in that car, please call me. No trouble for me. You can use me as an excuse, whatever it is. And do the same thing with drugs. Your life is more important. If you take something, please tell us what it is. Your friend took some, give me a call. I will help. No questions asked. This is what's happening. But it's really hard to have the same conversation about this because you just didn't know this existed. This conversation. How do we have this conversation about something so intimate, so personal in a time when teens like secrecy, they like their privacy, they're testing boundaries, all of those things that are good for developmental reasons. It's also really terrifying when it happens. And predators, whether they're financial, sexual, they will exploit weakness. And that's kind of where we are with this. I think about years ago, sexual assault still happened to children. They just didn't have the words to tell you what was happening to them. They weren't armed with that. Now they are. You have those It's outdated to say good touch, bad touch. It's like boundaries. But we go into classrooms and we talk about body boundaries. We talk about those things in age appropriate ways. As young as kindergarten, that's kind of how it is. So that message is reinforced and reinforced and reinforced. This is just the beginning of the conversations that we need to have in order to arm children with the ability to be able to be in that room by themselves and be able to I think Riley's mom definitely said to push away from the device, to say that this world I can get help from and push it away and ask for help. As commander Raymond said, these kids aren't scared that they're gonna get in trouble with law enforcement. They're terrified that anyone's gonna know. And that's kind of where the problem lies, is that trying to figure out how do we get to them because devices are pervasive. It's not going anywhere. So we really have to figure out a way to arm children with how do we handle this? How can they talk to us about this when something is happening? And what are the things that we can do and the ways that we can use what we know to help give them better defenses and ways when they're very defenseless night by themselves and this attack happens and it's best? So that's just kind of in general in terms of the education component. I was so glad to hear that piece because it's really important. When it gets to the criminality of it, we're cast that part. But it is important that what's happening, just like Riley and Walker's mom and dad, to talk about, well, how did we get here? And what are the steps that we can use to make outcomes different? But when they do happen, what are the tools that we can use to make sure that there is accountability? And we think that this bill addresses some of those concerns and tries to get at the ever evolving digital space that is outpaces our thought and outpaces just the rhythm of of how we make laws, prosecute them, and hold people accountable. So commander Raymond really gave the attorney general's view on this, on those particulars. I know that I think I think it was Kim that had pointed out about the nonconsensual thing and that has already been addressed. And that really is one of those things I think commander Raymond effectively pointed out. When it happens, it is consensual with air quotes. And that's a quick grooming period. It's deception. They think that they're talking to someone that they'd wanna talk to and someone that they wanna share pictures with and all of that in this protective bubble. Then when they have that image, the video, whatever it is, then it turns. And as commander Raymond said, there are two types of people that do this. This is the sexual piece of it, and then there's the financial piece. And the financial piece is really hard to address because it doesn't have boundaries. We need to coordinate and find ways to do that in ways that we've not done before. The ICACs are really wonderful in how we can seamlessly transfer cases and figure out who is best positioned to hold people accountable. But when you're talking about people in the Ivory Coast, it's very difficult for a Vermont prosecutor to to do that. What we can do and what we do do is be it a little piece of that investigation that could help support those bigger prosecutions across the nation. And we do we do play those parts often. That is also between states and all those things. So in the interest of time, and I know there's other witnesses, I'm happy to take questions or if you have any you want me to address.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I assume AI is just gonna make us just blossom way more faster and and just put us even further behind?

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: AI is our newest obstacle, and we're trying to figure out how to how to navigate it. It is a problem of reality, and it's also a a legal conundrum a little bit with our current case law. There's a very famous Supreme Court decision, an Ashcroft decision, where they basically were just talking about how do we balance things like free speech and the need to protect children, which is one of the most compelling interests that the state has. And there's a dissent in the opinion where it said, at some point, someday, we may get to the point where we won't be able to distinguish between a fake and what's real. And at that point, there may need to be a realignment of what it means to protect children versus balancing those rights. And I think we're there. I think we really are really there. So, yes, it is something that in every meeting on this topic, AI comes up. Everyone's trying to figure out the best ways to navigate it. Some states are doing some work, but it will eventually have to end up at the Supreme Court.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: So so just another thing with that. You there's already been lawsuits with Google was it Google and

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Meta or something like that? Yeah.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Is there do you say do you follow this do you have the same guidelines of what you can follow with with the the the people that do the AI stuff, or is that a whole different animal? Because I I don't know. All I know is that stuff scares the hell out of me.

