Online child abusers’ disturbing new tactic

Children as young as six are being abused in a sick new trend among depraved internet predators, sometimes while their parents are in the very next room. Here’s how to protect your kids.

Children as young as six are being “coerced” into producing sexual material by depraved internet predators, Australia’s leading online safety agency has warned, sometimes while their parents are in the very next room.

The eSafety Commission lifted the lid on the disturbing trend at its conference in Sydney on Wednesday, also revealing investigations into child sexual abuse online were on the rise in Australia, with more than 1900 probes launched in June alone to combat a new “virtual flood” of the illegal material on the web.

Investigations into child sexual abuse online are on the rise.

The harrowing trend has helped to fuel a rise in online child abuse investigations in Australia, with the eSafety Commission launching 8441 probes in the year to June compared to 8043 the year before.

Following the investigations, more than 35,000 child abuse images were deleted after being referred to international authorities at INHOPE, and more than 8500 reports were passed on to the Australian Federal Police.

But online safety experts said they were still struggling to work out the balance between scaring parents away from the topic and issuing warnings that were “just frightening enough” to encourage them to take action.

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Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant highlighted the harmful trend on the opening day of eSafety 19, revealing online paedophiles were increasingly targeting and grooming young Australian children to produce “coerced child sexual abuse material”.

“We’re seeing a virtual flooding on both the clear web and the Dark Web of young people — as young as six and seven — who are being directed remotely to engage in sex acts for the camera,” she said.

“Often our investigators are watching videos and they can hear the parents’ voices in the next room. This is literally happening under parents’ noses.

“They’re in the other room, completely oblivious, because their adolescent is in the bathroom or in the bedroom with a connected device.”

Many parents are not aware their children could be targeted by online predators.

Detective Inspector Jon Rouse, who heads the Queensland Police Service’s Taskforce Argos, gave the example of a girl who was exploited by a man in a Skype video call after being groomed on Instagram.

“We have 15 videos of this child,” he said. “She’s clearly in her bathroom. We know her family are home because at one point you can hear her mother call her to dinner.”

Det Insp Rouse said the offender subjected the girl to more than 30 minutes of “brutal self-humiliation” before telling her to stop crying and “never tell a soul about this”.

Ms Inman Grant also warned some offenders were using child abuse images in “sexploitation” and “sextortion” attempts to steal money from tweens.

Netsafe chief executive Martin Cocker said many parents were not aware their children could be targeted by online predators in this way, and cybersafety experts found it challenging to educate them of the risks without scaring them away.

“As parents, we don’t think of our children as vulnerable. They can go from being quite savvy to vulnerable because of this sexploitation quite quickly,” Mr Cocker said.

“We don’t want to frighten people away from (technology) but we need to be just frightening enough to draw their attention without frightening them away from working on it.”

Ms Inman Grant said parents shouldn’t just remove all technology from homes, but should discuss scams and internet risks with their children.

“Although it seems like the perennial parenting challenge of our time, sometimes it’s about basic things like just starting the conversation early about what you’re kids are doing online, letting them know that they can come to you if something goes wrong, and setting boundaries and limitations,” she said.