Crime Weekly - S3 Ep225: Crime Weekly News: Kim Devins Discusses Bianca's Law

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Last week on Crime Weekly News we talked about Bianca's Law, a law passed in New York that criminalizes the posting of photographs of victims of a crime on the internet. Bianca Devins was only 17 when she was murdered by a man she met on Instagram who took photos of the scene and spread them online - photos that are still used to harass her friends and family to this day. This week, we are honored to sit down and speak with Kim Devins, Bianca's mother, about her efforts towards making this a federal law, as well as giving consumers the power to hold social media sites more accountable. If you'd like to write to your representatives about Bianca's Law, you may use this email template shared by Kim here: Bianca's Law Email Template Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. CozyEarth.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 30% off!

This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news? There's a better option. I'm Will, and I created IQ Bar Plant Protein Bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low-sugar brain and body fuel.

IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes, and 4 enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow.

And tonight is going to be a different Crime Weekly News. This is a first actually for Crime Weekly News. You know, every week we talk about different cases and the theme of Crime Weekly News is to talk about crimes in the headlines or talk about things that we find important, not necessarily because of the crime itself, but what we can learn from it, how we can take information from those cases to better protect ourselves and the people that we care about. Well, last week we discussed Bianca Devins, a case that Stephanie covered on her channel. If you haven't seen that, go watch it. What was interesting after talking about Bianca's case on Crime Weekly News, the main reason we were talking about it was because Bianca's mother,

Kim Devins, is trying to get a law, Bianca's law, passed regarding, and just this is a generic description of it, but just trying to better protect people online. There's a lot more to it. And what happened this week is Kim actually emailed us and said that she saw the episode. She liked what we were talking about and wanted to come on and elaborate on Bianca's law further and if we would be interested in that. As you guys know, we don't have a lot of guests on Crime Weekly or Crime Weekly News. It's not because we don't want to, but with that many people, it can get a little messy as far as everybody talking. And then also, we are recording at weird times in some occasions where who wants to come on and talk to us at one

o'clock in the morning. So with Kim's situation, it was a no brainer. The minute she reached out, I called Stephanie and we're like 100 percent if she can use our platform to not only better explain Bianca's law, but potentially get more people to be on board with it by hearing from her directly. We're all for it. That's the goal of Crime Weekly News is, again, to help better protect people. Well, what better way to do that than to help get legislation passed that would better protect all of us? And so we had the opportunity earlier today to sit down with Kim, and we didn't know how long the interview was going to be. It could be five minutes, it could be 10 minutes.

I don't know how long it's going to be when we start to, we polish it up and edit it to make it more concise. But overall, we talked for over an hour. And so it was a really eye-opening and enlightening conversation. Kim is amazing. And you can see the drive and determination she has

and this new purpose for getting a law passed that will not only benefit the people around her, but in a way it's going forward with what Bianca would have wanted. So she's still living for Bianca, even though Bianca is no longer with us. Stephanie, what was your takeaway from all of it? I mean, like I said, when we first started talking to Kim, I said, we're the same age. You know, Kim and I are both 40. We both had our daughters when we were 17. And it was a very weird thing because you kind of grow up with your child like that. And the Internet and then message boards and MySpace. But then the internet took on a life of its own when my daughter was coming of age, and I didn't really know anything about it. I wasn't educated on that. And so it was a learning experience. And a lot of these younger kids now find their friends and their communities online. And when it comes to keeping them safe online, you don't know how to do that without cutting them off completely.

And then you're cutting them off from a lot of their support systems. So you don't know what to do as a parent sometimes. So I think it's very relatable. And I think a lot of people can relate to and understand what Kim is saying and why she's fighting so hard for her daughter. Yeah. And you will see in this video, this interview that we had with Kim, she brings up a template that you can send to your local politician or your state politician where by sharing this specific template, we're trying to get more exposure about Bianca's loss. So she's going to reference it multiple times in the interview. If you want to check it out, you can go to the description box

below if you're on YouTube. And if you're on audio, it's also there as well. We're going to put it into a Google Doc. So if you want to save it to your computer and share it with whoever is in charge of your district or your state, that would be greatly appreciated. One final thing, just a little bit of house cleaning. There's going to be an ad in this episode. To not get into the weeds here, we're contractually obligated to put certain ads in certain episodes. There's no way to avoid it. We didn't know this was going to happen, but just so you guys are clear on it, we will not be being compensated for this ad. We stand by the

product. It's cozy earth. You're going to hear about them later. It has to be in the middle of the episode. It's all, it's all the specifics of the business. We can't change that, but it's going to be in there. You're going to see it, but before you go, oh, that's terrible. We are not being compensated for it, but we are contract contractually obligated to put it in there. So wanted to explain that for anybody who's going to come at us and say, that's why we're doing it. Uh, and, and you, you have a clear conscience. We're not making any money off that ad whatsoever. This is about Kim. This is about Bianca and getting as much exposure as possible. Any final words before we hop into the interview, Stephanie? No, let's do it. Okay.

