WINNIPEG – A 32-year-old man from Ohio faces charges related to the online luring of a Manitoba child.
Cortney Arden Wise III of Wadsworth, Ohio was arrested by special agents from U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Cleveland after he allegedly groomed a 10-year-old Manitoba child on social media by convincing her to send explicit photos.
“The details of this case are disturbing,” said Cpl. Emmie Clements of the Manitoba RCMP’s Integrated Child Exploitation Unit.
Manitoba RCMP began investigating in December 2025 after a family member reported the message exchanges to police.
They allege the suspect pretended to be a teenager and interacted with the child on both social media and through text messaging.
The suspect convinced the girl to send images and videos of herself to him, and he did the same.
Police in the U.S. seized the suspect’s electronic devices and found evidence of the communication between Wise III and the Manitoba girl.
Wise III has been charged by U.S. officials with:
- Sexual exploitation of children
- Receipt of visual depictions of real minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct
- Possession of child pornography
He remains in custody in Ohio. U.S. officials also believed the suspect may have victimized other children and are continuing to investigate.
RCMP confirmed Wise III is not facing any charges in Canada at this time.
“This incident was a terrible reminder of the dangers that lurk on the internet, especially for children and teenagers,” Cpl. Clements said. “It only takes a few moments for bad actors to make contact with their next victims.”
Canada’s national tipline seeing increase in reports
Cybertip.ca, operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, serves as Canada’s national tipline for reporting the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
According to Lindsay Lobb, who works with the centre, reports involving online luring submitted through the tipline have tripled over the past five years.
In 2020, approximately 750 reports were filed. By 2025, that number had surged to more than 3,300.
“What we know is that much of this is attributed to adults being allowed to intercept their children in largely unregulated spaces,” said Lobb, who is the director of operations for the support services team at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. “We know that more needs to be done.”
According to Statistics Canada, police services across the country reported nearly 17,000 incidents of online child sexual exploitation in 2024.
The rate of these incidents has also risen 347 per cent since 2014.
However, Lobb says the age of victims is decreasing.
“We are seeing children as young as 10 and 11 report to us. On average, we are typically seeing more between 13 and 15 years old, but as accessibility increases, the age of the children is trending downwards,” she said.
She added that parents and children need better access to education, prevention tools, and support resources.
Popular platforms being used to harm children
The case comes only weeks after Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s government is considering restrictions on youth access to social media and AI chatbot platforms, with enforcement aimed at major tech companies.
Lobb supports stronger regulation, saying platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok continue to be linked to reports made through Cybertip.ca.
“They have been allowed to create spaces that are unsafe for children. They’ve been allowed to create those with no regulation and oversight,” she said.
But tech analyst Carmi Levy argues these bans alone will not stop online predators, saying they will always find other alternatives to reach out to victims.
“If you ban one technology, they will work around it and find some other way to find victims,” he said.
“That is the way this technology always works. You literally cannot turn off the internet for kids. Predators will always find a way.”
Levy says parents should always know what tools or platforms their children are using.
“That doesn’t just include classic tools like social media apps and artificial intelligence. Increasingly, it can also include gaming platforms or even music platforms that incorporate social media features into them,” he said.
Sara Austin echoes those statements.
“We need to be educated and informed as parents,” Austin, the Founder and CEO of Children Canada First said. “That’s not to say that we need to be cyber security experts and to know all the things, but we need to be having conversations with our kids from the very early years on how to be safe online.”
“We need to be monitoring those devices and ensuring that they are set up with proper parental controls.”
Austin also said it’s important for parents to be talking to their children about the dangers of online harms on a regular basis.
For more information about the risks of online luring, you can visit Cybertip.ca.
With files from CTV Winnipeg’s Charles Lefebvre
