Wadsworth man arrested, accused of luring 10-year-old Canadian girl online

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:48]So guys on camera, you didn't get any of the audio.

[00:00:53]I guess that was the warm-up. Test test test.

[00:00:57]Okay. Good morning, Mojo. Everyone, we acknowledge we are gathered on treaty one territory and that Manitoba is located on the treaty territories and ancestral lands of the Ashenabi, Anishanu, Dakota, Deni, and Netho nations. That Manitoba is located on the homeland of the Red River, Matei, and northern Manitoba includes lands that were and are the ancestral lands of the Inuit.

[00:01:26]No matter what territo for Lindsy Lob.

[00:02:30]Today we are releasing on an online ch child luring incident involving a Manitoba child. We are joined by Corporal Emmy Clemens from the integrated child exploitation unit who will provide details in a moment. We are also joined by Lindseay Lob from the Canadian Center for Child Protection who can provide some advice for parents, guardians, and caregivers.

[00:02:54]I'll now call Corpo Clemens to the port.

[00:03:00]>> Good morning everyone.

[00:03:07]The details of the case I'm about to describe are disturbing and underscore the real dangers. There are people with malicious intent, both to vulnerable children and teenagers.

[00:03:18]In December 2025, my RCMP learned a 10-year-old girl had been alerted online and had sent sexually explicit material to someone she believed was a male in his early teens.

[00:03:31]A family member discovered the exchange and reported to the RCP.

[00:03:36]Investigators subsequently learned a girl had been communicating with an adult male posing as a teenager that she initially met on a popular social media platform.

[00:03:47]Their conversation eventually moved over to text messages where the male continued to groom the girl and convince her to send sexually explicit images and videos of herself to him.

[00:03:59]The male also sent explicit material explicit material to uh the young victim as well.

[00:04:06]We were contacted to assist with this investigation and we reviewed the contents found on electronic devices used by the victim and determined the suspect live in the United States.

[00:04:17]We engaged the Homeland Security investigation at the US Embassy in Ottawa to assist in locating the suspect.

[00:04:25]On February 12th, special agents from Homeland Security executed a search warrant at a residence in Wssworth, Ohio, and arrested a suspect.

[00:04:34]They also seized the suspect electronic devices which contained evidence of the communication between himself and the child from Manitoba.

[00:04:43]Corn Ardan Weiss III, 32 years old of Watssworth, Ohio has been charged by US officials with sexual exploitation of children, receipt of visual depiction of real minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and possession of child pornography.

[00:05:03]The rem the suspect remains in custody in Ohio.

[00:05:07]US law enforcement officials officials, sorry, believe the suspect may have victimized other children and are considering the investigation.

[00:05:17]We are appreciative of the efforts of our frontline officers who responded to the initial complaint as well as our officers for the international child exploitation unit.

[00:05:26]We are thankful to our partners at Homeland Security Investigations for their help and collaboration collaboration in locating and arresting a suspect for this heinous crime. This incident was a terrible reminder of the dangers that lurk on the internet, especially for children and teenagers.

[00:05:44]It only takes a few moments for bad actors to make contact with their next victims.

[00:05:50]We encourage parents and caregivers to educate ch their children on how to stay safe online and to be watchful over them.

[00:05:59]I will now repeat these comments in French.

[00:06:25]victimiz.

[00:06:35]for platform material. Sexual victim.

[00:07:22]Security Ohio.

[00:07:56]Ardan wise.

[00:08:00]Worth victim.

[00:08:36]for collaboration.

[00:09:18]Thank you. Mercy.

[00:09:28]Thank you. Mercy.

[00:09:35]I'd like to invite Lindsay Love from the Canadian Center for Child Protection to the podium.

[00:09:43]>> Thanks for having me here. Um, and thank you to Corporal Clemens for that overview. So, my name is Lindsay Lob.

[00:09:49]I'm the director of operations for the support services team at the Canadian Center for Child Protection. The Canadian Center for Child Protection is a national charitable organization dedicated to the protection of all children. We operate cyber.ca, CA, which is Canada's national tip line for reporting online child sexual victimization. And every day we receive reports very similar to what Corporal Clement just outlined. Um, since 2020, the reports received through the tip line related to online luring have risen by more than three times uh from around 750 reports in 2020 to over 3,300 reports this past year.

[00:10:28]What we know is that much of this is attributed to adults being allowed to intersect with children in largely unregulated spaces. Parents are doing their best. Um, but we know that more needs to be done. There needs to be a coordinated approach and a shared responsibility to protecting children online. The Canadian Center for Child Protection offers parents a place to come for information, guidance, um, prevention, and educational resources when children have been harmed online.