Without further ado, here's our interview with Kim Devins. We hope you take a lot out of it and we hope that you follow her and her story and maybe we'll make something happen. Here it is. All right. It's a pleasure to have Kim Devins here. She's going to be talking about Bianca. For anyone who doesn't know, last week we discussed Bianca's case briefly. Stephanie had covered it before on her channel, but the main reason we were covering it is because Kim is trying to get a new law called Bianca's Law passed. I'm going to let her go into the specifics. She had reached out via email. She wanted to come on here and talk about what she's trying to accomplish right now. And we're happy to give the platform to allow her to discuss it with you guys a little bit more in depth. Kim, thank you for joining us today. I'm not going to say much more. You can

tell us what you want everyone to know. The floor is yours. Okay. Thank you for having me. Of course. So I definitely want to talk about Bianca's law, talk about, you know, Bianca. I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there about Bianca. As we were speaking about raising teenagers on the internet, you know, before we started recording, one misconception about Bianca is that she was this liar and manipulator. But what have we always told our kids, you know, growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, we were always taught you don't give people on the internet your real name, your information. So Bianca never gave people her real name. You know, she was Ashley from California because she's not going to tell you where she really is.

And people take that and run with it and say, oh, she was lying and she made up stories about who she was. And well, she was just trying to be safe. I think that's, you know, she kind of took some creative liberties, right? But she wasn't going to tell people her real information because that's what she was taught her whole life. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's, I think a lot of people on the internet do that, right? Right. Like, why would you, why am I going to tell you, you know, oh, I'm Bianca from New York. Here's my address. So that's just like one real frustrating thing is that a lot of people like to victim blame and take things that she did on the internet and, you know, twist them into, you know, some, like she was just this bad person. She also had a lot

of impersonators, people that would impersonate her online. There were just, I don't know, incels that really wanted, just like hated her and kind of attacked her and would impersonate her and send horrible messages to people. But I have to say, I can recognize Bianca's messages, the way she talks, the way she would text or type things. She never used capitals. So like I've never seen actual messages between Bianca and Brandon online that are actually between them. There's very few messages out there that people have posted that are actually Bianca and came from her phone. I mean, I have her phone. I had her phone. A lot of people like to critique my parenting. I did what I was supposed to do. I

knew Bianca's online friends. I went through her phone. I'll never say I know everything my 17-year-old did. Obviously, I'm not that naive. Of course. There's just a lot, a lot of fake screenshots out there. And so I haven't covered the case in depth like Stephanie has. So what you're referring to for anybody who's not familiar with Bianca's case as in depth as obviously you are, after what happened to Bianca happened, there were screenshots going around what you're saying. It's basically after the fact saying, oh, look at what she was sending to people. And you're saying those aren't even real.

They're Photoshopped. Yeah, I've not. Or they're fake accounts. I think there's maybe one or two that were real. Okay. And they weren't between her and Brandon. Yeah. People would just Photoshop them or take conversations that they found of other people that had nothing to do with

Bianca. There was one e-girl that did a interview pretty early on and she said, that was my screenshot that I sent to a friend. And I was like, wow, look how these incels treat us. And people are posting it as, oh, that's Bianca. Gotcha. So another thing the internet can do, right, especially now, especially considering what we're talking about today, where it's not only how vicious people can be online, but also with the technology available today. And again, this happened in 2019, but even more so now with AI, people can fake videos, they can fake interactions, DMs, text messaging.

You really don't know what is real on the internet anymore. Yeah, right. You really can't trust anything you see unless you know from your own eyes it came from that person and you saw it on them type it out because everything can be doctored and it's so easy. So what are you trying to accomplish with Bianca's law? For the people who haven't looked it up, what are you trying to accomplish with this new legislation?

Okay. So for a federal law, I'm proposing that we repeal Section 230. I would like to see Section 230, which for people that don't know, Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act is a federal law that basically gives blanket immunity to internet companies for what their third-party users post. So you're talking Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, social media, basically. Yeah. Social media is the biggest problem, but I mean, Section 230 gives immunity to any company on the internet. Whatever your users post, these companies are not

liable for. Got it. And I would like to repeal that completely. If not repeal it completely, have very narrow carve outs that if, as in Bianca's situation, when there is a picture or a video or something, it would first of all have to kind of define what illegal pictures are. I think that New York state does a pretty good job of defining what illegal content would be, which is, you know, a graphic, violent photo, which is intended to harass. So if there was a picture, you know, of someone being murdered going around as in Bianca's picture, we would establish that, yes, that's illegal, it violates the law. And then the social media companies would be held accountable for removing it. I understand completely that we can't stop people from completely uploading everything. Things are

going to get missed initially. But as in Bianca's case, we're five years in. The technology is there. It's been around since 2008 or before where we can hash these pictures and make sure that they're not uploaded onto these sites. And in Bianca's law, the carve out to that section 230 would be if these social media companies like Instagram and Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, if they are aware that there's a picture out there that is violating the federal law, they are legally held accountable to make sure that that's off their platform. And then it also should give a right to civil action, right? Like right now we can't sue. At minimum. At minimum. At minimum. You know, I know a lot of people are saying, you know, would like, oh, well, you know, you just

want to make money off your daughter's death. No, absolutely not. That money should go into a victim's fund. But the only way to hit these, you know, social medias and make them pay attention or follow a law is you have to be able to sue them. Hit their wallets. Hit their wallets. Absolutely. They don't really care about the criminal stuff as much, to be honest.

They don't. They don't. Because they have the lawyers to keep it in court for years in court and get it dismissed right but if you can sue them do a class action lawsuit even a personal lawsuit that's where you need to hit them i mean within days of bianca's picture being disseminated there was a forbes article that said you know instagram is profiting off of horror in the, you know, naming Bianca in the title. They definitely, you know, have made money. And that's why they just don't have any incentive to take these pictures down. The picture is still going around. It was sent to one of Bianca's

close friends this morning. And that's just completely unacceptable. This morning? This morning. So it's at this point, it's like people and this is very, I think, common on the Internet, too, because you're speaking out what five years later and have been speaking out. And you're saying basically this is hurting us. This is hurting Bianca's friends. This is hurting Bianca's family. We need to put a stop to this. And it's almost like the people out there who are participating in it get excited by that. And it's like, oh, let's up the intensity.

