Police warn kids are falling victim to revenge porn, online predators

Online learning during lockdown has created more opportunities for cyber crime and harassment, police say, with children spending more time on electronic devices.

Police receive reports almost daily about young people falling victim to revenge porn or being coerced into posting nude images online.

The incidents are also under-reported, according to the new boss of the NSW Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad, because children don’t always feel comfortable telling their parents or school.

“It is almost a daily occurrence across the state that we are notified of a young person, who may have sent images in confidence to a boyfriend or girlfriend, then become aware their images have been shared – even some that have been sent out across schools or social groups,” Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty said.

Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad boss Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

With young people spending more time on their devices during the current Covid lockdown, the environment has also created more opportunities for cyber crime and harassment, police say.

That includes students sharing intimate photos without consent, or predators targeting chat rooms on gaming sites and social media to groom children.

These types of predators are targeted heavily by Strike Force Trawler, which in the past two months arrested on average one person a week for allegedly trying to groom children online for sex.

A 37-year-old man was arrested in Beaumont Hills on July 6 accused of engaging in sexually explicit conversations with a teenager online. Picture: NSW Police

Disturbingly, there is no shortage of work and Police Minister David Elliott has revealed 10 new additional officers will soon join the squad.

“It’s one of the toughest jobs any police officer is asked to do, but the detectives in the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad are dedicated, focused and deserve our heartfelt thanks and support,” Mr Elliott told The Sunday Telegraph.

Supt Doherty appealed to parents to not only keep an eye on what their kids were doing online throughout lockdown, but to also create an environment where children felt they could talk to an adult if something dis go wrong.

“You have to be continually engaging with your kids and assure them they haven’t done anything wrong,” she said.

“What tends to happen is the kid spirals and thinks ‘I’ve (sent a picture) once, this person tells me if I don’t do it again they will send it on or tell someone so I have to keep doing it’.

“We don’t want kids to internalise it because trying to keep it to yourself makes it so much bigger.”

A lot of those incidents weren’t reported to police, she said, but those that were came from schools or parents themselves.

Police work closely with schools and the eSafety Commission, she said, to try and get the image or video taken down with a close eye on the young person’s mental health.

Elizabeth Payne, 21, was suspended from high school after her nude photo was unknowingly shared among her classmates. Pic: Supplied

In 2017, NSW introduced revenge porn laws, which made it a crime to distribute intimate images of a person without their consent.

If those images involve a child under 16, it can be viewed in the eyes of the law as disseminating child pornography.

University student Elizabeth Payne was 13 when she was pressured into sending a nude photograph to a fellow male student.

The photo, sent on Snapchat on the understanding it couldn’t be saved, was forwarded on and, soon enough, her classmates knew about it.

Ms Payne was suspended and offered one session with a school counsellor, but felt like there was little regard for the toll the situation played on her mental health.

She was told she was lucky she wasn’t going to end up on the sex offenders register for sharing child pornography.

“It was a punishment, it wasn’t a response of ‘we are here to help you’,” she said.

In hindsight, the 21-year-old said the approach from the school should have been trauma-informed and acknowledged the fact her consent had been taken away.

“Instead of just scaring us with the consequences of what can happen if we send nude photos, instil a sense of agency and bodily autonomy in young people,” Ms Payne, now a youth activist, said.

“Make sure they know the circumstances of which they are consenting to things and make sure we have consent education so the people sending these photos on know that isn’t OK and violating consent.”