ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ret. Det. Bob Shilling is a 36-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department. He spent ten years in patrol, five of which were walking foot beats in disadvantaged areas of the city. He spent twenty-six years in the Detective Bureau where he was assigned to the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit. He spent eighteen of those years as the Lead Detective in the Sex and Kidnapping Offender Detail. The Sex and Kidnapping Offender Detail is responsible for sex offender address verification, risk assessment, community notification, and public education meetings.
In 1993, Det. Shilling developed a curriculum for doing community notification public education meetings. This curriculum was seen by many as a nationwide model and assisted many law enforcement agencies across the United States in conducting community notification public education meetings without violence or vigilantism. The US Department of Justice and the Center for Sex Offender Management subsequently contracted with Det. Shilling to train law enforcement officers on this curriculum in over twenty states. He has also trained in Australia, France, Spain, and Switzerland.
In 2000, Det Shilling was appointed by the INTERPOL Secretary General to the INTERPOL Specialists Group on Crimes against Children. During his thirteen-year tenure, Det. Shilling Chaired the Major Crimes against Children and the Sex Offender Management theme groups. In 2009, Det. Shilling was elected as the Chair of the Specialists Group by the 190 INTERPOL member countries.
In 2013, Det. Shilling was recruited and subsequently seconded to INTERPOL Headquarters in Lyon, France for three years as the Head of Crimes against Children. He was responsible for the International Child Sexual Exploitation database (ICSE) which contains child abuse images from all over the world. These images are submitted by INTERPOL member countries. Det. Shilling’s team and network of investigators were responsible for identifying and rescuing victims shown in the images. By the end of his three-year secondment, Det. Shilling’s team and network of investigators had physically rescued 5,420 victims of sexual abuse from “images” in the ICSE database. This was more victims rescued in three years than had been rescued in the previous 13 years combined.
Det. Shilling was the recipient of the 2014 International Council of Jurists Award presented in London by the President of the International Court and the former Prime Minister of Jordan. The award was for his lifetime achievements in protecting the rights of children. Det. Shilling was the first law enforcement officer ever to receive this award. In 2015, Det. Shilling was honored at Facebook Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland with the “Wired Cop” Award for his lifetime achievements in protecting children online. In October 2017, Det. Shilling received the “Distinguished Contribution Award” from the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers for his “notable contributions to the field of sexual abuse.”
Det. Shilling has spoken at conferences all over the world on sexual abuse and sex offender management, including Tehran, Iran, Moscow, Russia, Bucharest, Romania, Doha, Qatar, Manila, Philippines, Bangkok, Thailand, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Jilhava, Czech Republic and Abu Dhabi, UAE.