Let's keep doing it. It's like an invitation for them to continue harassing you. And I think it's a very real testament to the culture of not just the Internet, but society where people have just become so mean and anonymous and they get off on hurting others. Yeah, absolutely. Like that you want to talk about it to stop it. And when you, but when you do talk about it, you're giving them a reaction that they enjoy. And so they keep poking to get more of a reaction. And it's just this horrible, vicious cycle that never ends.

That's exactly what's happening. And it's actually one count in particular on Instagram that has been reported for probably two years now. This account hasn't been taken down. It continuously sends that picture around. What's the account? It is Quindarian underscore Hoodwinkle. Spell it, spell it because everyone here should go and report it on our page. So everybody here, take a second. After she puts it up, Shannon can put it on the screen. We're not doxing anyone because we're talking about an individual screen name.

It's a public account. It's not personal information. It's a public account. Yeah. So everybody here, please, if you can go over right now, pause the video, go over to Instagram and report this account. And I will do it as well right now. Okay. It's Q-U-I-N-D-A-R-I-A-N underscore H-O-O-D-W-I-N-C-K-L-E.

Okay. We'll have that on the screen. Go over there. And it's a public account. And on that account right now, you're saying they're disseminating pictures of your daughter. Yes. They are taking pictures of, they're putting my daughter's picture in with a collage of her friend, sending it to her friend. Then they're Photoshopping her friend's face and Bianca's murdered body. Maybe once 20 or 30,000 people report it, they'll take it down. Maybe they'll pay attention. It's not going to stop them from creating another one, but that's the point. He has a backup account too. Yeah. When you get banned, then you can just, even if they ban you, all the accounts that are attached to that email, then people just make a

new email. Kim, do you have social media? I do. Would you, is your account public or private? Most of my accounts are private. My Instagram is private. My Facebook is private. I have a TikTok that's public. Okay. The reason I ask is I'd like you to give that out. And I usually save this for the end, but if you want to give it out now, the reason being to kind of combat what Stephanie's saying and what you're saying, if people want to

follow you somewhere, this If people want to follow you somewhere, this is where they can follow you. And if there's another account that pops up and you want to get that information out to a lot of people quickly, people here can go follow you. They can watch your account. And so whatever account you're comfortable with sharing, I think there's going to be people that want to follow you. And if they can help going forward with whoever pops up and what new account pops up, it could, it could help. Yeah. I mean, I always check my messages on Instagram. They can always message me on Instagram or follow me. I do. I, I accept normal looking people. There's a lot of weird looking fake accounts.

But even, even if you have the, if your TikTok's public, even if you, they don't want to message you, if you want to get a name out there. So if you're on TikTok and there's a username that's harassing you or a loved one or a friend, you could put out a TikTok and without you get it out to a lot of people really fast. So on TikTok, I'm at Kim Devins. Okay. And on Instagram, I'm Kay Devins. Perfect. Perfect. So her TikTok is public. If you want to follow her on TikTok and if, if something comes up where you want to get a name out to a lot of people pretty quickly, TikTok is probably the way to do it because that way they're not having to message you. You could get your story out to them. Okay, that's good. So we have that covered. So we're going to try to get that account shut down and we have that information. Instagram does have the ability to ban IP addresses. They've done it in the past. They just don't actually. It's really hard to get them to do that.

We used to have a contact at Instagram. I think she was the global policy director. But she's, I don't even know if she works for Instagram. She either took a new job within Instagram or she doesn't work with a company anymore. Yeah. So we lost our point of contact there. The only reason we had that point of contact because we were working with a local congressman. That's another one of my proposals for Bianca's Law is that these social media companies, the big ones at least, need to have a crisis response center. That was a great point that you made. I loved that point, that there just needs to be a real person to speak to.

There needs to be a real person. There's never a real person to speak to. And it's not just photos like this. A lot of things. Yeah, it's a lot of things. Where they can make a decision with a human brain on a case by case basis instead of just using these very general guidelines and saying, oh, well, you know, this doesn't violate it here. It's like a real person needs to look at it objectively as a human case by case. There's not enough human

moderators. And I know they said that they after Bianca's picture went viral, they did say around 2020, they did hire thousands more human moderators. But every time we report something, it just we get the message back that it doesn't go against their community guidelines. The frustrating thing is, so this morning with Bianca's friend, she reported the picture that was messaged to her. Her, she got a violation because she called the guy a piece of shit. But the picture that he sent her didn't violate their community guidelines. And I know it's all within the technology, right? Words are easier for the algorithms to pick up and hash.

But it just comes down to they have no incentive to put the technology in place. It's there. The technology is out there. I've spoken to several computer experts. And why should they? Because go look at Bianca's Instagram account and she's constantly still has engagement. Yeah, it's got to be more. And these are multi-million dollar, if not billion dollar companies. They hire people for marketing and engineering of the applications that we're using. They could definitely hire more people. And I do think there's a level of escalation where, to be fair, there's millions of people that are using these

applications. So if everybody's submitting something, you can get inundated. But this is something that needs to be done when we talk about the mental health issues in this country and the fact that people are being harassed and it can lead to more dangerous situations where you have young kids committing suicide based on what's being put online about them. So is this something that's important? Absolutely. And I think your angle of attack is the right way to go. Because right now, these companies can always fall back on the laws, right? Like if you really want to change something, you have to go at the foundation and that's the legislation because once they're not, they're not conforming to the legislation, that's when they can get themselves in trouble. So your approach, instead of just complaining about it online and hoping a few people, you know, doing nothing, not that there's anything wrong with petitions, but to be honest, a lot of the times it falls on deaf ears, even when you get the signatures required. You really got to go to the foundation of it and change the laws so that once those laws are enacted, these companies have no choice but to comply.

