Roo Powell, A Real Life Superhero

Mixed Asian Media - June 12, 2023

By Alex Chester-Iwata

Roo Powell is a bad-ass-boss, changing-the-system powerhouse. She's basically a superhero who goes undercover as an online teen decoy and takes down adults who are contacting minors to exploit and groom for sex.

She does this all through SOSA (Safe from Online Sex Abuse), an incredible nonprofit organization that combats online sex abuse of minors. She is also the star of the ID’s reality series Undercover Underage, where a camera crew follows Roo and her team as they take down the bad guys along with law enforcement.

* Content warning: This interview includes mentions of sexual assault, rape, violence, lewd acts, and abuse —

all involving children and/or individuals under the age of 18.

How did you start SOSA? 

I had been in Southeast Asia with an NGO that was combating sex trafficking, and I remember going into these brothels with undercover investigators.Seeing that side of my heritage was startling. It's very different to witness in person. The whole idea of bodies being commoditized and young people being objectified. That’s also happening in the States, but also in a much more prolific way, because of the internet. Decades ago, CSAM (child sex abuse material) or child pornography had to be put in the mail. Photos had to actually be developed, or VHS tapes were physically handed off, and that was a lot easier for law enforcement to intercept.

Now people are sharing this content with a click of a button. Kids are being preyed on online, and there's not a lot of awareness around it because my generation of parents didn't grow up with it. We didn't grow up with Snapchat or iPhones. I think that's improved over the past five years, but there's a huge lack of awareness about what can happen online and the idea that a kid can be abused without ever being in the same room as an abuser. it can happen quietly without a parent ever knowing. So, knowing that kids go through this without having an adult to lean on, I think is what really was the impetus for starting SOSA, to raise awareness and to also just combat sex abuse in all its forms.

Truly incredible. How do you sustain as an organization? Are you all volunteers, or do you get grant funding, money from the police or ID?

We get our funding mostly through individual donors. We've had some corporate donations.I think right now we have 206 people who donate monthly to us, and that is very meaningful. I think our average monthly donation is like $25 a month.

What you see on the show is sort of like a rolling team. We only have three people that are full-time employees right now, and on a nonprofit budget. We do have volunteers, which is wonderful, but it also takes resources to manage volunteers.

Was there any influence from the show To Catch a Predator? How do you think this show is different, and have you ever talked to Chris Hansen?

No, I have not talked to Chris Hansen. He is welcome to email me or we can be buds on Twitter. I would say the difference is that To Catch a Predator was a show and SOSA is an organization, and there just happens to be a show about it. Irrespective of the TV show, we are doing that work year-round.

There's a lot of nuance. The law enforcement we worked with has said that we're able to help identify the more seasoned, advanced nefarious perpetrators because they're a lot more careful and we are able to be, like, a force multiplier for them and show signs of life and have conversations and dedicate time to the investigation. So many ICAC (internet crimes against children) teams or investigation teams are strapped or they're doing other things like solving murders too. 

How long does the average case take from contact to arrest?

Contact to arrest can take months. The shortest it's been is two hours. You'll see in Season 2, there's a five-hour turnaround time, and it's because we identified this person to be so dangerous we said, “He needs to be off the streets right now.”

Is there a particular case that you're really proud of that led to an arrest? And is there a case that you were working on that you regret?

One case that we're proud of is this one guy, and you'll see him in Season 2, who is just so careful, so paranoid, sending different photos of different faces and was communicating with three of our decoys concurrently. He was really, really hard to get. What I ended up doing was creating another profile of somebody who is 18, so just of age. That's how we ended up getting him. We set up a meeting with an 18-year-old, but to get him and all the stuff that he did with a 12-year-old, 13-year-old, and 14-year-old. He comes, and he's arrested, and I'm like, this guy's gonna lawyer up. I don't know if it was like we did him a service by making him stop, but he admitted on the spot. I apologize for how triggering this might be... He admitted to sexually assaulting his 12-year-old relative. All I could think of was the moment he was arrested, his relative didn't have to worry about being harmed anymore. If that is the only thing we accomplished over this summer, it's good enough. 

Congratulations. Is there a case you were working on that you regret?

I would say not that I regret. In spite of seeing all this, I really believe that nobody is 100% good and nobody is 100% bad. In this season you see us talking to this guy who's kind of like this nerdy gamer, and he seemed really sweet. He was being abusive, and he bailed on the conversation. So part of me was like, he bailed on the conversation. He gets a point for that, he's like, “Wait, I can't do this anymore,” and he's stopped.

But that's not how the law works, right? That's not how the system works. I remember I had to scout out his place of work. I needed to confirm it was him. I’m like, “Hey, can you just grab this chair for me?” So he's chatting with me, so nice about the products. “Do you need anything else? Happy to help.” And I'm sitting here going, “This is a kid who has done this super fucking dumb thing. Why can't we just find him a path to rehabilitation? Like, I wanna stand there and grab him by the shoulders and be like, ‘Look, I'm gonna turn around. I'm gonna walk out. I'm telling you this right now. Only talk to girls that are over 18. Please. Don't talk to any more kids. I think part of me believes that that would've been enough, like, I've got law enforcement in the parking lot. I'm just gonna let you know right now. Stop it. Get off Discord.’” 

But of course that's not how the legal system works and sometimes there's no way to rehabilitation, unless it's punitive, because that's how things work in this country. Of course I have to report, regardless of my feelings, and he was arrested and he's awaiting trial. I don't regret it because it was supposed to happen, but I definitely cried over it.

How do you and your team keep sane? I mean, you are literally being exposed to abuse, and I can't even imagine how traumatic that must be. How are you able to create space for yourself, for your team? Are you able to leave the work at home?

