TORONTO -- Bailey, an 11-year-old girl who is afraid of the dark and hasn’t yet had her first crush, had a man talking to her about explicit sex acts in an online chat within five minutes of her posting a profile.

She told him she didn’t know the terms he was using and he was eager to graphically explain them before asking her to send him naked pictures of herself.

Bailey wasn’t a victim in this case, though she represents millions of children who have been exploited and abused online. Bailey was actually a 37-year-old tech company executive from Atlanta who was the face of a sting to bring online predators out into the open.

Roo Powell, a mother of three young children, posed as a variety of young girls over nine months, using photo manipulation software to look younger, a room staged to look like a child’s bedroom, complete with stuffed animals and a desk with art supplies, and clothes from the tween section of stores.

Powell posed as Bailey for seven days. The first hours were the hardest.

“By the end of two-and-a-half hours, I’ve had seven video calls, ignored another two dozen of them, text-chatted with 17 men (some who had messaged her before, gearing back up in hopes for more interaction), and seen the genitalia of 11 of those,” she wrote in a powerful story about the project published on Medium in December.

“I’ve also fielded (and subsequently denied) multiple requests for above-the-waist nudity (in spite of being clear that Bailey’s breasts have not yet developed) and below-the-waist nudity.”

Another Powell persona, 15-year-old Libby, had seven men contact her within an hour of her social media profile going live and 92 within nine days. It took a team of five people working full-time to keep up with the onslaught, working to gather evidence that could be used to arrest and prosecute these predators.

“It was much bigger than we bargained for,” Powell told CTVNews.ca. “We eventually took a team off-site to do this, because we didn’t want to traumatize people in our office any further.”

Powell works for Bark, a tech company that monitors kids’ online activities to help parents uncover bullying, suicidal thoughts or depression, plans for violence, or sexual exploitation.

Bark says in 2018 it detected 1.2 million instances of cyberbullying, 142,000 instances of self-harm and/or suicidal ideation, and since 2015, Bark says it has also helped prevent 16 school shootings in the U.S.

It also alerted authorities to 99 child predators in 2018. And in 2019, when this undercover operation was undertaken, that spiked to more than 300.

‘Immediate, methodical and manipulative’

The project began as an attempt to show parents just what is lurking out there in the online universe. Bark had plenty of real stories in what its platform uncovered but didn’t want to hurt victims any further. The company decided to set up fake accounts and eventually realized it needed a real person to draw out predators and interact with them.

“Predation is really hard to explain to parents,” Powell told CTVNews.ca. “They don’t get it. They think of their kids getting nabbed on the way to the school bus. But this goes unseen.”

Bark worked closely with law enforcement agencies to ensure everything gathered was carefully documented and to avoid any hint of entrapment.

They opened the fake accounts on a range of social media and messaging platforms. They built friends, interests and convincing back stories, but photos and posts were only the gushing exuberance and silly selfies typical of teens or pre-teens ­– not sexual in any way.

The speed with which online child abusers pushed these fictional girls for sexually explicit photos or videos was shocking, said Powell.

“Parents think they have a great relationship with their kids and would know if they’re being groomed for sexual abuse but it’s immediate, methodical and manipulative. These guys do it over and over and they have a script they use.”

She pointed out that boys are victims, too, and are often drawn in by predators pretending to be pretty girls their age.

Powell eventually posed as Libby to meet a 28-year-old man in the lobby of a hotel. As they sat together on a couch, with him running his hands through her hair and stroking her neck, she repeated that she was just 15 and told him she was nervous. He was persistent in persuading her to come to his hotel room.

Powell can’t say whether that man was charged, because, as a testifying witness, she can’t talk about any active investigation or case. But she can say that Bark’s project has led to “numerous” arrests and convictions.

“Nine months of this, and we still continue to be stunned by the breadth of cruelty and perversion we see,” Powell wrote. Videos and Powell’s first-hand accounts documenting the project have been viewed many millions of times.

Predators hide in plain sight

Powell said it’s a myth that pedophiles are easily spotted or have deeply lonely, unsuccessful lives.

“Many of these men were my age and conventionally attractive,” she said. “Some of our team were saying that these were easily people they would go on dates with. They’ve got 9-5 jobs. They’re professionals and educated and they have dinner with their families and help their kids with homework. And when they go to bed, they are reaching out to kids online.”

According to Cybertip.ca, Canada’s national tip line for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children, about one in 10 children in Canada were sexually victimized before they turned 18.

In the past two years, Cybertip.ca analysts have classified 305 reports as luring of children. Of those reports, 22 per cent of incidents occurred on Facebook or Facebook Messenger, 34 per cent on Instagram, Snapchat, or KIK Messenger, and nine per cent on an online game platform.

Almost 40 per cent of these luring cases involved victims 13 years or younger and the youngest was eight.

Analysts at global watchdog The Internet Watch Foundation processed 229,328 reports of child sex abuse in 2018, a 73 per cent increase on the 2017 figure of 132,636.

What parents can do to protect their kids

The extent of online exploitation of children is not understood by the vast majority, said Charlene Doak-Gebauer, author of a book about “digital sexual victims.”

“No one wants to believe this is in their backyard, but unfortunately, it’s in everyone’s backyard.”

And it’s only defeated by “digital parenting skills” and “digital supervision” of children, she said.

Parents should collect phones at bedtime. The home’s wireless router should be in the parental bedroom and turned off at night. Doak-Gebauer also urges parents to install a keylogger on their child’s device, which delivers a comprehensive report daily about every key stroke, every picture sent or received, and every website accessed.

Before kids even get a phone, they should have to sign a contract that clearly sets out that they will hand it over for routine inspections. The results will be “jaw dropping,” said Doak-Gebauer.

Parents should scroll through their kid’s photo galleries, check on messaging apps, and examine their social media profiles and posts. Click on every icon, because kids are adept at hiding troublesome stuff, she said.

Doak-Gebauer, who lives in London, Ont., said many parents don’t realize that as the owners of their under-18 kids’ phones and data plans, they are responsible for any child pornography that may be on their devices.

“Whenever a parent tries to talk to me about invasion of privacy, I raise my hand and say, “Is it invasion of privacy or evasion of parental responsibility?’”

Private isn’t enough

Powell has her own advice for parents. First, don’t rely on privacy settings. Her fake accounts were posted both publicly and privately.

“We saw fewer predators (with private accounts) but there were still predators who got through.”

And kids can easily change the setting, she said. They may do that routinely when away from their parents to grow their social media following or test their boundaries. And Powell said, “any social media app with a chat client holds the potential for abuse by predators.”

And monitoring services like Bark (which is not available in Canada) are just one line of defence, said Powell, who likens them to having a child wear a helmet while riding a bike. They are important but won’t fully keep them from getting hurt.

“Thoughtful, open and consistent conversations are the most important. The aggregate of effort is the key.”

Powell initially revealed the sting operation under a pseudonym, but decided it was important to come forward publicly with her real name last month.

She was subjected to a stream of vitriol, even threats, but said the encouraging messages from victims and parents of abused children, and those thanking her for her work, including law enforcement, drowned out all the darkness.

Powell hopes to see tougher penalties for pedophiles, more legislation to hold online platforms responsible for child sex abuse, and more resources injected into prevention and prosecution of criminals.

“I hope we also convinced some predators that we are on to them and maybe they should get some help.”