And I definitely think what you're saying as far as to find them criminally liable, I could see how that would be a conundrum, right? Because then you have to find a specific person. And where does the buck stop? But with the civil action, it's the company you're going after, right? It's the LLC or the incorporation, whatever it is. And as we were saying earlier, when it's affecting their money, that's when they start to pay attention. Because at the end of the day, all of these platforms are for profit business. So when they start losing money, that's when the higher ups start paying attention. Honestly, it's all about money.

Of course. They're getting money off of engagement of my daughter's account, which is why they won't give me access to it. That's another proposed section of Bianca's law would be that the perpetrator's accounts should be disbanded immediately. So Instagram, when that picture started going around and he had pictures, he almost kind of like live posted what he was doing, right? He posted very cryptic messages. And then, you know, afterwards he posted like pictures with her body covered and pictures of himself with a knife. Bianca's account was immediately memorialized. Her account was actually logged into my phone and I was going through it trying to find messages. His screen name had recently been changed.

So I was looking for a different screen name than what it actually was. So I was going through it and I got kicked out because they memorialized it immediately. His account was left open for over 24 hours. And Instagram said that they had to verify that it was, you know, his account and that the crime actually was real. Yeah. They should immediately be disbanding these offending accounts. You know, he had pictures of a body. He had pictures of himself

covered in blood with a knife. None of that should be allowed on a platform. There's no excuse. Instagram will always, you know, when asked, they will always overstate what they did. They basically did nothing. So let me ask you, because obviously we know the internet, like you said, this internet's been around for a while. Some people still kind of look at it as this new emerging landscape, but it's been around that as well, right? There's always ways around everything when it comes to the Internet because technology has far surpassed what we as humans even ever expected it to. And we can't keep up with it. So we can't really police it or monitor it. And then these social media and Internet companies use privacy as their scapegoat.

Well, we can't compromise this user's privacy while still completely ignoring the privacy of these victims like Bianca. Her privacy doesn't matter. The user's privacy that's posting these things matters. So they kind of hide behind the guise of privacy. And it's a slippery slope because if you start telling people they can't say things or if certain social media platforms start monitoring or policing what people are allowed to say or allowed to post, then they're going to lose users. And then other platforms are going to pop up where you don't have to do that. Right. So that's why the federal law making everything the same and equal across the board is super important. How have how has the government in New York been reacting to you? Have they been helping you? Because I just know from living here that it doesn't seem

law enforcement or the judicial system in New York is super victim-focused at all. I have found the same. It's very frustrating. The New York law is great. It's a great first step. There's a similar law in California that came out after the Kobe Bryant pictures, you know, they were worried about those potentially being leaked. Bianca's friend just called the police about an hour ago and she said he kind of blew her off and acted like he was annoying her because really, what are they going to do? I mean, let's be honest. But you have to report it. You have to make sure there's's there's documentation. Right. And it's like and that's the frustrating part, because, OK, great, we pass this law.

But how are we going to enforce it? And how do we get we need to get the police on board? You know, she called the state police. We need to get the police on board with actually enforcing it. And it's frustrating because we don't know where this person is. So I know you guys spoke last week and I think, Derek, you said you brought up a great point that like, really, how is law enforcement going to enforce this? It's in New York State. So if the person's in another state, we're not, you know, then we're not going to go through the extradition process and, you know, use all that money and resources over a misdemeanor. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good

news, there's a better option. I'm Will and I created IQ Bar plant protein bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low sugar brain and body fuel. IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20% off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes, and four enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20% off all IQ Bar products plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20.

So let's just use Instagram, for example, although we're not attacking Instagram. It's all of them. But a perfect example, because we have it happen all the time, is someone will come in, make a report, and then I, as the detective, have to reach out to Instagram and get them to work with me to find out where this user is. Well, the same contact that you have to reach out to Instagram is the one that we have. There's no law enforcement liaison that I know of. Maybe there's a back channel that has changed since I left the department. But when I was on, there was no law enforcement hotline that we could call to say, hey, listen, we have a subpoena from a judge and we're looking for records for this person. And so maybe that's changed since then, but that's like the movies where if someone reaches out and threatens you, I can call the people over at Instagram, fax over the affidavit from the judge that signed the search warrant. And within an hour, I'm going to know who the person individual on the other end is taking different steps to ensure that even if you're able to track that account, it comes back to a VPN or something that's not going to relate back to them, a fictitious email, whatever it might be.

So the hurdles law enforcement has to jump through to get there is extremely difficult, which is why I think it's so important what you're saying, which is at the end of the day, Instagram can stop this. Facebook can stop this. X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, can stop this. Reddit can stop this because they have the ability to go on there based on their policies and guidelines to make changes and get rid of these accounts when they're violating their policies without any law enforcement involved. And that's why I think what we were saying earlier is so important. We can avoid the hurdles that have to jump in the time it takes to jump through them. If Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, they all just do their part and enforce their own policies correctly.

