Australian Federal Police respond to disturbing child abuse investigation claims

Federal police have responded to claims child abuse offenders weren’t being investigated during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Online platforms need to step up to help reduce the threat of child abuse, a report says. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

A senior federal cop has slapped down claims federal police were unable to execute search warrants on potential child abuse offenders during the height of pandemic because of basic resourcing issues.

The emphatic response from Child Protection Operations Superintendent Paula Hudson came after a damning report declared “stretched” and “exhausted” law enforcement officers were struggling to keep up with an alarming surge in online child exploitation, abuse and grooming.

The University of NSW research had a global focus, but its lead author Michael Salter provided startling details about the impact to investigations in Australia.

“I’m aware that there were police forces in Australia who were not executing search warrants for a period of time during the pandemic simply because they didn’t have their infection control procedures in place to make it safe for police to be in the field,” the criminologist told NCA NewsWire.

“And we know that the child protection services had similar sorts of challenges – how do you go out and how do you investigate child abuse complaints when that puts your staff at risk of COVID-19 infection?”

But Superintendent Hudson insisted the pandemic was no barrier to targeting child exploitation offenders.

RELATED: Shocking spike in child abuse revealed

The AFP said it charged 187 people with alleged child abuse-related offences last year.

She said the Australian Federal Police’s Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) charged 187 people with 1966 child abuse-related offences in 2020.

“If the community thinks that COVID-19 restrictions have stopped the AFP and the AFP-led ACCCE from operational activity to protect children, they are wrong,” the senior cop told NCA NewsWire.

“Our investigators continue to operate on both the dark and clear net, ensuring that children are safe and our joint anti child exploitation Teams across the country are executing search warrants on a near daily basis arresting offenders.”

Another disturbing finding in the UNSW report, funded by the Australian eSafety Commission, was authorities across the world failed to ramp up operations as reports of offences surged, which Superintendent Hudson said didn’t relate to Australia.

“To ensure the protection of children during the COVID-19 pandemic, the AFP bolstered also resources within the ACCCE child protection triage unit and ACCCE covert online engagement team to address the increase in referrals received,” she said.

Dr Salter also highlighted significant and concerning ignorance from social media and online gaming platforms that he said let complaints and alerts of abuse go “unanswered”.

He said the “clear message” was technology companies needed to step up and take responsibility for the horrific rates of abuse occurring on their social media and online gaming platforms.

“We had a range of complaints from many agencies that they were dealing with the overflow from social media companies who just weren‘t responding to reports fast enough and hadn’t invested in online safety during the pandemic,” he said.

“So cases and complaints were just going unanswered but, more broadly, their platforms are just so unsafe for children that at a time of crisis there were no brakes to put on, there were no safeguards to raise.

“Children were abjectly at risk on these online platforms and there was just nothing that could be done about it.”

The criminologist said there was “absolutely no question the epidemic levels of online abuse and exploitation” during the pandemic was “a result of the lack of preventive measures from online platforms”.

“To a certain extent, they've tied their own hands behind their back because it’s crazy that the online profile of a user who is sexually exploiting children and the online profile of a legitimate user appear the same to the social media company,” he said.

“They haven't designed their platform to make those distinctions.”