[00:11:01]Um, it's equally important that children know where to go for help. Um, and so we have all we also operate needhel now.ca, which is a safe space for young people to come and get guidance and information if they have been harmed online. um together with the RCMP, we are happy to share information um and resources for families uh to encourage these ongoing conversations with children. Thank you.

[00:11:31]>> Thank you, Lindsay Merci.

[00:11:36]At this time, if you have any questions for either Lindsay or Corporal Clements, you can ask them now. Step up.

[00:11:47]It mentions here it was in December that RCMP were notified. Do you know how long I guess the initial contact when that happened between the victim and the suspect?

[00:11:56]>> I do not know.

[00:11:58]>> Can you mention which social media site they were initially?

[00:12:01]>> I'm not ready to disclose.

[00:12:03]>> Why are we only releasing on this now if the man was if the seizure happened?

[00:12:08]>> Uh to give a little bit of space in between the report and this quick look at the entity of the death. We know when men was arrested.

[00:12:15]>> Yeah. On February 12th.

[00:12:16]>> February 12th.

[00:12:17]>> Yeah. At the time of the search warrant.

[00:12:19]>> Is he facing charges here in Canada?

[00:12:21]>> No, he's not.

[00:12:23]>> In terms of the collaboration between RCMP and Homeland Security, can you expand on that? What exactly that looks like over those few months during an investigation like this? So typically what happen is once we uh know for sure that the suspect may have come from the United States uh we report it to our embassy in Ottawa speak to an investigator from home security and they assist us with evidence that we gathered from the victim's devices or the social media at play um provide them with evidence and then they go on their own investigation to fight. Why can't you name the social media platform?

[00:13:02]>> Again, we try to keep uh the privacy of the victim more centralized to make sure that there's nothing happening there, but also not to blame the social media platform. It's not necessarily the fault of the social media platform or so um the suspects and people with that intention actually taking advantage of the social media to platform to victimize the children. I can appreciate that they're already doing that anyway, right? Like wouldn't it be better to say what it is to help parents a little bit better?

[00:13:34]>> I think any social media platforms would be a danger to children.

[00:13:38]>> Is there one that you see that does more than the other?

[00:13:41]>> There's several. I wouldn't be able to say pinpoint one. Exactly. Because there's a lot of them that are victimizing children if not all of them.

[00:13:49]>> Sure. How do you can you talk about how this person got in contact initially? Was it through a direct message? Was it through >> through a social media platform?

[00:14:00]>> Well, I get that. But like how did they reach out to this?

[00:14:04]>> So it depends different social media platform different u ways of getting in touch with their victims. uh usually happens when the profile the social media platform profile of the victim is not privatized and then so outside people can get in contact with the victims.

[00:14:21]>> Going to mention when they started meeting but do you know for how long they stay in touch until our >> I do not know this.

[00:14:30]>> We know if there's any more victims here in Canada.

[00:14:32]>> We are not sure yet. The investigation is still ongoing. How often does it happen that a person from outside of the country start getting within jurisdiction like Manitoba? Like is this something that you see coming?

[00:14:43]>> Yeah.

[00:14:44]>> Yes.

[00:14:45]>> Is it only but predominantly from the United States? Like do we from where is it?

[00:14:48]>> Uh it depends of the offenses. Sometimes it's from the United States, sometimes it's from other countries as well. We've seen it all around the world.

[00:14:56]>> How does that underscore the gravity of this problem? The fact that anyone anywhere in the world can be targeted.

[00:15:00]You can speak to >> you can speak to that like how does this underscore? So with the internet and the ease of accessing the internet um be anyone in the world that have a cell phone connected to data which is connected to the web and have access to many many complicate prosecuting or like getting a whole lot of people that are doing this if it is like these sort of crimes.

[00:15:21]>> It depends. Um and the way why it depends is basically we have to have the evidence to persecute someone. uh we have to know exactly uh specific things like username the platform at which they were using and then sometimes what we are facing as well is uh we don't have access to the communication sometimes very often parents or caregivers or children are scared of the consequences that may lead to these offenses because very often they blame themselves for these people with that intention. Um so basically they delete the conversation. So if they delete the conversation, we are not able to go with if they don't have any usernames or profile names or conversation that leads to this. So if we have all these have strong chances that we can contact someone in the world.

[00:16:13]>> Does it like also I'm assuming it depends on what jurisdiction you're working with? Like you're working with online security, but is it more complicated when you deal with other jurisdictions? uh when we deal with uh countries within Africa can get very tricky um because the laws there are not as severe as the laws here. It's also hard as well to find a place willing to take on this investigation.

[00:16:38]>> It's 10 yearear-old. How often does it happen that we see people as young as this?