Right. Correct. My dad worked for a medical device company for 41 years, and he always uses the comparison that, you know, back in the 70 force these social media companies to do is, you know, they're not going to regulate themselves, which is ridiculous, but forced to be regulated. They need to be regulated. There's needs to be consequences. We need to hold them accountable because they're just letting things go, you know? And it's, it's strange because anytime I post something on Facebook or Instagram talking about social media regulation, I can do two posts like a minute apart, right? And the post with anything stating social media regulation or Bianca's law gets far less views than just a regular old picture of our family. Interesting.

Of course, yeah. Yeah. It does not get pushed out. So, I mean, they're already hiding things. They have algorithms to do things like that, like push down certain posts with words and pictures, but yet they're not going to put the policy in place to protect people. And we're talking about harm here. We are really harming so many young kids and, you know, young adults. I'm 40 years old. I have pretty thick

skin. I have access to really good trauma therapy. I have a really, really good support system around me. I can take it, right? Like I've been able to, I kind of just block it out, right? Like doesn't even seem like when I talk about this stuff, it doesn't even seem like I'm talking about my own daughter. It's an outer body experience. You dissociate, right? So like, I can get through it. But there's so many kids, you know, Bianca struggled with mental health.

She was in a girl's home for mentally ill girls, young, you know, teenagers for five months. A lot of her friends that are getting harassed have severe mental health issues, and this is just making it worse. They're just being re-traumatized every time this picture gets popped up or sent to them. I've had experts call it psychological terrorism, and that's what it feels like. It feels like you can never, I'll never get over losing my daughter. I don't, I honestly, five years later, I don't think it gets any easier. If anything, it's, it's, it's harder, right? It's just like

a longer time you've been without her. But every time, it just brings you back. Every time you have to see your daughter in that situation. And I'm forced to see my daughter in that situation. My brother has taken, you know, on that role of having to see his niece that he helped me raise. And, you know, we lived with him for a while. Having to see her exposed like that in that picture of her body. And we have to constantly see it so that we can stay on top of where's it being sent to, who's it being sent to, the platform, you know, and we can try to fight this and get it taken down. So even if people aren't sending it to us, unfortunately, we have asked people, please email it to me, send me screenshots, and we have to look at it so that

we can get it taken down because we're always going to protect Bianca. I'm going to do what I can to not have my daughter exploited on the internet. I will do whatever I can. And unfortunately, that means having to look at that picture over and over and over. And these kids are having to see it. My biggest fear is Bianca has younger siblings. And they're now teenagers, right? Her stepbrother's 15. Her sisters are 14 and 13. I can't imagine them seeing that. Bianca's sister is six. She'll be seven at the end of the month.

And she loves YouTube shorts. Well, last week, I found there's a YouTube short with the picture of Bianca. And then there's a pig eating me over her wound. And all I could think of was, oh my goodness, what would happen if she saw that? So how do you, with your younger children now who are in their teenage years, that would obviously be a concern

besides the concern of just having them on the internet. Now you have to worry about them being on the internet and seeing something about their sister that they're not prepared to see. And how do you manage that? So for, you know, my six and a half year old, she doesn't know. I mean, she, she knows that baby's gone, baby's in heaven. She doesn't know, you know, the details of what happened to her. She doesn't know about the picture. Her, you know, her YouTube is YouTube kids. Her iPad is connected to my, to my phone, my Apple account. I can see everything she's doing. You know, she doesn't really use the iPad unless she's around us. The older kids, we do what we can. They, unfortunately, there did

come a time where we had to sit them down and tell them about the picture and tell them that, you know, because it was going around on YouTube and certain things pop up and we just had to explain that this is what's happening and you need to be very, very careful. You know, they know not to open messages from people they don't know. You know, Instagram and they'll blur the pictures first. So we always say don't, you know, don't open any blurred pictures. Same with TikTok. You know, we've just had to really, really be very firm with them about social media and what they can and can't do, what they can. You know, we've had to tell them don't Google her name because it pops up in the Google too. You can't stop their friends from sending them something. You can't talk to everybody. You can't put them in a bubble. And it just has to be incredibly stressful all the time. And that's the thing I know. I hate when people tell me, well, just delete your social media. Well, that's not fair because I've seen the best in social media. A Facebook group in 2012 saved my 12-year-old niece's life. She had a very rare form of cancer. And a Facebook group connected me with the best doctors in the

U.S. that cured her. Yeah. That's amazing. I've seen the best. You know what I mean? I've seen this great community. We have a Facebook group, Remembering Bianca Devins. And it's this amazing community that just honors her and shares stories and pictures and, you know, pictures, pink pictures and Hello Kitty and bees and anything that reminds you of Bianca. And obviously that really does help. It helps our family to see that she's not forgotten. So we've seen, you know, Bianca has found really good friends. Her internet friends are some of the most protective people over her and her memory. And I've stayed in touch with a lot of them. So I think the internet has a really

good place in our lives and it can be very useful. I mean, think about the random things you learn on TikTok, right? Got some good recipes off there. I know. It's a great concept and that that's what it was for, and people coming together in all different areas who have similar interests. And then all of a sudden you're a part of this whole thing that you didn't even know you were a part of until you started getting threatening messages. So yeah, it's pretty rough. I didn't ask to be put on the internet. I didn't ask for my daughter to be murdered so violently. I didn't ask for my daughter to be taken from me. And I did not certainly want those pictures to go viral. Here we are. And I'm constantly getting critiqued on my parenting. I have lies made up saying I gave Bianca drugs and that I was on drugs. I mean, I've never done a drug in my life. I'm like,

