Child exploitation offending has ‘exploded’ in the past decade due to cheap, easy smartphone technology, says elite JACET police team

Forget the stereotypes – elite cops say these child exploitation offenders, including those busted possessing or sharing material, could be anyone.

Police say these child exploitation offenders could be anyone. Picture: Artwork

An elite child-rescuing police team is investigating three new cases every week, warning exploitation has “exploded” in the past decade and perpetrators are “literally anyone and everyone walking among us”.

Detectives from the Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team say advancements in cheap, affordable technology have taken the crime out of the dark web and into the mainstream.

The Advertiser can exclusively reveal that, last year alone, the combined AFP/SA Police team arrested 88 people on child exploitation charges.

They also removed 23 children in Australia and a further seven overseas from harm.

The team’s methods are highly secret but, from what courts have heard, involve everything from cutting-edge forensics and data analysis to covert operations and knocking down doors.

JACET Detective Senior Constable Jordan Dowling said the community’s perception of pedophiles was outdated compared with the reality of the unit’s day to day work.

Offenders unmasked by the team range from wine scientists, logistics managers and baristas to former soldiers, a top cardiologist and a maker of children’s apps.

Their biggest bust – Australia’s worst-ever convicted child sex offender – was a ranking RAAF member entrusted with top-secret military intelligence operations.

“Probably the scariest part about it is there’s no child sex offender persona, it’s literally anyone and everyone, they are walking among us,” he said.

“You couldn’t pick them in a crowd, it’s not the creepy old guy in the corner like we thought years ago.

“It’s common for offenders to place themselves in situations where they can increase their access to children, they volunteer in groups, sporting organisations, in religious groups.

“They deliberately place themselves in those positions for the purpose of getting access to children – and they don’t just groom kids.

“They groom adults around them and that provides a level of comfort to parents and caregivers that they’re fine – but really, they’re evil.”

Detective Leading Senior Constable Stephen Hegarty and Detective Senior Constable Jordan Dowling. Picture: Matt Loxton

NEW WORLD OF CRIME

To mark National Child Protection Week 2023, starting today, The Advertiser is stepping inside JACET to see how victims are removed from harm and pedophiles are busted.

The team is the combined AFP/SA Police unit responsible for some of the biggest child abuse busts – in Australia and around the world – over the past six years.

Their skills span the range of police work, digital law enforcement and victim identification, and they work closely with their interstate peers and similar agencies around the world.

One of JACET’s veteran members, Detective Leading Senior Constable Steve Hegarty, said smartphones had created “a whole new world of criminality”.

“You have so much technology that is at everyone’s fingertips and people don’t need to be tech savvy to be organised and to discuss abuse,” he said.

“It’s so prevalent for individuals to just create groups to talk to each other, trade and encourage each other and justify their actions and their beliefs.”

Hegarty said online pedophiles treat children and their anguish like commerce.

“There can be a bit of a hierarchy in relation to who’s posting the best material, who’s got the best stories,” he said.

“Ultimately, it’s about who’s got access to a child – that always gives an offender a higher level of kudos.

“It’s about clout, and the abuse material is often used as currency – the more you have, or the better you have, changes your status within that group.”

Dowling said such activities had spread far beyond the confines of the dark web.

“I think it’s exploded everywhere, not just necessarily on the dark web, it’s exploded in other platforms that aren’t encrypted … it’s widely and freely discussed,” he said.

NO STANDARD

Hegarty said the increase in offending over the past decade had repeatedly proved there is no such thing as a “standard” pedophile.

“There’s different levels of sophistication, intellect, different skill sets, the ability to groom adults as much as victims, being extremely charming, educated and calculating,” he said.

“A lot of them are extremely high-functioning, sometimes holding extremely good jobs … they can groom anyone because they are eloquent, funny, and good conversationalists.

“That is exactly how they commit their offences.”

He said it was important to remember that the crimes of pedophiles affect not only their victims, but also the parents, caregivers and loved ones of those children.

“Grooming is often associated with children but anyone can be a victim of it,” he said.

“It takes that charm, that ability to engage and get people to drop their concern around an individual.

Detectives Carla Corbitt, Steve Hegarty, Jordan Dowling, Brendan Martinovic and Sergeant Joe Barry from SA’s elite police team, JACET. Picture: Matt Loxton

“I like to think I’m a relatively good judge of character, but sometimes I’ll meet an offender and think ‘you could trick me, you’re that good, I would have been duped by you’.

“So when I hear family members say ‘I must have done something wrong’, I say ‘you did nothing wrong, these people are skilled at what they do, don’t blame yourselves’.”

Hegarty said pedophiles also destroyed their own marriages and families through their crimes.

“You see, when you speak to the offenders’ families, that their families are victims too – they were living with a monster and were never aware,” he said.

“That’s another difficult aspect of our job – we may rescue the child, we may arrest the offender, but then there’s the family of the offender who had no idea what was going on.

“The level of betrayal that some of these families feel is actually a very difficult thing to deal with … you see it rip things apart.”

The emblem of SA’s Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team. Picture: Matt Loxton

JACET BY THE NUMBERS

Since the inception of SA JACET in 2015, the unit has received 496 referrals for investigation

2022/23:

Average active investigations per month: 12

Arrests: 88

Children removed from harm: 23 in Australia, seven internationally

– July 2022: 15 investigations, nine arrests.

– August 2022: 16 investigations, nine arrests.

– September 2022: Eight investigations, two arrests.

– October 2022: 13 investigations, eight arrests.

– November 2022: 13 investigations, nine arrests.

– December 2022: Five investigations, five arrests.

– January 2023: 10 investigations, six arrests.

– February 2023: 17 investigations, 13 arrests.

– March 2023: 11 investigations, 10 arrests.

– April 2023: Three investigations, two arrests.

– May 2023: 12 investigations, eight arrests.

– June 2023: 12 investigations, seven arrests.