There are two questions sexual predators ask children when they are grooming them online.
Former detective and cyber safety expert Brett Lee saw the horrors of child exploitation firsthand while working undercover.
“One of the first questions I’d get asked every single time, ‘Do you talk to your parents about what you do online?'” Mr Lee said.
“If I said ‘yes’, they’re gone.
“The second question an online child predator would ask me was, ‘Are you in your bedroom?’
“Because what a bedroom gives people is a perception of privacy, which gives them control and that’s where all the bad stuff happens in that private environment.”
‘Stranger danger’ not just on the street
Queensland Police are urging parents to prioritise cyber safety as internet-enabled devices expose more children than ever to the world of online predators.
One in every three children is allowed to use a device in their bedroom unsupervised, according to research by the Gonski Institute for Education.
Detective Inspector Chris Toohey says parents and children need to be aware that stranger danger doesn’t just happen on the streets.
“We’re inviting offenders into bedrooms if we allow children to take their devices there,” Detective Inspector Toohey said.
His child protection investigation team arrested a man earlier this month on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on more than 100 child abuse charges.
Police allege the 31-year-old travelled hundreds of kilometres to Bundaberg and Gladstone to meet underage girls after grooming them online.
“I think they are horrible circumstances for us to get lessons from,” Detective Inspector Toohey said.
“We want parents to be aware that there are risks on all sites, especially online chat forums.”
In February, Australian Federal Police arrested a central Queensland man after finding a sexualised online chat with a 14-year-old girl, as well as more than 1,000 files of child abuse material.
‘Sextortion’ and grooming: What it looks like online
Grooming and child exploitation is commonplace online, according to Detective Superintendent Stephen Jay, who heads the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE).
Social media and popular games are full of potential targets.
Most perpetrators are seeking one of two things — money, or to meet the child in person — and both use similar strategies to make it happen.
“What it may look like is a child having an unsolicited contact on a platform, a social media platform or something online, from a person they don’t know,” Detective Superintendent Jay said.
“And the purpose of that contact is to get an intimate photograph.”
The explicit content becomes leverage for the abuser to isolate children further or extort them. It is common enough to have a name: “sextortion”.
It refers to young people — often boys — who are tricked or lured into sending explicit images, then threatened with humiliation if they don’t hand over money.
Detective Superintendent Jay said groomers should not be underestimated — and the way they targeted children was finely honed.
“They spend a lot of time learning about children’s behaviours and what the latest trends are,” he said.
Online grooming is everywhere
Conrad Townson is the top advisor for Project Paradigm, a Queensland anti-exploitation group.
He said while grooming often began on social media or in games, it could also start in the real world, with the abuser then using that meeting to connect online.
Perpetrators were finding children to talk to, whether they were on Roblox or TikTok or Instagram — no matter where they lived.
“We’ve seen cases over the last year in Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, Maryborough, Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, Gold Coast, Mt Isa,” Mr Townson said.
“When you look at your more regional and remote communities, there tends to be less service support for young people, which means you will often see cases not easily picked up or recognised.”
One report to ACCCE via a child and his family led to a 37-year-old Sydney man facing four charges relating to child abuse.
It inspired the free book Jack Changes the Game about a boy who is worried after a friendly chat takes a worrying turn.
‘Hours’ to remove child sex material online
Work is being done to crack down on the risk, but part of its success relies on the behaviour of social media giants.
This time last year, the Australian e-Safety Commissioner dispatched legal notices to Google, Twitter, TikTok, Discord and Twitch in relation to child sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual extortion.
While TikTok said it could identify and remove abusive content within minutes from public feeds, it could take hours if sent as a direct message.
Twitter (now X) refused to respond to the notices, and Google would not say how quickly it addressed dangers on YouTube, a platform used by an estimated 18 million Australians each month.
Streaming service Discord said it took up to 13 hours to remove child sexual abuse material from its platforms.
Similar notices had been previously sent to Apple, Microsoft, Skype, Facebook and Instagram’s owners Meta, WhatsApp, Snap and Omegle in relation to child sexual exploitation and the work each were doing to reduce it.
What is being done, and is it working?
The impact this work has on predators is close to impossible to measure.
In the past 12 months, the Australian Federal Police has had more than 40,000 reports of child exploitation, up 10 per cent on the year before.
Over five years, it has received 135,000 reports, which it estimates has led to 637 children being removed from harm, 570 victims identified and 877 arrests.
Operation Molto in 2022 ended with 51 children rescued in Australia, 153 rescued internationally and 117 people facing 1,248 charges.
Experts say the high, and increasing rates, may be a sign that more people are recognising exploitation, and are going to authorities.
“There’s no doubt you’re going to see an increase as awareness increased,” Mr Townson said.
“It’s like anything, you kick the stone over, you can’t then put the stone back.”
Mr Townson also pointed to the level of media coverage on grooming and online abuse, an issue he said was close to invisible even five years ago.
Just 3pc worry about grooming
Perhaps the best measure of progress is how seriously families are treating the risk to their children.
On that standard, things are not going well.
The Australian Childhood Foundation found:
- One in three parents or carers still felt there was no need to worry about child abuse
- Two out of three thought children were likely to make up stories of abuse, and should not always be believed.
Data from ACCCE also paints a worrying picture:
- Just three out of 100 (3 per cent of) parents or carers were actively worried about online grooming
- Most 11 year olds were using the internet unsupervised
- Almost one in four (22 per cent) were online “with no oversight whatsoever”
Detective Superintendent Jay from ACCCE said the internet and its dangers were evolving, and families needed to keep up.
“For a lot of parents, they may not know what online grooming looks like, they haven’t experienced that or lived through it, so it’s a foreign concept,” Detective Superintendent Jay said.
We know the dangers. Now what?
Brett Lee has three strategies parents and carers can adopt immediately that he says will help protect their children.
He said families could reduce the risk of children being targeted by online predators by 50 per cent if they adopted a simple rule of no devices between 7pm and 7am.
“It won’t always be popular with kids, but the rewards that we’re going to get as a family are going to be just as great,” Mr Lee said.
Of equal importance, he said, was open communication.
“The benefits that parents are going to receive, just by talking to their kids, verbalising questions, making sure their kids are OK, that is going to repay a family gold for the rest of their life,” he said.
Thirdly, Mr Lee recommends treating your child’s safety online the same way you would in the physical world.
“We have a right to know where our kids are going, who they’re communicating with and we have a right to help them manage the world that they’re in,” he said.
“We have the same rights as a parent when it relates to technology.”
Why bonding, not banning, can help
Act For Kids chief executive Katrina Lines said it was not an option to simply force children or young people to disconnect.
“Online activity is normal for kids these days and we need to stop saying to them that they can’t do these things,” she said.
“You actually have to be invested and involved, and be there with them, so that if something really does go wrong, they’ll come and talk to you.”
Dr Lines said it kept her up at night thinking about those children who might lack supervision or protection due to difficult living situations.
“If you know that there are families where kids are vulnerable, or don’t have a family that would potentially listen if something went wrong — you can look out for signs of something not being OK,” she said.
“So they’re becoming extreme in behaviour — aggressive or submissive, anxious or distressed or becoming withdrawn.
“All of those are red flags.
“If this is a child that you know, ask them if they’re OK or seek some help for them.”
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