probably the most straight ed person you'd ever meet. And you can't even sue anybody for defamation or libel or anything because you don't even know who's behind those codes. I don't know. Right right and that's the thing right you have these keyboard warriors that just say whatever they want whatever they want yeah a lot of these you know in the intel community they just say things for a reaction um you know which they're not going to get a reaction out of me because I'm an adult I know how to handle that younger kids you know don't have as much impulse control just give them what they want and it's it's just it's awful I don't you know, don't have as much impulse control, just give them what they want. And it's, it's just, it's awful. I don't, you know, I don't even understand who these people are. Like,

to be honest with you, it's five years later. What are you doing? Yeah, no. And I think we said it last week when we were talking about your daughter, I think a lot of people in general, just talking about internet bullies or whatever you want to call them, trolls, hurt people hurt people. And for some individuals, I agree with what you're saying as far as internet being a place that can be really helpful, right? But it's still the wild west. Oh, absolutely. And relative to like time, it's still new, right? And 100 years from now, it's going to be a completely different world. But I think moderation is important. And I also think understanding that although you may be

on the internet for good reasons, there are individuals out there who this is all they have. This is all they have. This is their world. Everything outside of that doesn't matter. This is their reality. So when they go on the internet, they're going on there with a specific intent. And because of whatever circumstances are going on in their own life, they want to hurt others. That's their gratification. And so you have to understand that there are certain people, regardless of what you do, regardless of how much sense you make, regardless of how many times you rationalize what's going on, that's not going to matter to them because this is all they have. And so I think what you're doing overall, this three-pronged attack of how to fix this, going after the legislation, looking at different ways to mitigate this through the companies that actually are in control of it, like Instagram,

like Facebook, right? Trying to push or enforce an idea that there should be more humans on the other end monitoring these situations. And then also being proactive on the internet yourself, right? Like you said, I will do whatever I have to do for my daughter. I don't mind if I have to see the photo a million times, even though you shouldn't have to, you're going to be out there for her. But I also think the three of us as parents, understanding that we have children and understanding that the internet is a great thing, but I'll speak to, for my own kids, they're on it all the time. I have this screen times on there now and they get like an hour per day or an hour and a half per day. I don't know

what it is, but they're always requesting more time. They're always requesting another 15 minutes. And it's funny you mentioned the YouTube shorts, cause that's what my youngest P is, is all about. She just wants to be on the shorts. And there's been times where she's scrolling through the shorts on the TV and some of the shorts that come up are not suitable for her, even though she's on like the kid version of it. Not at all. Exactly. I agree. And I'm like, whoa, I'm like, go back to, I'm like, hold on a second. What was that one I just heard out of, you know, out of the side of my ear here that I, that didn't sound like a stitch short. So I feel like. And they sneak them in there and then you're like, well, what is, what is she hearing when I didn't hear when I'm not picking up? Yeah. And they, and she knew it

too. Cause she scrolled past it quick. So I knew she, she understood what was going on. Same thing. Yep. Kim, what, obviously this is a tragedy, what you're going through, and nobody should have to experience this. Are there any other things that you would like our viewers or listeners to know,? What is something that people can take away from this conversation today to maybe help better protect themselves or the people they care about? So that's always a hard question for me. Because 2020 hindsight, I've always looked back for five years and said, what could I have done differently to prevent this? And a lot of people want to blame the internet for what happened to Bianca. I don't blame the internet for her murder. She could have met him anywhere. He was local enough that she could have met him anywhere. She was going off to college. Even the police investigators, the DA that prosecuted the case,

agree with that, right? Like we don't blame the internet for the crime. The internet is to blame for exploiting her and the dissemination of those pictures. So, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, you shouldn't meet someone online. Well, that's just a reality of the world we live in, right? Like we just, people meet people online. She made some really, really good friends online. I think you just have to be careful if your child is, you know, going on. Discord is a big one for these kids and you have to monitor as best you can because Discord, you know, encrypts things. Bianca was big into Discord, but I was always going through her phone, right? Like trying to figure out, you know, they have apps. Bianca, when she was 15, she had an app on her phone that looked

like a calculator. And it was, I don't even remember what it was, but it was some other like site that like led you to app, like different apps or like the internet or something. But you have to always just kind of, you have to do your best to monitor your kids. Also, make sure your kids have a world outside of the Internet. And I know it's hard because Bianca, she struggled. She found it hard with her mental illness. She did find it hard to make connections outside, but she had friends outside in real life, as they would call it. And get your kids off the Internet for a while. It's just not realistic these days to say that our kids aren't going to be on these apps.

You know, but you really have to just monitor it. I don't, you know, young teenagers, they shouldn't have public accounts because you never know who's going to stalk. That was my biggest thing with my girls was you never know who you're talking to. You think he's, you know, someone's 14 years old. It could be this 52 year old man that's just trying to groom you and, you know, get you to meet him. You really, really just have to be on top of things. I, my kids would try to block me on, on like Instagram and I'd make fake Instagram accounts. They used to call me a stalker. They're like, how many fake accounts do you have? And I'm like, as many as it needs, I need to have needed As many as you need, exactly. As needed.

I will keep making them to figure out what you're doing. Don't block me. With my girls, Bianca, she would be 22. And my youngest, Olivia, is 20. And so all these, I had to kind of like, as we went, figure out all the new apps, right? Like I got on Instagram because my kids were on it. I have a Snapchat because my kids were on it. TikTok because any, like, I have a Twitter because Bianca was really into Twitter at one point when she was like 14.

