AFP Commissioner reveals new taskforce to stop sadistic torture gangs online
A new AFP team has been set up to tackle a shocking surge in teens joining sadistic online gangs that groom and abuse kids for fun, and encourage victims to kill pets. WARNING: Graphic
Exclusive: A crack Australian Federal Police team has been set up to tackle a shocking surge in teens joining sadistic online gangs that groom and abuse other kids for fun.
The new AFP Commissioner will outline in a speech on Wednesday how victims are being forced to share sexual images of themselves, self-harm, commit violent acts against their siblings, as well as kill their pets.
Cases overseas have included inciting suicide and murder.
Members of these groups revel in creating chaos and anarchy and are also involved in various other crimes, including hacking, cyberattacks and terrorism.
The perpetrators, who are typically young males aged 11 to 25, are finding each other via gaming platforms such as Roblox. They share common beliefs on violent extremism, nihilism, Nazism, Satanism and sadism.
US-based Bradley Cadenhead, the leader of cult group 764 – one of the main criminal organisations which this masthead reported on extensively last year – was jailed for 80 years aged just 17, for possessing and promoting child abuse material.
In Commissioner Krissy Barrett’s first address to the National Press Club, she will talk about counter-terrorism, Colombian narco-terrorist groups, pedophilia, and human trafficking, but will focus heavily on the threat of sadistic online exploitation.
She said the new Taskforce Pompilid is the AFP’s commitment to eradicating these individuals.
“There are decentralised online crime networks and loosely-affiliated individuals in Australia and offshore who are glorifying crime online, such as sadistic online exploitation, cyber attacks and violence,” Commissioner Barrett said.
“These crimes are now spilling into the real world and have real world consequences.
“They are crimefluencers, and are motivated by anarchy and hurting others, with most of their victims pre-teen or teenage girls.
“These networks, which I will not name because it will validate the notoriety they crave, are a new and disturbing front in traditional gendered-based violence.”
She said overwhelmingly, the perpetrators are young boys and young men from Western English-speaking backgrounds, while the victims are young girls who are being intimidated, exploited and controlled.
Commissioner Barrett said the motivation of individuals within these networks is not financial nor is it for sexual gratification – but is purely for their amusement, or to be popular online without fully understanding the consequences.
“These groups have a similar culture to multi-player, online gaming culture, and hunt, stalk and draw-in victims from a range of online platforms,” she said.
“To be accepted into these networks, the perpetrators often have to pass a test or undertake a task, such as providing videos of the self-harm of others, or other gory content.”
The taskforce, which includes investigators and analysts from cybercrime, counter terrorism, and child protection, will work closely with domestic and international law enforcement partners to target the network.
Commissioner Barrett said police were working with Microsoft to develop a prototype AI tool that will interpret emojis and Gen Z and Alpha slang in encrypted communications and chat groups to identify sadistic online exploitation.
Insiders say these criminal organisations, which operate globally in mainly western English speaking countries, tend to target vulnerable children, mainly young girls, often finding their victims in online chat rooms for self-harm or eating disorders.
Once they have gained their trust, they coerce them into providing explicit images of themselves, before blackmailing them into taking part in increasingly more extreme acts, such as self-harming or even suicide, hurting their siblings and killing their pets.
The offenders will often trade abuse material with other members of the online criminal network to build their status.
Part of the ethos of these groups, some of which have been likened to cults, is to cause chaos and anarchy, with police saying they’ve been responsible for large-scale cyber attacks, extremist-inspired violence, doxxing, swatting, and violent offences in Australia and overseas.
Last year, this masthead exclusively revealed how violent, sadistic online groups were a growing issue in Australia.
One traumatised NSW victim was coerced into etching her perpetrator’s name into her skin and blackmailed into creating child sex abuse material of herself that was streamed live on the internet.
She only revealed what was happening to her when members tried to persuade her to kill her cat, which she refused to do.
One of her abusers, a man called Kyle Spitze from the US, who used the alias ‘Criminal’ and was also a member of 764 pleaded guilty earlier this year to possessing child sex abuse material and distributing animal crushing videos.
