WEBVTT - The Hunter 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.600 A quick note, this is episode three of a six 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:08.760 part series. If you haven't heard the prior episodes, we 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.280 recommend going back and starting there. It should also be 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:19.520 noted that this series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence. 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.160 Please take care when listening. 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:27.840 With Late. 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.120 One night, after a day of reporting in Leavittown, I 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:34.280 called Margie from my drive home and she told me 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:36.280 she'd turned up something big. 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:39.400 I told Olivia I'd found some people who were looking 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:43.120 into the same website where the Lavettankas had appeared. They 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.559 were halfway across the world in New Zealand. 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:52.279 I was like, what, in my many years of covering 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:56.360 tech for Bloomberg, I've had very few stories take me 0:00:56.480 --> 0:01:00.000 back home to me, New Zealand is a little slah 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.440 of paradise at the bottom of the world, a place 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:07.120 where traffic jams and missing dogs make the nightly news. 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:11.959 Now Margie was telling me that women in New Zealand 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:16.160 were also being harassed on the very same website where 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:21.120 the Livettown girls were posted, and in New Zealand the 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:30.520 local cops were taking notice. 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.800 So my name is Doug preferred Doug, but Douglas. 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:40.320 Nuoku one of my sources introduced me to Doug, who's 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:44.560 in his early fifties, tall, shaved head. He's a detective 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.040 in New Zealand, stationed at the top of the South 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:49.760 Island in a small town called Blenham. 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:54.640 No traffic lights in Blenham, no traffic jams, no congestion 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:56.520 of people or commercial buildings. 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:02.840 So is it I'm just imagining less I'm there, not necessarily. 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:07.440 Doug is brusque and no nonsense. He looks like he 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:09.880 was born to play the role of coop, and in 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:11.119 fact he sort. 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:15.040 Of was, so I'll put it out there. At nine 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:19.240 years old, my father left. Once my father left, basically 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:24.440 our wills fell apart in terms of structure and discipline 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:25.120 and behavior. 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:27.520 My brothers fell hard. 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.080 My brothers were into gangs and gang members, and so 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:35.240 they fell straight into trouble, straight into prison. I went 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:37.680 and saw them in prison once, and the first thing 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:39.800 I said to me is, don't you ever come back here? 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:44.080 Don't you ever come and see see? And I basically 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.040 left from there and that was the end of it. 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:50.799 But Doug went the other way into law enforcement. He's 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.079 been on the police force for over twenty years now, 0:02:53.520 --> 0:03:00.000 working mostly on drug related crimes. One day in twenty nineteen, 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:02.680 he got a call that changed his career. 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:07.360 So one day a colleague of mine phoned me and said, basically, 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.760 I've got this friend of mine who's been bombarded with 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:17.520 horrific photographs for several years, images of her face taken 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.280 from social media sites, and on those images there were 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.280 often captions detailing how pretty she was and what would 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:28.440 you like to do to her in terms of sexual 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.359 preferences and violations. There were also images of her face 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:38.800 with males erect genitalia or males ejaculating on her image 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:42.440 and then reposting it back online. She had been to 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.280 another police station to make a complaint, but due to 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:48.720 capability and understanding, they didn't. 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:49.360 Know how to deal with it. 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.200 And she's ad wits end to the point where she 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.920 was potentially suicidal at one stage. Is there anything you 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.200 can do? 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:02.640 Doug hadn't seen this level of online abuse, stalking and 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.680 harassment before. He needed to hear what happened firsthand. 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:11.160 So the first time I met the victim, I was 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:11.920 obviously at work. 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:12.560 It was late. 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.280 Typically I'd set up a nice soft interview room where 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:17.320 he sat on a nice soft couch get a cup 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:20.240 of tea. But I would start off, try and get 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:22.320 to know the person, try and build a nice, easy 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:24.960 rapport really quickly. You want to make things as easy 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:30.040 as possible. She was pretty apprehensive. What was a physical 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:31.640 toll as well as a mental toll? And you could 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:33.400 see it in your face and she was talking to me. 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.039 The woman who was not willing to be interviewed and 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:42.040 will remain anonymous in our series recounted how her email 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:46.640 inbox was constantly flooded with explicit pictures and violent threats. 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:50.920 She was able to provide some screenshots and information about 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:51.920 what's been going on. 