BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— The Clay County Sheriff’s Office has joined forces with five other Northeast Florida sheriffs in addition to FDLE and the U.S. Department of Homeland security to fight child sexual exploitation and human trafficking.
The Intercept Task Force is a public-private partnership that includes two nonprofit organizations: Operation Lightshine and the Tim Tebow Foundation.
During a news conference announcing the task force, Clay Undersheriff Ron Lendvay said the operation is dedicated to shining a light of hope into the dark underworld of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.
“We all know these cases can be difficult to investigate and prosecute,” he said, “but there is no higher calling in protecting those who are vulnerable among us, and we are all committed to this cause.”
Lendvay said each of the partnering agencies: the Clay, Jacksonville, Nassau, Putnam and St. Johns sheriff’s offices, in addition to FDLE and Homeland Security Investigations, will contribute one full-time officer to the task force. Homeland Security will supervise the group.
Enticement and sextortion
The undersheriff added that the internet has multiplied the occurrences of child sexual exploitation.
“The disturbing reality is that the internet platforms we use every day to connect with each other and share information, including social media, online gaming, and email, are now being used for these illegal and illicit purposes,” he said.
Lendvay added that child sexual exploitation offenders commonly employ enticement or sextortion to lure their victims.
“Enticement involves an individual communicating with the child over the internet with the intent to commit a sexual offense,” he said. “Offenders traffick in child sexual abuse material, share photos and video files across the internet and dark web, re-victimizing the child each time the images are shared.”
Lendvay said sextortion occurs when a minor has shared an explicit image with someone they mistakenly trusted, who then blackmails them to produce additional sexual content, meet for sexual activity or pay to keep their images from being shared.
The undersheriff said that across Northeast Florida, over 2,000 child exploitation and human trafficking cases were initiated last year.
He added that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received 29.3 million tips in 2021, a 35% increase over 2020 and nearly double the number of leads received in 2019.
“So, as we can see from this trend line,” he said, “we have an ascending problem nationally.”
Sister’s death sparks mission
Operation Lightshine President Matt Murphy said he founded the nonprofit after his sister, a victim of human trafficking, was found dead.
Murphy’s organization launched the first Intercept Task Force in Nashville, Tennessee. The North Florida team is the second.
The former Green Beret said that while working counterterrorism missions in the middle east, he witnessed interagency cooperation that contributed to the success of those missions.
“Everyone came together, put their pride aside, put their agency aside, put all of the red tape aside so that we could accomplish that mission to defeat terrorists,” he said. “What I didn’t realize at the time is the lesson that would teach me later in life on November 5th, 2019, when my little sister Sarah went missing.”
Murphy said his sister became addicted to opioids, which started her downward spiral.
“She would disappear all the time on drug benders,” he recalled. “I’m sure everyone in this room knows somebody that has lost their life to heroin or fentanyl or someone that has struggled. But the dark side of that is that a lot of the women and even men fall victim to trafficking because of their addiction, and my sister got pulled into that underworld.”
Murphy said the details of his sister’s death are still unclear. However, her body was discovered in a river on Christmas Eve, 2019.
“Our family finally got closure,” he said, “but that sent me into the darkest spiral of my life. I got pulled out of my operational capacity as a Green Beret and got made an instructor.”
Murphy added that the shutdowns sparked by the COVID-19 Pandemic isolated him and worsened his reaction to Sarah’s death.
“I’ll spare you the raw, dark, gloomy details of that,” he said, “but one day I prayed, and I asked— I didn’t know what I was asking for, but I prayed— I just asked for help, and that prayer changed my life.”
Murphy said he started Googling human trafficking and child exploitation. He researched the fentanyl epidemic.
“I started to see just how bad the situation in this country got, how (vulnerable) our children are, how much they’re exploited from every corner of the earth because the second we hand our children a cell phone or an iPad, we give them access to the world and we give the world access to them.”
Murphy recalled that a Homeland Security official told him that if he took the lessons he learned fighting terrorism and applied them to combatting child exploitation and human trafficking, he could move the needle.
“He told me about the concept that he had worked on and bringing together federal, state and local law enforcement,” Murphy said, “and we started just talking through the process. He was like: ‘if you could pull this off, I will move my agents out of the Homeland Security office, and I will move them into your task force.’”
Murphy said the final step in making his dream a reality was getting the support of Tebow.
He added that a month after the Nashville task force launched, an FDLE agent visited the office and asked Murphy to consider establishing a second operation in Florida.
MVP: Most vulnerable people
Tebow told the audience that throughout his career, he has been designated as the most valuable player for a game or even a season.
“But as cool as those MVPs are, they’d be nothing compared to what this group is fighting for,” he said. “I was competing for MVPs of being the most valuable player, which ultimately one day means nothing. It’s just a game. But what this group is fighting for are real MVPs, meaning the most vulnerable people, who desperately need us, need you, need all of us to work together to put the mission above the credit.”
Tebow said the news conference is a rallying cry for victims of human trafficking.
“As we’re talking, so many boys and girls are in their darkest hour of need,” he said. “They’re calling out to us saying, rescue me. Help me. Because there’s a lot of monsters that are chasing them, and we need an army of people that will stand in the way and say no longer under our watch because every life is that valuable.”