I don't, you know, some of these apps I don't even use anymore because my kids are adults now. But, you know, if your kid is on a social media platform, you need to be on that one too just to see, you know, what's it about, what's going on, what's being posted, what, what are they potentially seeing? Because like you said, those YouTube shorts, even though, you know, my youngest Maddie has, is on YouTube kids, like, like you said, there are some weird things that pop up. Yeah. And it's also based on, we have a little bit of familiarity with the YouTube world, the age restricted, they're supposed to be, they're supposed to be labeling these certain videos, you know, age restricted content, but a lot of content creators will not do that because it limits the amount of people who are seeing their videos. And at the end of the day, they don't care who sees them. Like all of our videos, it says right there, is this suitable

for children? No, it's not. And so we have to click that. And if you don't, they'll usually demonetize you anyway. So it's something where some content creators will purposely not click that because it limits the amount of, they don't care who sees it. They just want people continuously scrolling through it and that's all they need. So overall, I just think there's a lot that's going to happen. And I think people like yourself who unfortunately go through something that they shouldn't have to experience, but because of it, develop a new purpose. I can see that you have a new purpose in life. Your mission is to accomplish this tell your story and tell your daughter's story and hopefully start to change the way things are done. Again, it's very early on. Other people like you coming forward as well as a collective, hopefully something actually occurs.

And I do think you're right in the sense of it's going to take the money to start being affected by these big companies before they make changes. Because what will happen, my hope, is that eventually if some type of civil litigation does go forward, what their lawyers will start telling them is, hey, in order to mitigate and create less exposure to these types of cases, you have to create a department within your organization that's specifically designed to answer these type of things so that when you get sued, you can say, look at what we have here. We have a whole staff of people that do this every single day. So they won't be doing it for the right

reasons, but they'll still be doing it. And we see it with other organizations and other programs that are now there in order to mitigate civil litigation. So that's what I'm hoping in this situation where unfortunately enough situations like this occur, they start to actually change because now their profits are being affected. Right. And, you know, they, I think we just, we also need to get more support for this. You know, I think we need to as many like bigger creators as we can get. I think once people start in numbers, start to demand change is when we're going to see the change. You know, I had an attorney that was working on this case and was in communication with Instagram and Facebook. First thing they did was try to, you know, just pay me off and

make me go away. And as they wanted to talk about a settlement was like the first communication back from them. And as soon as I refuse that, because this isn't about money for me, there's no amount of money that is going to bring my daughter back. And there's no amount of money that is going to take back or help all of this trauma that my family and Bianca's friends are going through constantly. So I immediately, you know, we said, no, there's, this is, this isn't about a settlement. And the communication kind of dropped

from then, right? Because they don't have to answer to us. They were going to try to quick throw some money at me to make me go away because they can, you know, whatever they wanted. I don't even, I don't think we even got to a number, but they would probably be something that wouldn't affect them. And I'm not going away because this isn't, this isn't about money. This is about my daughter. It's about other people's kids. And it's just, we're, we, we need change. I think we need the numbers. You know, I have a template if people want, and I can send it to you and we somehow maybe can figure out how to have people access it.

If you send us a Google Doc, we can probably put it in the description. We can put it in the description box below. And it's just a template, too, that you can send email, mail, whatever, to your congressperson and demand that we need change. We need a law in place. But, you know, just me doing it isn't helping. I've tried with my local congressperson. I did have one congressperson that introduced a law in 2020, and then he lost his election that November. The next congressperson drafted a bill, and then New York was redistricted. So she was no longer my congressperson. The current one hasn't responded. My hopes are if we can get this template out there and people just send it to their congress,

maybe someone will pay attention and take this up. Because it's just such important legislation that needs to go into effect. There's no other way. If you create a Google Doc, we can definitely throw that up because that was going to be one of the last questions I asked you was, what can we do? And not only Stephanie and I, but also just everybody watching or listening today, what can they do? And I think your answer would be this template, right? Would be getting this out to the legislators in your town or your state. Exactly. That's the only way we're going to get attention is if enough people are calling for action and calling for change, maybe someone, we just need to find, you know, those few people

that are in the right place to actually, you know, make some sort of change and introduce this legislation because it's so important. And it's not just graphic photos. It's child exploitation. Before we go, I want to ask you one thing, and we're going to leave the episode with this. Obviously, right now, Bianca is seen a certain way on the internet. And whether she's viewed as the victim that she became or the bright light that she was in life or if she's being seen as, like you said, this bad person who lied and this, this and that. Obviously, none of those things are 100% true. There's so much more to her. if you could change the narrative about how Bianca was seen and you could talk about her in a way that you'd want her to be perceived as she really was by the person who know her the best her mother

what would you say about her uh Bianca what would I say about her I would say she was just an absolute joy like she was when you say someone like, everyone always says, oh, they lit up the room. She really did. Bianca struggled with mental health. She had borderline personality disorder and she really struggled for a while with depression. And even in her darkest times, she would help her friends, right? So like where she didn't feel like, you know, she had any worth to her, she couldn't see her worth. She couldn't see, you know, past what her brain and her disorder was telling her about herself. She always uplifted her friends. She always made time to listen to them and help them. I think,. I think just the amount of lives that I've been told that she's touched and that she's encouraged. I feel like that's a really hard thing when you can't even pull yourself out of the darkness really, really could help people. She had so much empathy for people.