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:55.960 Every time she got these messages, she'd block the center 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:58.520 and take a screenshot, and she'd add it to her 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:02.440 growing pile of digital a evidence. Had you seen anything 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:03.799 like that before? 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:04.800 No? 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:09.320 What went through your mind when she showed you those pictures? 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:11.520 Well, I'm a hunter. 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.479 You have certain police officers there that will wait for 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:18.760 calls that come in and then now go and respond 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:21.840 to those courts. I like to identify myself as a 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.040 person that will go and hunt people before they get 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.640 a chance to do that sort of thing. So, as 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:32.000 a hunter, if you're given pray, you want to go 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:32.560 and get it. 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:44.159 From iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. This is Levertown, I'm Margie. 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:45.799 Murphy and I'm Olivia Carvill. 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:58.800 Doug sifted through image after image, email after email, attempting 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:02.520 to trace the sender. There were so many emails and 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.719 they were sent from different addresses, making it hard to 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:09.960 identify the sender. Many of the messages were also attempting 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:12.520 to get her to click on links to pawn websites. 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:17.320 Doug wondered if the sender had posted these explicit images online, 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.560 which is a crime in New Zealand. So, in addition 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.080 to the threats of blackmail that the person was sending, 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:27.360 if these images were disseminated online, and if Doug could 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.480 catch that person, it would mean years in prison. 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:35.279 Although I'm a hunter, I'm still bound by rules, by laws, 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.760 and by a line that I cannot cross. The reason 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.520 why Will got involved was because there were lines that 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:43.520 needed to be crossed. 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.680 Doug had heard about Will from another officer who said 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:50.480 Will was known for doing whatever had to be done 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:52.600 to solve tricky cases like these. 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:56.760 He is like a little terrier, so as soon as 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.320 he gets a rope to pull on I'll pull until 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:01.200 he gets the whole rope. 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:03.080 He would go to extremes. 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:12.280 My name is Will Wallace. I am thirty seven years old, 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.360 live in New Zealand. I have a young family. 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:19.480 Well, there's really nothing like a little terrier, and he's 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:22.400 much more comfortable behind the computer in that space. 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:25.760 I found it a lot easier just to be a nobody, 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:27.840 you know, not worry about all the other stuff that 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.200 kind of comes along with it, you know, this whole 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:31.560 podcast being one of them. 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.240 Yeah. 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.040 Will grew up on the South Island. He served in 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.560 New Zealand's military and as a police officer. He then 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.360 became a private investigator, which is when Doug caught him 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:48.320 and told him about this woman who was the target 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:50.360 of an online abuse campaign. 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.480 To be perfectly honest, I was given very little in 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:57.200 terms of information. I was basically just given internet harassment. 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:01.680 It's been happening for three or four years. The victim 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.440 is at their wets end. Would you be interested in 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:07.800 having a look. So I was like a moth to 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:08.280 a flame. 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:13.760 First, he reviewed the evidence the victim gave him, essentially 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:17.600 a giant pdaff of abusive pictures and comments. The victim 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.480 had received all this by email, but Will suspected the 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:22.400 content also lived somewhere else. 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:24.960 I was like, well, there's got to be a website 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.400 or there's got to be somewhere where the images are 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:31.760 being posted. So I was like, the first step is 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.040 to find out where the photos are being posted. 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.120 And that's when he found it with a simple reverse 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:39.880 image search. 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:46.320 This website come on Printed Picks. 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:47.440 The very same website where the Levett Town girls had 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:50.920 found their images altered, posted and defiled. 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.400 The first time I saw up, it's kind of like 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.400 disbelief that our website like that exists on the Internet. 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:03.160 It's like an online so right. So yeah, seeing it 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:05.480 in front of me, I just site, what the fuck 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:10.200 is this place? It's you can tell by the photos 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.880 on there that the people on there have not consented 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:16.520 to being on there in the first place. I would 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:21.000 describe it as more of a severe Internet harassment site 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:23.239 than a pornography website. 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.480 To figure out how many users were going after the victim, 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.040 will have to wade through every single post made about her. 