Sweetie was a computer animated child that was created by

children's rights Children's rights or the rights of children are a subset of human rights with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors.

organization

Terre des hommes Terre des hommes (; ), also capitalized as Terre des Hommes, is an international children's rights charitable humanitarian umbrella organization under the aegis of the International Federation of Terre des Hommes (TDHIF), with independent organ ...

as a

sting operation In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person attempting to commit a crime. A typical sting will have an undercover law enforcement officer, detective, or co-operative member of the public play a rol ...

. It was used to lure online

sexual predator A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically "predatory" or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to "hunt" ...

s into providing personally-identifiable information, so that this information could then be reported to law enforcement agencies.

Background

In 2013, the Dutch branch of Terre des hommes, noting that efforts to combat

child sex tourism Child sex tourism (CST) is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, which is commercially facilitated child sexual abuse. The definition of ''child'' in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is "eve ...

in impoverished countries had resulted in pedophiles instead seeking victims online, joined forces with local advertising agency Lemz that at first preferred to remain anonymous to create the animated, photorealistic image of a 10-year-old

Filipina Filipinos () are citizens or people identified with the country of the Philippines. Filipinos come from various Austronesian peoples, all typically speaking Filipino, English, or other Philippine languages. Despite formerly being subject to ...

girl.

How Sweetie worked

A 'puppeteer' for Sweetie would enter a

chat room The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

, claiming to be a ten-year-old Philippine girl.

Sexual predator A sexual predator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically "predatory" or abusive manner. Analogous to how a predator hunts down its prey, so the sexual predator is thought to "hunt" ...

s would open

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in Videotelephony, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

connections with 'her', during which programmers would animate Sweetie as necessary in real time through

motion capture Motion capture (sometimes referred as mocap or mo-cap, for short) is the process of recording high-resolution motion (physics), movement of objects or people into a computer system. It is used in Military science, military, entertainment, sports ...

. As the dialogue between Sweetie and the predator progressed, the predator would make a $20

wire transfer Wire transfer, bank transfer, or credit transfer, is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or entity to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account, or through a transfer of cash at a cash ...

and provide his

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

address. Once this information was gathered, the chat with Sweetie would be shut down, and the information was given to the local police or

Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL (abbreviated as ICPO–INTERPOL), commonly known as Interpol ( , ; stylized in allcaps), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime cont ...

. After receiving a letter from the United Nations, the team of the advertising agency Lemz admitted that they were behind this initiative. Strategy director of Lemz Mark Woerde gave one public interview to the Dutch TV show ''

RTL Late Night ''RTL Late Night'' was a Dutch late night television talkshow. It was broadcast from August 26, 2013, to March 4, 2019, on commercial station RTL 4 on weekdays between 22:30 and 23:40. Background In the daily program, guests are seated at a tabl ...

'' to explain the intervention and to make clear, for security reasons, that they were no longer involved in Terre des hommes, Sweetie or police activities.

Outcome

During the ten weeks of operation, Sweetie was contacted by more than 20,000 users from 71 countries. Terre des hommes identified 1,000 suspected predators, and passed their names, IP addresses, and social media accounts on to

. The first arrest resulting from Sweetie-gleaned information occurred in

Brisbane, Australia Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

, in February 2014; however, Troels Ørting Jørgensen of the

European Cybercrime Centre The European Cybercrime Centre (EC3 or EC³) is the body of the Police Office (Europol) of the European Union (EU), headquartered in The Hague, that coordinates cross-border law enforcement activities against computer crime and acts as a centre o ...

has expressed concerns that judges may consider Sweetie to have been

entrapment Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a crime that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.''Sloane'' (1990) 49 A Crim R 270. See also agent prov ...

, and thereby rule inadmissible any data ultimately sourced to Sweetie. Sweetie led to the arrest of 46 people in Australia. In 2014, an Australian man became the first person to be convicted as a result of the sting operation. Scott Robert Hansen, a registered sex offender, pleaded guilty to sending sending obscene pictures of himself to Sweetie, possessing images of child sexual abuse on his computer, and failing to comply with a sex offenders order. He was sentenced to two years in prison. Sweetie has since been retired and "will not be used again".

References

{{Pedophilia, state=expanded Anti-pedophile activism Fictional Filipino people Internet vigilantism Virtual avatars Vigilantism against sex offenders