Society's Child
In one of the largest joint operations in the country — led by the Australian Federal Police and spread across five states — 16 people have been charged with 728 child exploitation and sexual abuse offences following a two-year investigation into the online exchange of child pornography.
The arrests come as AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw warned of a spike in traffic across the so-called dark web — including live-streaming and incidents of child sexual abuse and child grooming — since the outbreak of the coronavirus, prompting a call for parents to strictly monitor their children's online activity during the lockdown.
The Australian understands that the four children were aged between two months and eight years and are believed to be related to those who had sexually abused them and then exchanged the graphic images through highly encrypted web forums.
Three were rescued in NSW and the fourth in Victoria in a joint operation, codenamed Walwa, involving the AFP, state and territory police and Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Teams.
The 16 people were arrested and charged with contact offending and producing and exchanging child sex material through the internet.
Three are from NSW, one in South Australia, five in Queensland, three from Victoria and four from Western Australia. Of the 728 charges laid, 632 were against those caught in Victoria and 70 against those in NSW.
While the vast majority of live-streaming of child sexual exploitation originates in known hotspots including The Philippines, the latest case reveals material is also being generated in Australia and channelled through exchange networks via the dark web.
"This type of offending has no borders," Mr Kershaw told The Australian. He said the depth of depravity would be hard for most people to comprehend.
"It is very hard to explain to a society, to people who don't see the images ... these involve images like you've never seen before," he said.
"If I had my way I'd set the dark web on fire."
The two-year investigation was prompted by a US Homeland Security covert operation into encrypted dark nets that operate through virtually untraceable networks on the web and cannot be accessed without specific software, making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to hunt down offenders.
Homeland Security officers in Phoenix, Arizona, had uncovered activity in Australia and channelled the intelligence to the AFP through the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, which was set up in 2018 as part of global investigations into the rise in dark web child exploitation.
Mr Kershaw said there had been a spike in activity since the strict COVID-19 social-distancing restrictions were put in place around the world, adding that the dark web had recently become "congested".
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said the establishment of the ACCCE had proven its success through the arrests and the rescue of Australian children from harm.
However, he said he was concerned about the rise in users across the internet accessing the material since the outbreak of COVID-19.
"We have had increasing reports of people seeking to exploit the increased amount of screen time children will be spending online during the current climate to gain access to and abuse children," Mr Dutton told The Australian.
"The work of the ACCCE and Australian law enforcement does not stop. The ACCCE continues to drive the fight against online child exploitation, despite the challenges faced by Australia as a result of COVID-19," he said.
"As these outcomes demonstrate, we will continue to pursue all those who commit these horrific crimes, which can have a terrible impact on survivors, their families and the Australian community at large."
Mr Kershaw said all parents, guardians and carers needed to be extra vigilant in the current environment to ensure that children were not being exposed to these ruthless predators.
"More and more kids are being subjected to predatory behaviour by these sick perverts. We are very concerned about that," he said.
"Some of these people are very good at exploiting children ... so we are urging all parents to be connected to their kids when they are on line."
The arrests come as law enforcement agencies claim they are being hampered in their efforts to track offenders through the dark web because tech companies have been reluctant to co-operate in allowing access to encryption codes for the purpose of criminal investigations into child exploitation.
Mr Dutton has warned the big digital platforms such as Facebook and Google, as well as device manufacturers including Apple and Samsung, that more legislation will be considered if greater co-operation is not forthcoming.
At a Press Club address earlier this year, Mr Kershaw said that while 10 years ago there would have been 300 referrals a year for online child exploitation activity, that figure had now ballooned to almost 20,000.
"In the US, it's in the millions," he said. "And understand that each referral is not a single file — it could be thousands, millions of videos and pictures of children being sexually abused.
"The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation is dealing with a database of 22 million seized videos and images, and it will soon merge with a Queensland database of another 50 million," Mr Kershaw said.
"We are seeing more videos, younger children, and more violence. We are seeing the rape and torture of our children. All for sexual gratification."
He said investigations in relation to Operation Walwa were still ongoing, both in Australia and internationally, with officers from the ACCCE and local police analysing reams of seized material to try to track down any more child victims in Australia.
Reader Comments
I get so very weary of some members of the human race....
I don't.
Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eat—though it didn't look eatable in the least—I saw in their possession was a few lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour, they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us—they were thirty to five—and have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest—not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived—in a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so—what shall I say?—so—unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse. I had often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other things—the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul—than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma
But you can break the contract by renouncing sin (pornography, immorality, adultery, fornication, stealing, lies, rebellion, depravity, slandering, hatred, witchcraft, idolatry, pride and arrogance) and accepting the fine Jesus paid on the cross for your crimes. Jesus is the only way to be saved from hell.
Without Jesus, you will end up in a prison filled with entities far worse than these pedophiles, and you will burn with fire.
Instead, I have to come to SOTT to find it. You know, the site that's been condemned as a purveyor of "fake news" by the watchdogs. Amazing.
The NZ Herald is just pure nausea isnt it..
Its like telethon for Covid-19
"thank you very much for your kind oblivion,thank you very much,thank you very very much"
Of course, we can't be subjected to this without being sold the need 'for the common good' to give up each of our INDIVIDUAL rights to privacy.
R.C.
*Their past history (in the US in particular) makes me skeptical. Believe it when proven.
P.s., Apparently AU's uniforms reflect their South Indian Ocean/Oceania heritage.
RC