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:36.520 Only then could he figure out who was going after 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:40.079 her the most. Once he did that, he was able 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:44.360 to determine who was organizing the harassment, coordinating it, and 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:45.880 goading others to join in. 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.320 So if you can imagine this has been happening over 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.520 like a period of three or four years, then there 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.640 is a lot of content that that person has posted. 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:02.480 The question remained, who is this person? That's where having 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:06.679 a civilian like Will involved in the investigation helped. As 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:09.920 a private citizen, he could move through the web freely 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.440 and even pay for information he wanted on the dark Web, 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.560 and Will knew how to do this with tools he'd 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.280 first used as a police officer tracking drug dealers online. 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:22.040 The Facebook graph tool. 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:27.400 You could pretty much punch anyone's Facebook profile into and 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:32.280 export a lot more information than they would otherwise be 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:37.160 willing to show, like via interaction with other people's photos, 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:41.080 all of their comments, all of their photos, the groups 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:41.640 they were in. 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.439 There's a name for this, it's called open source intelligence, 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.440 and as well explained, it's basically. 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.679 Hoovering up information all over the place, generally the Internet, 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:57.040 and then turning it into a product that can be actioned. 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:00.439 This is the kind of thing that takes a lot 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.640 of skill and a lot of time, but Will was 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:07.960 good at it. After months of digging, Will started following 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.000 the harasser from pseudonym to pseudonym, finding accounts he owned 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:16.600 on different social media platforms, and Will discovered something else. 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:22.280 Like in Levittown, this one harasser had many victims. 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:38.800 As Will Wallace followed the suspected harasser around the internet, 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:45.200 he found other victims, including a young woman named Lucy, 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.040 who had been harassed for more than half a decade, 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.520 starting when she lived not far from the first victim. 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.600 I'm really still trying to untangle in my adult life 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.839 how it has affected certain things that happened to me. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:01.120 Lady as of high school. 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.840 The first time Lucy was harassed online in twenty fifteen, 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.480 she was going to an all girls high school, similar 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:11.640 to the school I went to when I was growing 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.319 up in New Zealand. All girls' schools are the norm. 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:19.080 We wore a uniform every day. We even had a 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:24.080 special cream colored outfit just for church. Lucy also had 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:25.040 to wear a uniform. 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:30.240 We were fed talking points like being only surrounded by 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:35.520 other girls is better for your academic standard because you're 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.240 not distracted by boys, and we were just trained to 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:43.400 be good girls. I think it reiterated that we were 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:50.480 lesser than boys, so we were constantly, constantly thinking of 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.880 how to appear more attractive or more cool to the boys. 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:59.960 As Lucy learned, whether it's in Livettown, Long Island or 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.920 or a beach town in New Zealand, just identifying as 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:08.080 a girl online can make you a target, and in 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:12.080 Lucy's case, she learned she was a target from some 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:16.000 friends who saw her face on the dating app Tinder. 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.360 I was under the age of eighteen, so I could 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.319 not have a tender, but it's some guys that I 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:24.120 knew who were maybe one or two years older than 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:27.560 me sent me screenshots of a tender account with all 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:29.640 of my photos on it and were asking if it 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:29.920 was me. 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.520 The photos had been taken from her Instagram account. Some 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:38.720 of them featured her in her high school uniform. At first, 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.840 Lucy thought that was kind of funny, maybe a joke, 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:45.320 but then she learned that there was more to it. 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.280 When this person matched with a boy on Tinder, they 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:55.240 would send them a Snapchat account, and through that Snapchat 0:13:55.240 --> 0:14:00.239 account would send like very explicit nude and sexual content, 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:01.240 but without a face. 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:06.760 The photos that were sent back weren't altered images of Lucy. 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.240 They were nude photos that were cropped so you couldn't 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.520 see a face, but whoever had created the fake account 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.520 clearly wanted to make it look like Lucy was sending 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:24.320 back nude and sexual content. She decided she would report 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.520 it to the police in Nelson, her hometown in New Zealand. 