Police warn parents online groomers will lure kids as remote schooling resumes in Melbourne
Parents have been urged to monitor their child’s online activity when term 3 begins remotely next week. Police fear have issued a warning that all mums and dads need to be across.
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Police have warned paedophiles will prey on children when remote schooling resumes next week.
Children have been groomed online at alarming rates since the outbreak of coronavirus.
The demand for child sex abuse material has been so immense that websites trading photos and videos of victims have crashed because they can’t cope with the huge amounts of traffic.
Australian Federal Police Commander Jamie Strauss said the explosion of online sexual offending against children has led to the creation of “COVID-19-themed” abuse forums.
These forums have more than 1000 networked members who send and receive abuse material and talk about their offending “tendencies”.
During the first lockdown some of these sites crashed due to the extreme volume of traffic.
Commander Strauss said predators will strike when children start term 3 remotely.
He urged parents to closely monitor their children’s online activity to help keep them safe.
“We suspect that offenders will use this second wave as an opportunity to find more potential child victims, as young people spend an increasing amount of time online with limited adult supervision,” he said
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation child protection triage unit received more than 21, 000 reports of child exploitation in the year to June 30, 2020 – up 50 per cent on last year.
The number of child abuse files shared online also doubled at the start of the pandemic.
Perverts are using online games and social media platforms to lure in children.
They have become more cunning, often asking other offenders advice how not to get caught by police.
Commander Strauss said: “In some instances, we are seeing children groomed, and then blackmailed to produce more and more extreme material with the fear that if they don’t do it, it will be shared.”
“In other matters, parents, carers, or adults with access to children are being groomed online, or willingly engaging in the sexual exploitation of children and sharing of such imagery and videos.”
Commander Strauss said parents need to talk to their children about being safe online, know the websites they are using and tighten privacy settings.
“By the time law enforcement is called in to remove a child from harm or bring an offender to justice, it’s already too late. A child has been severely impacted, for life,” he said.
In Victoria, AFP arrested 32 people who were charged with 349 child sex abuse related offences in the year to June 30, 2020.
This is a huge increase on the same time last year where half the number of people were arrested and 135 charges laid.
AFP rescued 134 children from sex offenders in the year to June 30.
Online child sexual exploitation can be reported to ACCCE.
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