[00:16:44]Um very unfortunately I guess >> any sort of numbers or like >> um do you have numbers on >> I I wouldn't say I have specific numbers on >> I wouldn't say I have uh specific numbers on like how often we're seeing 10 year olds but I would say increasingly through the tip line as well as we need help now we are seeing children as young as 10 and 11 come in and report to us. Um on average we are typically seeing more between like 13 and 15 years old. Um but as you know accessibility increases so does the a the age of the children who's trending downwards.

[00:17:29]>> A tough time with the whole like you can't give us more like obviously parents aren't picking up on this right away in time but we're not sharing like what platforms how they're doing it.

[00:17:40]Like how are parents supposed to learn when we're not even really telling them exactly the way is it? Like I I can get but I don't I don't know how privacy would play into.

[00:17:51]>> So I understand your concern and I understand how curious that might be to actually know which platform it is. Um but it would be the same way for any other social media platform. So basically the best way for the parents to keep an eye on their children is to monitor the activity online to make sure that they know exactly which social media platform they are using. uh but also knowing their password. A lot of children are able to actually hide a little bit more from their parents from changing their passcode and their password on typical social media platform and then they are hiding conversation. There's also children that just erase the communication and then as new communication come in they just keep erasing it to hide from the parents as well. Um there's different ways that that the parents can do and the first way to do it very nicely is to make sure that the kid is very well supervised uh when they are online or on the social media platforms or on the devices uh making sure that they know exactly how many devices they have because there's also children that use different devices in a way to actually evade their parents um monitoring the devices. Uh we've came across a few times that kids were using one device with their parents. they were showing that device to their parent, but yet they were hiding another device somewhere else in the house uh to make sure that the parents didn't know about what was going on on the other device.

[00:19:07]Um but definitely making sure that the child or teenager are not using the devices uh behind closed door is one very big advice that we give. Uh no cell phone in the bedroom, no cell phone in the washroom. Uh and being aware fully of what's happening on their phone. Uh I know parents have set um daily time range at which the kids can actually access the internet within their home and then some of which is 7 p.m. So from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. the child is able to have Wi-Fi within their home but outside of those hours the Wi-Fi actually shut down for their devices.

[00:19:42]They are not having access to their social media platform.

[00:19:46]>> Mentioned a family member discovered the exchange and notified RCMP. Would you say that's how the majority of these investigations began? Is it a family member that brings it to your attention?

[00:19:56]>> Uh sometimes it's the child and the victim itself that actually comes forward with this. But very often it's the parent that would come forward and after monitoring the child devices realize um an offense have taken place, images of videos have been shared or just the communication itself was sexually explicit and then needed to be reported.

[00:20:16]>> Wanted to get something you mentioned.

[00:20:17]You said that it's not necessarily the social media platform's fault. I just wanted to know what's the opinion of the Canadian Center for Child Protection. Do you think that is the social media platforms hold some responsibility to this?

[00:20:31]>> Um, so I I kind of speak to a couple of things there in response to that question in regardless to your question around the social media platforms. Um, while certainly, you know, we can't speak into the specific case. What I can share with you is what we are seeing reported through the Canadian Center. So um you know in terms of the platforms that are being utilized on a regular basis to harm children tend to be the more popular platforms and I think that is what we're seeing um the top platforms that are coming and being reported are Instagram and Snapchat and increasingly Tik Tok. Um we saw when Tik Tok opened up their platform to a private messaging um application then we saw an increase in reports. So those are directly connected in terms of the ability to private message children. Um so you know in terms of what we're seeing related to you know the responsibility on tech companies um yes as the Canadian center we are in support of regulation um related to the these tech companies they have been allowed to create spaces that are unsafe for children um and they've been allowed to create those with no regulation and no oversight. Um so I think long are the days where we can say to social media companies that you know do what you will to create this safe space. Um so we are in support of you know further in further regulation related to these companies.

[00:21:48]>> What could those regulations look like?

[00:21:50]I assume this through a a federal um level. What how can we make it safer online through that?

[00:21:57]>> You know and that's such a great question and that's something that's still in discussion. So currently that is something the federal government is exploring with a number of experts um who are all coming to the table to weigh in on what those regulations may look like and what um what we could be putting in place to better protect children in Canada.

[00:22:14]>> Does your organization support a social media ban for youths?

[00:22:19]>> We certainly are in support of a social media delay. Yes.

[00:22:23]>> You mentioned those numbers of the tip lines. Are those Canadawide or are those Manitoba phase? Those are Canadawide. So yeah, as the as Canada's national tip line, when we're reporting out on numbers, they are typically representative of what we're seeing across Canada.

[00:22:37]>> Do you have the specifics for money by any chance?

[00:22:39]>> I don't specifically, but um you know, should your um outlets wish to connect with us, um we can certainly look at getting that.

[00:22:49]>> Okay. Well, thank you very much.

[00:22:52]That'll conclude our press conference.