In the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing chaired by Senator Grassley, witnesses delivered an unmistakable message: online child extortion has evolved faster than our laws, our platforms, and our defensive capabilities. The rise of sextortion networks and violent “gore groups” such as the 764 collective represents a new class of digital threat—organized, transnational, and engineered to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities of children at scale.

For those of us who work at the intersection of technology, compliance architecture, and mission assurance, the hearing was a sober confirmation of what data has shown for years: platforms lack the operational tooling to identify and interrupt these attacks in real time, and the broader ecosystem lacks unified safety infrastructure capable of reducing risk without eroding privacy or civil liberties. The testimony of Tamia Woods, Lauren Coffren, and Jessica Smolar underscored the gravity of the moment. They described increasingly sadistic content, unprecedented levels of psychological manipulation, and legal gaps that allow offenders—often operating overseas—to exploit children with virtually no deterrence. Smolar’s example of a 764 offender charged in Germany under a coercion-to-harm statute that does not exist in the United States is emblematic of our fragmented response. The bottom line is clear: the digital landscape confronting children today was not built to defend them, and our institutions were not architected to operate at the speed, scale, and sophistication of modern online exploitation. This is the operational gap Childsafe.dev set out to close.

The Structural Problem: Platforms Are Reactive, Fragmented, and Blind

In my work overseeing operational strategy and compliance frameworks at The Proudfoot Group, we routinely engage with developers, law enforcement professionals, and platform operators who all articulate the same set of constraints:

1. They cannot detect grooming, coercion, or extortion early enough.
2. Existing tools focus on post-hoc content moderation, not predictive risk detection.
3. They cannot share signals or collaborate without compromising user privacy.
4. Privacy regulations and architectural silos have created a fractured defensive posture.
5. They cannot keep pace with rapidly adapting offenders.
6. Violent networks such as 764 intentionally exploit platform fragmentation and latency.
7. They lack federal statutory clarity that would standardize enforcement and deterrence.
8. As Smolar noted, the absence of a dedicated federal sextortion statute leaves prosecutors without consistent tools.

Congress is rightly examining the legislative dimension. But legislation alone cannot close the operational gap. We need infrastructure—privacy-first, real-time, embeddable safety infrastructure—that stops exploitation before it escalates.

Childsafe.dev and RoseShield: Infrastructure Designed for the Threat Landscape

Congress Just Confronted

This need is precisely why we built Childsafe.dev and its underlying engine, RoseShield™. RoseShield is a compliance-aligned, privacy-preserving safety platform designed to give developers and law enforcement the tooling they have long lacked:

• Real-time detection of grooming, coercion, sextortion, and high-risk behavioral patterns

• Operational intelligence without identity harvesting—no PII collected, stored, or transmitted

• Cross-platform safety signals that preserve privacy while enabling early intervention

• Built-in alignment with emerging regulatory and statutory frameworks

• Scalable deployment into games, social platforms, ed-tech, and communication tools in under an hour

Childsafe.dev makes RoseShield available as a unified global infrastructure layer—an operational backbone for child protection across the digital ecosystem. This is not another content filter. It is not a moderation tool. It is mission-assurance infrastructure for child safety, built to operate in adversarial environments where offenders evolve tactics weekly. The testimony before Congress only reinforces what developers and investigators have told us for years: the current ecosystem cannot defend children without new architecture.

Global Early Access: Complimentary Deployment for Developers and Law Enforcement

To accelerate adoption and enable immediate protective impact, The Proudfoot Group is launching a Global Early Access Program, beginning December 12, 2025. Through this program:

• Developers, game studios, platforms, and ed-tech providers receive full complimentary access to RoseShield.

• Law enforcement agencies worldwide receive free access for investigative support, triage, and operational safety analysis.

• Participants are granted Founding Member Status, with priority onboarding and direct influence over the platform's roadmap.

• All integrations maintain our core commitment: no PII, no surveillance, no identity tracking.

Child safety must never require sacrificing privacy. We built RoseShield because the digital world cannot remain defenseless. We are offering it in early access because children cannot wait for incremental progress.

The Path Forward

Congressional action is essential: standardizing statutes, closing jurisdictional gaps, and equipping federal prosecutors with the tools they need to pursue transnational offenders. But platforms and developers cannot wait for legislation to catch up. We need immediate, systemic, infrastructure-level defenses—precisely what Childsafe.dev and RoseShield were built to deliver. For developers, investigators, and platform operators who want to join this mission, the door is open. Global Early Access is live. The technology is ready. And the need, as made clear by the Senate hearing, is urgent. Our commitment at The Proudfoot Group is simple: make child safety a default feature of the digital world, not an optional one. I look forward to welcoming the inaugural partners who choose to stand with us in this work.