She always gave people the benefit of the doubt. You know, she, she met a lot of predators on the internet and she would try to give people the benefit of the doubt in the beginning. And then, you know, um, she was a protector. She was a fierce protector of her friends. If she saw someone, you know, being groomed or being bullied or, you know, she got them away from the people that were harming them. She, you know, made people see like a different way of life and like the way they can do things. She was just such a great, she was so special. It's kind of hard to talk about because I just know the potential that she had. She wanted to be a psychologist because she wanted to help people. It really, really just hurts to see that that potential was cut so short. She loved being a big sister and her siblings were everything. baby, no matter how old they were. Loyal. That was my only problem with Bianca and Olivia is from the time that Olivia was born, those two would not snitch on each other.

They closed ranks, right? They completely closed ranks and you did not snitch on each other. I mean, she really, really just a loyal friend. And she cared. She cared about other people and helping people. She, you know, would stand up for people that were being bullied. I see the Aubrey Wyatt case and her mother being silenced. And I just, I can hear Bianca screaming with frustration, you know, like Bianca would have been shouting her name from the rooftops and, you know, keeping her going. And she just she was she was really, really special. I think I think a lot of times people who need who need the most give the most because they feel like, yeah, they feel like this is how I would want to be handled.

This is what I would want. I would want somebody loyal. I would want somebody to not judge me. I would want somebody to unconditionally support me. And so they don't feel comfortable taking that if they're not also giving it. And those are the best kinds of people, honestly. Bianca grew up with a really strong support. Her and I were very, very close. She was very close with my parents and her aunts and uncles. And she had all these people where when she felt brought down by the depression and just, you know, I can't fight anymore. She had people to fight for, right? Like she told me, like, I could never really actually harm myself because of what it would do to you. The hardest part of losing her is because there were times where she fought for

me and her sisters. She knew she had to stay alive for us and then she was taken. And that's so hard at the end of the day. It's like, it's, it's just, it's devastating. Yeah. When you fought so hard for, it was like four to five years, we really, really fought and got and finally got her healthy and on track. And then for someone to take her from us is just an unexplainable feeling. It just feels very unfair. That's like something I scream all the time. It's just not fair. I say it all the time. I've been doing this since I was 20 years old. And it wasn't until I became a parent myself where I really started to think about what parents of these victims go through. And even to this day, even though I've done hundreds of these cases, I just don't know how you do it.

And the amount of courage it takes to get up every day and put one foot in front of the other after losing a child, and your ability to not only keep going, but also to take this negative, this horrific situation, and try to turn it into something that may benefit other kids like Bianca in the future, I have nothing but admiration for you because I don't personally know if I would be able to do what you're doing. I don't know if I'd be able to come on here and talk about it publicly like this and continue to fight, even in the face of adversity where it seems like a lot of people are closing doors. So your determination is something that I'm extremely impressed by. And I'm glad that you came on today and talked about it because we can talk about it. We try to use Crime Weekly News to take these, we talk about

horrific stories every week, but with Crime Weekly News to take these, we talk about horrific stories every week, but with Crime Weekly News specifically, it's like, what can we take from it? How can we learn from it in our own lives? But it never is going to hit as hard as it's going to hit like hearing from someone who's actually experienced it and is going through it. So I think our, I think everyone here today is going to get a lot out of what you had to say. I hope so. Cause I wasn't given the choice, right? Like I, I have no other choice. There's days where I don't get out of bed. Um, and there's days where like, I can't function, but I can't stay that way. I have other kids that need me very early on after losing Bianca. I had a dream where she came to me and told me,

you have to be happy. You, you can do this. You're going to help people and you have to go on and fight for me. And I just replay that over the days that I struggle to get out of bed or struggle to just barely function. I remind myself that she would want me to fight for her, fight for other people, because that's what she would be doing. If other people, because that's what she would be doing. If she was here, that's what she would be doing. You know, if it happened to someone else, she would be the first one to step up and advocate. And it's just, you know, we're not given a choice. It's incredible what you're doing.

And I really hope that covering it on here and talking about it and having more people be aware of it, especially now hearing from you directly, anybody out there who's listening or watching, you can not only listen to this story, but you can be part of it, which is why, do you want to give your contact information one more time, Kim, so that everyone has it and what you're comfortable with as far as if people want to follow you or reach out where they can follow your journey as you continue on from here? So my Instagram is kdevins. My TikTok is at kimdevins. Okay. And that template,

you're going to try to put it into Google Doc. I will put it into, yeah, I can very easily copy and paste it if it's not already there. It'll be in the description below. So you guys, if you want to take this template and send it to your local person that is in charge of this, your congressman, your senator, your house of representative, whatever it might be, get it out to as many people as possible.

It takes 10 minutes to share it. It takes 10 minutes to email it. So that'll be in the description box below. Kim, thank you for reaching out. We appreciate you being here. Stephanie, any final words from you? No, thank you so much, Kim and Bianca. She sounded amazing. And I'm glad you're still working on it because a lot of people would not be strong enough to, I don't know, like Derek said,

I don't know if I would be. A lot of respect. We have a lot of, there's some negatives associated with it right now. There's some people using her death in wrong ways. Maybe if this all goes the way you want it to go, Bianca's name will take on a new legacy as far as her tragedy and what it can do for other children like her and other adults like her. So that's the goal here now is to take this, there's certain things we can't change, but we can dictate what we learn from it and what happens because of it. Right. So, and I think you're going to be a major part of that. So appreciate you being here guys,

make sure you go follow Kim's story and we will stay up to date on it. And if there are any things that come up with it, we will make sure we share it with you here on Crime Weekly News. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you later this week. Bye. Bye.