Two Edmonton girls are being heralded for their courage in tipping off police to a suspected online predator accused of blackmailing at least 100 girls in Canada and England into performing explicit sex acts over the Internet.
"Without victims coming forward to us we have nothing," said Det. Kevin Fald of the Alberta Integrated Child Exploitation Unit at a news conference yesterday.
"We have two very young girls who have been very badly victimized - they're ashamed, embarrassed ... they're terrified. The fact that they made that first step to come forward was the break (in the case)."
"They thought they were talking to a friend in a chat room, and just as a prank, they thought that person had asked them to flash or expose themselves (on a webcam)," said Fald.
"They got a message back saying, 'I'm not who you think I am. Now I'd like you to do this, this and this or I'm going to show pictures of yourself exposed to your friends, parents and I'm going to upload them on to the Internet.' "
The accused would then go into the girls' "buddy lists" and assume their identities in order to lure more young girls in the same way, police said.
The girls, who ranged in age from nine to 15, were threatened with rape, bodily harm and death if they didn't co-operate, Ontario Provincial Police said.
Bedford is charged with two counts of child luring, two counts of possessing child pornography, three counts of making child pornography, two counts of distributing child pornography and three counts of extortion.
Det. Randy Wickins, a fellow investigator on the provincial ICE team, said Fald deserves a lot of credit for the "huge amount of work" he did on the case.
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