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: It it is it is terrifying. I mean, do remember even five years ago, we were kind of saying, well, we don't really see it. Now we now we see it. And trying to prove what's real and what's not, we still are able to do that. I don't know how much along the way that will prove, but it really is trying to find out how do we hold people accountable in doing this. It used to be very clear. I mean, the images were terrible. The real decision between cartoons, you could have cartoons of children having sex, and that's fine, because it wasn't real.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Pretty disturbing.

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Now those cartoons are very sophisticated cartoons anymore. They look like kids. And so the the world of fantasy has it's getting harder to distinguish. So it's just one of those things that we keep up with as best we can, and we'll figure out how to navigate it as as we move along.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: So tougher laws, tougher laws and prosecuting prosecution and tougher laws might do something to curb some of this?

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Expanding

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: definitions. We're dealing with very trying to find a diplomatic word to use, sophisticated minds, for lack of a better word, than what a normal person would think.

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: They're very motivated by their interests. There are groups of them. They network, as you heard Commander Raymond, when you do have someone who is dealing with this for a sexual reason, they trade with each other. They try and keep it really I remember having a case once where it was someone who had 80. It's the first time that anyone had ever caught him in this. But the collection that he had of CCA material was breathtaking. And it had circled back to the early I think it was the fifties or sixties where they needed a dark room. I couldn't find ways to do this. And there was this whole network of a dark room person who you would send all of those to, but you would have to send them to you unless you had your own dark room. When you think about it today, what you can accomplish from your computer in your own home, And with that, you could just see the collection of the tools that he used and what he needed until the very end where most of them were on storage devices. And he actually would print things out and had them in photo books in his in his basement.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: And I hope he got knobbed and knobbed good, and he's took

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: care of that. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Angela.

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: I was thank you for your testimony, and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on the other provisions in the bill relating to our changes we're proposing to the Boyers in statute? Any thoughts on penalties and the expansion of the statute of limitations on the criminal side and the removal of the statute of limitations on the civil side. Yes, so I am always someone who I like longer statute limitations. I think anytime you're talking about digital space, the shelf life of those primes can be very long. When you think about when The legislation is so responsive to changing norms or just a better data that comes out when you think about now sexual assaults do not have statute of limitations because we understand trauma a little bit more. The person of course knows when they've been victimized, but they might not be able to have the tools to talk about it or they feel safe enough until years and years later. We used to be barred. And it was like whatever's early disclosure plus ten years or whatever arbitrary number kind of got put to it. Now we don't have that. And those are really great breathing spaces to say, I can't tell you how many times I've worked with children who have experienced child abuse sexual trauma, And their mother has disclosed to me their own sexual trauma and their own abuse. And I used to have to say, I can't do anything about that. I couldn't. Now I could say something different. And that's been a really great thing. So when you think about And the numbers are arbitrary, of course, I understand why you have to put a fine point on it sometimes, because there has to be finality in the law. That's one of the reasons it exists, that it's a decision that's made and people move forward from there. But any time that we can have an extended statute of limitations that makes sense based on the harm that's being caused or how someone would find out about it. When you're talking about some of these places where not everybody visits the sites that might come up with somnolocides or have those kind of You don't know how it's ever going to unfold because it has such a long shelf life that you may not know that this has been posted somewhere or someone's seen it or it's been being exchanged until a really long time after. And then there's also strange things sometimes that happen when especially when it's like a disclosure about when did the statute of limitations start and when do they Was it when the person uploaded it to a site? Is it when you saw it? Is it the last time someone looked at it? And since you can look at it at any point, there's a theory of ongoing that it resets itself every time because the possibility of somebody just accessing it can be end day. So there's a lot of different theories that we attach to statute of limitations when we talk about the fine points of it. So anytime that we can avoid some of those fights and trying to get us close to that, the better. And so that's kind of, in general, my thoughts on stature notations in terms of digital.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So I'd like to back up a little bit to the sextortion part of the bill. So we've talked about the need probably, which I agree with particularly with respect to bringing folks in from other states, threat meeting a felony level crime. If a death resolves, there is death by suicide, is there another provision that capture that? Or should we have an enhancement here for this kind of behavior resulting in somebody dying by suicide? I've seen other states tackle, and

