[vzaliva]

First of all, sorry to hear about the poor girl’s ordeal, and I’m glad she was rescued. But after reading about all that complicated digital sleuthing, it basically comes down to this:

"The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother’s boyfriend - a convicted sex offender."

I feel like the police should’ve started there: cross-referencing people in her close circle against a list of known sex offenders.

[Macha]

It sounds like they had the abuse images but not her name or identity - hence asking Facebook to identify her via facial recognition search.

[mmooss]

I don't think they knew who Lucy was. Otherwise the search would have been much narrower and faster than 'everyone who bought this sofa'.

[globular-toast]

Or, you know, if they knew who she was they would just go and rescue her?

How are people struggling so much with basic logic on this one? This is quite strange. Are some of you just unable to imagine having limited knowledge and not being able to just look everything up?