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:31.200 I went after school one day in my school uniform 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:35.800 to the police station and I knocked on the little 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.960 window thingy and a middle aged man came out, and 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:45.000 I said I maybe needed some help. But as soon 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:47.600 as he stepped up to the window, I remember getting 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:53.320 really nervous and suddenly feeling so silly, because it's actually 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:55.040 rather public when you go to the police you have 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:58.160 to kind of plead your case in the waiting room, 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:03.040 which is quite echoe loud. So this random middle aged 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:07.720 man police officer come up to the window and asked 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:10.920 me what was wrong, and I kind of feebly told 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.360 him that I think someone had stolen my pictures and 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:19.200 was faking my identity on Tinder, and he just stared 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:19.920 at me blankly. 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.600 She said she felt so weird being in this public 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:30.640 space trying to explain this bizarre, upsetting and deeply personal 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:35.040 situation to this man who was completely clueless. 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:37.560 And he he just had no idea what I was 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:43.120 talking about. I remember him just saying, oh, Snapchat, what's that? 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.720 He just he had really no idea what I was 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:49.240 talking about. 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:53.920 To be fear, this was around twenty fifteen. Snapchat and 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.440 Tinder were only three or four years old. 0:15:57.560 --> 0:15:59.640 I think I just went in with confidence out a ten, 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.800 and every minute that I was in the waiting room, 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:06.160 it just depleted by one point by the time he 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:09.600 stared at me blankly and then realizing that this was 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:12.480 you know, other people could hear me speaking, and then 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.120 I got quieter, and then I got embarrassed, and then 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:18.160 you know, I just didn't have anything left to give 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:19.200 after a few minutes, so. 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:23.560 I just apologized for wasting his time, and I left. 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:29.960 Like the women in Levittown, Lucy tried to put the 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:32.600 pictures and the police visit to the back of her mind. 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.440 She moved on with her life, graduated from high school, 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:42.040 but the next year, twenty sixteen, she started receiving messages. 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.800 I am not quite sure how it began, but it 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.280 began at some point that year that I started receiving 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:55.880 quite a number of message requests from anonymous profiles, either 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:03.080 on Facebook, Messenger or via Instagram, Oh of some disturbing content. 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:08.800 The messages began as verbal abuse and threats of violence. 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:12.120 And other times there was photos. 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.520 And then there was an onscourt of a different. 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:19.800 Abuse, somebody holding their penis over printed out photos. 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:23.560 Of me, one after the other after the other, so 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.800 many that at some point Lucy stopped counting. 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.840 Many a different photos strewn across the cavet or on 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:30.320 a bed. 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.359 At that point, it wasn't clear to Lucy whether this 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.639 was illegal. She figured it was something that she just 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:38.480 had to deal with. 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:49.080 It sounds crazy, but I have received so so many 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:56.680 photos of penises over pictures of me over five years. 0:17:57.640 --> 0:17:59.920 I cannot remember how it feels to be shocked by it. 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:08.159 I have received more than I cared to remember. I 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:12.960 have become so accustomed to that image. I cannot even 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.200 remember being shocked by it. And I'm sorry to say 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:22.399 that just seems like same shit, different day now. 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:26.679 As soon as she saw the messages, she blocked the 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:33.000 center and deleted the content. Ping block delete, ping block delete, 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:38.199 ping block delete. It became the constant humming in the 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:42.280 background of her life. By this time, she had moved 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.760 to Europe and had begun studying to become a social scientist, 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.560 and still she had to deal with the dread of 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:49.479 this cyber abuse. 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:55.000 From twenty eighteen, I had been living in Europe for 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.439 about a year and a half and some of the 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.360 harassment had slowed down, like it was just a sort 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:05.640 of small hangover and remnant from high school. But unfortunately 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:09.200 my dad got very sick, so I had to return 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:13.760 to New Zealand, and almost as soon as I got back, 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:18.880 I started receiving these messages again, but now they were 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:19.640 more pointed. 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:23.320 This time, someone had threatened to contact her parents and 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.000 send graphic photos if she didn't respond to them in 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:27.280 a certain number of days. 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.080 They also had my parents' email addresses already in the 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.120 email address bar, to prove to me that they knew 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:37.840 who my parents were and where they worked. The idea 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:42.359 that just someone out there was obsessed with hurting me 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:48.080 definitely began to take off my life. I remember being 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:51.879 really scared to go out. 