Pedophiles coerce kids as young as three to film themselves

There has been a spike in child sexual abuse videos and images being made by children themselves on their mobile phones.

‘When we give a child a ­connected device, we are potentially allowing a stranger into their lives,’ says ­eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Picture: News Regional Media

There has been a spike in child sexual abuse videos and images being made by children themselves on their mobile phones under the ­instruction of pedophiles.

New figures revealed exclusively to The Weekend Australian by the eSafety Commissioner show a doubling in overall investigations into online child sexual abuse and other abhorrent violent material online, up from about 10,000 in 2018 to nearly 20,000 last year. Among the material, ­investigators say, they are seeing a higher volume of “coerced, self-generated child sexual abuse material­ ­involving children”, some as young as three years old.

The videos seen by investig­ators include many cases of children, either alone or in a group, recording themselves on their ­mobile phones or webcams taking off their clothes, and engaging in sexual acts.

The children are acting at the instruction of a person on the other end of the phone, who is ­recording it.

Many of these videos are then shared in pedophile forums on the clear or the dark web. “When we give a child a ­connected device, we are potentially allowing a stranger into their lives,” said Australia’s ­eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. “And our research reveals that 94 per cent of parents have given their child access to an online ­device by the age of four. In this context it is disturbing that we are seeing an increasing volume of coerced, self-generated child sexual abuse material ­online.”

Ahead of Safer Internet Day next Tuesday, Ms Inman Grant also endorsed a letter sent on Thursday to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg from more than 100 child safety advocates and organisations urging him to ditch his plan for end-to-end ­encryption on all its platforms, ­including the popular Facebook Messenger. The groups are worried that encryptio­n will increase the risk to children by allowing abusers to ­escalate their grooming activity without fear of detection.