Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie warned parents that most abuse against children in inter-familial, but also warned parents about Internet chat rooms and other people in their children?s lives.

?My unit of 17 officers is the largest in North America to conduct internet child pornography investigations,? he said.

?The main two things we do is to go into a teen chat room and pose as a 12-year-old girl or boy and the undercover officers also go into an adult chat room and pose as a 40-year-old paedophile.

?And because of that we have generated a lot of cases of people who believe that they are going to travel to Toronto and meet and have sex with a 12-year-old girl. They come with their condoms in their pockets, handcuffs, sex aids and they spend days and weeks thinking they are in conversation with a little girl.

?They tell them I?ll meet you here, and they say, ?don?t tell your parents?. And they show up and typically they are business men, family men, with no criminal record, but they want to have sex with a child and that is just wrong.?

The other thing they do when they see new pictures on the Internet is breaking down the pictures, looking for investigative clues in the background and they try to identify the child.

?This has led to the identification of 25 children world-wide,? he said.

?The third thing we do when we catch someone on a child pornography offence, is to interview every child in that person?s life as a potential victim. By interviewing these kids we have identified and rescued 33 kids, who otherwise would have never been detected.

?We don?t spend much time on Internet sites, or main focus is to identify and rescue children.

?Rescuing children doesn?t happen often enough, but when it does it really is a good feeling, because we don?t quite make it in time, or we don?t quite get enough of it to be a success, but when we do it ? we sleep pretty well at night.?

Det. Sgt. Gillespie said people say the Internet is the problem, but he said: ?The Internet is the evidence, but it is an age old problem combined with modern technology.?

He warned parents to be wary of people in their child?s lives.

?It is two-fold, if you have any other adult for whatever reason, whether he is the football coach, the soccer coach, the scout leader who shows a little too much interest in your child or even if you get that feeling that your child just seems slightly withdrawn ? ask why,? he said. ?But, parents just need to be aware that if something is too good to be true ? it probably is.

?If there is someone who is willing to drive your child every where; willing to do extra schoolwork; and you thing, ?aren?t they the nicest person? well you have to remember these people put themselves in a position of trust ? that is the area they want to find victims. I don?t think parents very often think about that.

?But, if I know that there is single 35-year-old male who is a warm and loving scout leader, he volunteers for the camping trips, he drives the kids back and forth, he does this and that, I?m telling you, he is on my radar.?

He said at the crux there was a need for open communication about abuse.

?From the time your child can speak they must understand what good touch and bad touch is and if anyone ever does anything, the word is no, run, and to notify a parent. They have to know that this is their space and its about teaching kids to respect themselves.?