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:52.560 At night on my own. 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.760 I was terrified of ever sleeping somewhere where you could 0:19:56.760 --> 0:19:59.159 see from the outside in because I always had this 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:03.000 vision that someone following me at night and would would 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:10.240 look into my room. It was unbelievable how much the 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:21.160 fear consumed me. I felt sometimes overcome with suspicion, and 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:23.439 it really undermined a lot of relationships I had with 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:27.120 men or people that were in the life of my mom, 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:28.760 or men that were in the life of my friends. 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:34.720 I yeah, I just always had in the back of 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:42.160 my mind that any of them could be the one. 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.160 Lucy decided she would try to go to the police again. 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:48.920 At this point, I felt, now I'm an adult, so like, 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:50.240 they're definitely gonna take me seriously. 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:51.880 I'm not wearing my skool uniform this time. 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:58.200 I am a very old twenty year old and I 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.000 walked in. It was when I remember, so it was 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:07.280 cold and dark already, at like six pm, and I 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.040 said I would like to speak to someone because I'm 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:15.840 being harassed, and the exact same thing happened. Despite my 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:20.200 best intentions, they just had no idea what I was 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:20.720 talking about. 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:23.920 I remember. It was a very short interaction. 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:29.359 And I left and sat crying in my car. I 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:34.040 didn't have the language to express what was illegal about 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:36.400 what was going on, and they didn't have the language 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.760 or the training to understand what was significant or illegal 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:43.360 about what was going on. So, you know, I probably 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:48.359 said something like, Oh, I'm being bothered on Instagram or 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:54.320 I'm receiving some unwanted content or something along those lines. 0:21:54.320 --> 0:22:00.320 But we didn't have enough, like yeah, digital literacy or 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:04.240 social media literacy from a legal or criminal standpoint at 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:10.960 that time to deal with these things. I feel like 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:15.480 neither of us could communicate to each other what was important. 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:18.520 I felt deeply like at that point the onus was 0:22:18.560 --> 0:22:22.000 on me to prove to them why they should care, 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:26.800 and then because I couldn't do that, I panicked and left. 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:36.800 Two years later, she got an email in twenty twenty, 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:42.160 I got a very unexpected email from the New Zealand 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:46.080 Police asking to have a phone call with me. And 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:52.520 I was so suspicious at this point of online harassment 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.880 and the ability to fake anything online that my initial 0:22:56.920 --> 0:22:59.439 response was that this was my harasser pretending to be 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:02.000 a place I was trying to get in touch with me. 0:23:03.119 --> 0:23:06.359 Lucy soon registered that this was real and that she 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:08.240 was part of something much bigger. 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.440 I realized that there was a wider case going on 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:16.280 revolving around another woman who was being harassed in a 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:23.400 similar way, where they were basically had reverse engineered some 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:26.280 evidence that led them to me. 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:31.680 In addition to Lucy, Doug Nukou and Will Wallace had 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:35.640 identified twelve other victims in New Zealand, and they were 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:39.560 getting closer to a perpetrator. Will had been following a 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:42.960 suspect around the Internet for months, getting to know his 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:47.159 favorite usernames, watching him post the same victims on different 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:51.280 pornographic websites, and even watching him buy and sell secondhand 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:56.520 goods on Facebook, Marketplace and elsewhere. It quickly became clear 0:23:56.840 --> 0:24:00.080 that the person who was responsible for the harassment was 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:02.920 skilled at what he was doing, and he knew how 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:03.359 to hide. 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:08.119 They were using crypto accounts that were from overseas sites, 0:24:08.320 --> 0:24:14.560 for instance America, proton Email, Switzerland, European sites. It was 0:24:14.600 --> 0:24:18.320 also obviously at the time that our finder used a VPN. 0:24:19.040 --> 0:24:22.879 A VPN or a virtual private network is like wearing 0:24:22.920 --> 0:24:26.840 an invisibility cloak while you glide around the Internet. No 0:24:26.920 --> 0:24:29.280 one will know where in the world you actually are. 0:24:30.320 --> 0:24:33.919 So Will didn't know exactly where this perp lived, but 0:24:34.000 --> 0:24:37.120 he kept watching him, waiting for a chance to pick 0:24:37.200 --> 0:24:42.159 up some detail somewhere about where he lived. Will watched 0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:46.160 as the suspect brought girls underwear and bulk. Another time 0:24:46.359 --> 0:24:49.560 he saw him post an electric guitar for sale. When 0:24:49.600 --> 0:24:53.159 he looked closely, the guitar had been laid out on 0:24:53.240 --> 0:24:58.439 a floral comforter. Will realized he'd seen that comforter somewhere before, 0:24:59.200 --> 0:25:02.440 on a picture hosted to a pornographic website called ex 0:25:02.480 --> 0:25:07.040 Hamster that he'd already linked to the suspect. Doug was 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:10.840 able to subpoena that ex Hamster account. It turned out 0:25:10.960 --> 0:25:13.960 the suspect hadn't always masked his traffic on the site. 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:16.919 This one time he hadn't. 0:25:18.000 --> 0:25:22.480 My team found one IP address that hadn't been masked, 0:25:23.080 --> 0:25:26.080 and that was an IP address that we could attribute 0:25:26.840 --> 0:25:27.520 to a person. 0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:32.360 Once again, like in Levittown, the background of a photo 0:25:32.680 --> 0:25:37.000 sealed the deal. Will knew the matching bedspread meant they 0:25:37.040 --> 0:25:40.320