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: I did hear previous testimony where this kind of was a floated idea. I think maybe it was the undersheriff talking about felony murder. Felony murder rule is kind of a controversial legal term where basically you would have terms of murder, it's all about intent. The law is all about intent so that you can make sure that Is it specific intent? Like, I intended to do this or is it reckless? Like, I should have known that when I did this, this could cause this kind of harm. Felony murder is something where it says and something very defined. So Vermont has some defined pieces. It's sexual assault. It's arson. Those kinds of things where your intent doesn't have to be the death of somebody. And usually in a homicide, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that's your intent to kill somebody, the premeditation, all of it. I mean, it can happen in seconds. Premeditation is one of those things where it seems like it should be a long time, and it's not. It can be seconds. But we still have to prove how that is and what that looked like. Felony murder takes away the intent to kill and replaces it with the intent to commit a specific crime. And when you have the intent to say, sexually assault somebody, but within that sexual assault, they happened to die, then that I don't have to prove that the intent was to kill. I have to prove that the intent was to do this specific crime, and then the death resulted from it. So we have some of those. I would say and some states don't. Sometimes it's just if it's felony, we do felony murder. Disproportionately across the nation, the evolution of those crimes, sometimes were very disproportionately prosecuted because they are so discretionary. You could pick anything and have it do that. And the results of a homicide conviction is huge. So there is that. So some states limited those particular provisions, and they particularly said this, this, or this. We have them. I do think there is a way that we could, under the right circumstances, use involuntary manslaughter. When you think about an involuntary manslaughter, it is just that you have it's a reckless standard. And it's basically saying that what you were doing was so reckless that, of course, it caused harm, and this is what resulted in it. Think about some and this is a it's a creative it's kind of a catchall in in the homicide statutes. And you I'm not sure if you've seen some of the way that it's been used across the country lately. The cyberbullying in Massachusetts, where it was just this attack, like, kill yourself. Know? No. Never touched a person, but did result in them taking their life. That was a successful involuntary manslaughter prosecution under the theory of this was what was happening. You were, of course, isolating this person, bringing them down after them and harassing them, and it caused this full series of events where they took their life. You've also seen some of the parents being held responsible for mass shootings, where they were aware of what was happening or should have been. So there is a way that I think some of these things could fit into our manslaughter laws without having to specifically do it. I do think that there are some states that have put this in specifically, and it might have been under felony murder rule. I haven't looked at a lot of the nationals, but a little bit that I saw, that's where it's been fitting.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So do you think it's sufficient that our laws now can be used to try to capture an individual who does undertake this behavior and it results in death?

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: I think there's an argument to be made. Of course, it would be novel, as they all are, but I think there's a way to do it. I'm not saying you couldn't add this to the felony murder piece, but I will just say in taking a look at it, of the things that we have now, they're very physical based. Like it is, my hands are on you. It's a kidnapping. It's an arson in which it starts a fire which you're known to have been there. Kidnapping. This is a novel approach saying that this is not someone that you're ever touching. Right? This is something that happening oratively and sometimes very, very fast in that space. So it really is a new frontier, a way of thinking about how do we hold people accountable on it. It really is a policy choice, and that's how you

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: don't see it. So before I

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: get to Tom, what's the downside of actually putting an enhancement in for tying it to recklessness?

[Dominika Tarczynska (Chief, Criminal Division, Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: There's none. What is always so helpful, matter where you put anything, is to make sure that your intent is known so that when we're in the courtrooms and we're arguing this in front of judges and things saying that these set of circumstances is exactly what the legislature had in mind here. It's also something that would direct us to, if we had the ability to charge something very specific, it would mean that we wouldn't do a manslaughter. We wouldn't try and fit it somewhere else, that it would more naturally flow in a certain area that you all had decided was the most appropriate way to address it.

[Commander Matthew Raymond (Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force)]: Now the last two things brought up addressed my question, like my English. Any other questions for them?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Not seeing any. So we are going to take a break somewhere