Christopher Diorio joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to discuss proactive parenting approaches that reduce children’s vulnerability to online exploitation and prevent human trafficking.

Christopher Diorio

Christopher Diorio is a supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, D.C. He specializes in combating human trafficking and child exploitation. With over two decades of law enforcement experience, Chris has been at the forefront of investigating complex cases and developing strategies to dismantle criminal networks. He is passionate about prevention and advocates for proactive parenting approaches to reduce children’s vulnerability to exploitation. Chris will also be a featured speaker at Insure Justice on March 7th and 8th, 2025.

Key Points

Children must be taught to become “hard targets” to protect against online exploitation.
Parents should familiarize themselves with the social media platforms and apps their children use by downloading them personally.
The concept of “hard targets” stems from lessons in personal safety that parents pass on to their children in real life, such as protecting wallets or purses.
Parental controls on social media apps are essential tools but are underutilized by many parents.
Parents should balance allowing children access to social media with supervision and clear guidelines.
Blocking children entirely from social media can hinder their ability to learn safe online habits under parental guidance.
Open, daily conversations between parents and children about online interactions build trust and awareness.
Children need to recognize and trust their instincts when encountering abnormal online behavior.
Online predators often use tactics such as creating multiple personas to manipulate and build trust with children.
The dark web is not inherently evil but can be misused by bad actors to exploit children.
Community collaboration, including law enforcement, schools, and parents, is crucial in preventing exploitation.
Empowering parents to raise their cyber IQ and engage actively in their children’s digital lives reduces vulnerability.

Resources

iGuardian

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sandie: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode number 336.

[00:00:14] Sandie: Proactive Parenting to Prevent Online Exploitation with Christopher Diorio.

[00:00:22] Sandie: My name is Dr. Sandy Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I’m so grateful to have our guest, Christopher W. Diorio

[00:00:38] Sandie: With us today, and he is a supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, D. C. There he specializes in combating human trafficking and child exploitation. With over two decades of law enforcement experience, Chris has been at the forefront of investigating the complex cases and developing strategies to dismantle criminal networks.

[00:01:12] Sandie: He is passionate about prevention and he advocates for proactive parenting approaches to reduce children’s vulnerability to exploitation. I’m excited because he’s going to be at Ensure Justice, March 7th and 8th, 2025. There will be a link to register to join us in the show notes. But for now, we’re going to have a conversation with Chris and demystify technology and empower our communities to take action. Welcome.

[00:01:53] Christopher: Thank you, Dr. Morgan. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today.

[00:01:57] Sandie: Well, let’s get started. In one of our past conversations, you mentioned the importance of making children hard targets, and that caught my imagination. We’re going to use that terminology during this podcast. What. What would it mean for you to make a child a hard target?

[00:02:25] Christopher: Well, thank you very much. You’re right. I hard target is a term that I have used I don’t really remember where it came from and where it started, but it’s certainly something that’s sort of baked into a lot of parents and teaching their kids, right? And when we were children likely it was your mom telling you when you’re on a busy subway to maybe move your purse over your head and wear it like a shoulder bag and put it in front of you Or it was a dad telling a son to move your wallet from your backpack And and just over the course of being reared, you get to the point where your parents are making you hard targets in life.

[00:02:59] Christopher: They’re teaching you these little bits of lessons. And when we start talking about technology or exploitation of children through the lens of technology, We went through an entire generation where the kids were going up with a type of technology that the parents just didn’t have or weren’t available to them, so they didn’t know how to put those lessons on to the children to make them hard targets.

[00:03:21] Christopher: So I started pretty early on in my. investigative career into child exploitation and the sexual abuse of children to start educating children and parents on how to become hard targets and sort of apply those lessons in the world or the online world

[00:03:39] Sandie: So Chris, can you break down what this means and share everyday actions? parents can take to build resilience and reduce their child’s vulnerability.

[00:03:53] Christopher: Sure. One of the first things that, I like to encourage with parents is getting comfortable with sort of the ecosystem or the world that their kids are going to be living in online, right? if they’re going to be using a particular type of, social media, if they’re going to be operating, on these group chats with their friends, make sure you sit down with them and explain to them that, they need to know that every person that’s on this, making sure that they understand that whatever has been put on the Internet is going to live on the Internet forever.

[00:04:21] Christopher: And then I often ask parents to sort of take. their own personal experiences from when they were coming of age, right? You have to, as a parent, think back to that time when you were 12, 13, 14, and sort of the hormones and the changes that your body was going through and remember what that was like and now apply sort of the pressure that comes with that, with that in and of itself to it being 24 seven through constant communication, right?

[00:04:50] Christopher: And so from that, If you download the apps themselves, like, I, I haven’t mentioned yet, but I do have a daughter who’s, who’s, 13 years old, and before she gets any application or is allowed to learn anything, I’m going to download it myself. Unfortunately, I have way more social media accounts than I would have preferred to have.

[00:05:06] Christopher: but I feel like that’s one of the most important things we can do is actually understand the world that they’re going to be communicating in.

[00:05:13] Sandie: So let’s talk about what kind of, let’s say, what kind of protections can parents put in place. The some, here are some of the options that I’ve had conversations about. Uh, parent who does not allow any social media on their iPhone or Android phone, the parent that says, I’m going to look at your phone every day and check all of your conversations.

[00:05:47] Sandie: And the parent that says, I just trust you. And I know you’ll make a good decision. So that’s a really broad spectrum. What kind of guardrails do you recommend putting up?

[00:06:02] Christopher: Yeah, Dr Morgan. That’s a that’s a really good point. Um, you know, look, it’s not going to be I completely and intrinsically trust you, to just make the right decisions. Um, I wouldn’t put that level of pressure on my children, nor would I ask that parents in general do that. Tech companies have put a tremendous amount of effort into putting parental controls in a lot of social media for a reason.

[00:06:22] Christopher: I also think it’s a sliding scale on how you deal with that, right? It’s going to depend on your particular guidelines as a child. How old is that child? What is their mental maturity of that child? But I think we’re remiss if we completely block our kids out from this world, because what ends up happening is if they’re not learning to use, this social media and interact with people online under the guidance of a trusted adult or a guardian, At some point, they’re going to be released into the world, and they’re going to have no protections in any way, shape, or form, and they’re not going to have learned those hard lessons.

[00:06:55] Christopher: So I personally fall into that middle ground of the three options you gave, which is to allow them to use it, allow them a little bit of freedom, allow them to understand what the benefits are, but then take the time to explain what the downsides are, right? I, as a parent, am constantly leveraging wan...

336 — Proactive Parenting to Prevent Online Exploitation