It’s difficult because we are exposed to it, and I think the biggest reminder is better me than a kid, right? I have access to a therapist, I have access to coping methods, we also offer therapy to the team, like every employee gets a significant amount of mental health days andI have my cat Mochi.

I try to keep everything that I consume, like TV-wise, lighthearted. I watch a lot of standup comedy. I really care about the news and culture and social justice. It's definitely hard to turn off because I care about those things, but there are times where I can only take in so much of the world's trauma that I have to sometimes shut down Twitter for a little bit.

As far as work goes I keep work at work and when I come home I won't do any predator conversations from home. I try to keep that really, really separate. Then I try to find space in my life for frivolous things and like whatever my hyper fixation hobby of the moment is. Currently, it's couponing and needle work, which makes me sound very, very old. But I'm very into it.

Have you, have you ever been afraid for yourself or your team? A team member?

Yeah. I think when I'm afraid for a team member, it's never for their physical safety, it’s for their emotional health. I am probably overprotective. Sometimes they're like, “I'm a grown ass woman, I don't need you to mom me right now,” but I feel compelled to protect the team. Also, with the decoys, now we do rotate them out, so they don't do this year round, not by any means.

What was it like for you growing up as a mixed Asian?

My mom is from the Philippines and my dad is from Wales and I was born in Hong Kong and I moved here. At that point, there was this real push to acclimate and become as Americanized as possible. No speaking Tagalog at home, we're just gonna be really good at English. I went to a really conservative private school full of very white children. It was a religious school and there was talk about not race mixing, as if this is like the 1940s, but in the ‘90s. And I remember really feeling embarrassed, I never had a doll because I could never find a doll that looked like me. So I had a lot of stuffed animals because it felt weird having a doll.

I do remember wanting to be white so badly. You know how if you cut your elbow and you put a bandaid over it and then after a couple days you take it off and the skin's lighter? I distinctly remember that I raided the first aid cabinet and I just covered myself in Band-Aids, like, “OK, how long do I have to wait to peel all these off? Then I'll be whiter.” I really felt the push to acclimate and be Americanized in the ’90s. It would've been great to just kind of embrace all of that.

How have you embraced yourself now? What has that journey been like?

I remember a while ago somebody said, “Hey, do you consider yourself to be POC?” This was probably a decade ago, and I was like, am I? Sometimes I'm white presenting, sometimes I'm not. I did have a guy on Instagram Live ask, “Do you smoke a lot of pot?” I'm like, why? “Because you always look high.” …No, I'm just Asian.

Oh my gosh.

I think it's a little bit easier for my kids than it was for me, especially in the environment that I was raised, that very much kind of lauded the white American experience, or being a little bit embarrassed that my mom had an accent. Now I love my mom's accent and I hope it never goes away. Even as it relates to Undercover Underage, what I really wanted to highlight is how the work that we see or the crimes that we see, how much of it is affected by the fetishization of Asian women and girls.

You just took the words outta my mouth.

I remember when I was in Southeast Asia and I was talking to all the sex workers, and they're like, “If you go to Amsterdam, or any other European country where sex work is legal, a lot of times you can get French or British or a Dutch sex worker, but they'll say, ‘Go find an Asian because they'll let you do whatever you want.’”

There's this serious dehumanization, even among the ranks of sex workers, seeing the amount of white men who decided to retire in these cities because it's so cheap to get a sex worker. The amount of bachelor parties that I would see walking through a town as though it's for sport. They're not looking at these women or these girls or these kids (irrespective of gender) as actual humans, and frankly, I see that in the work that we do.

When the show came out, you're kind of placed in the public spotlight. Good, because I can share what SOSA does, but also bad because you're exposed to tons of people all over. They can tell you as much as they want to not read the comments, but what happens when it's a direct email or a direct message? I remember it was of course a podcast of men who thought they were very, very witty and very funny (and YouTube wouldn't take it down as hate speech), they said, instead of calling it Undercover Underage, they really should have named it “The Chink in the Armor.” Just the slurs that women get. That was kind of eye-opening for me as well.

I will say it's really fun working with Shelby Chicazawa and being with another half-Asian, being able to kind of sit in that space together, because I didn’t grow up with other half-Asians. We would go to the Philippine American Association dance, and I still kind of stick out because I'm not fully Filipino and I'm not fully white, and a lot of times I felt too white for the Filipinos and too Filipino for the white folks. It's been fun to spend more time with Shelby because she's the opposite. My Asian mom, white dad, and her Asian dad, white mom, which she says is superior. The superior combo.

It's so funny. Yes. My dad was Asian, but so many of my friends have Asian moms. There's so many different nuances. Even just how you were raised having an Asian dad versus an Asian mom.

There's a lot of nuance, a lot of layers there. I think being able to highlight that or just see another side of that doing this work has been really strange. I did not think in 2021, I would be called a racial slur, four different times. That is a record for me. I haven't been called these names since I was in elementary school. To know that it's so easily on the tip of someone's tongue or that kind of abusive language is so easily on the tip of someone's tongue or doing the eyes at me. It's just a reminder that anyone who claims that we are in a post-racial world does not understand at all.

One hundred percent. I don't know for you, but working with a group of mixed Asians I have found it to be really healing to me, culturally and emotionally. 

Yes. I would say that is very much the case. What has also been really nice for me is I moved to an area where a lot of my kids' friends are half-Asian. Their parents are fully Filipino or the mom is fully Filipino, and now I have this opportunity to go to their homes and they'll make the dishes that I never learned to make. Seeing them raise their kids in the way that I feel like we should have been — allowed to express ourselves. I love it.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length

Roo hopes that as a society we reprogram ourselves to stop victim-blaming and find ways to be a safe space for a kid who might be in a tough situation. To support her work, you can donate to SOSA here.

Undercover Underage airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT on ID and it’s available to stream on Discovery+.