Over 40,000 verified reports of online child sexual exploitation were made to The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) in 2022–23. That’s over 100 reports every day. And these numbers are trending upwards.
Cases of sextortion have soared by 400 percent in some states in the last 18 months.
Targets and perpetrators
Young people are navigating a digital world where one in seven minors are asked for nudes by a stranger online on a weekly or even a daily basis.
This complex moral and social challenge demands our collective attention, because despite ongoing research and reports calling for urgent national action, public awareness remains low.
The vast majority of four-year-olds are using the internet in some capacity, according to research. By the time those children turn 11 years old, the majority of children are using it unsupervised.
A report in 2022 revealed that of all 9–12-year-olds, the majority (two out of three) interact with unfamiliar adults online. One in six children have had romantic or sexual conversations with an online-only contact.
There is no longer an ‘online’ and ‘real’ world dichotomy here; for young people online is the world in which they live, meet friends and navigate relationships.
Perpetrators of online sexual exploitation are accessing children through gaming, chat functions, video calls, dating apps, social media applications and other platforms.
Recent cases of sextortion in Australia are dispelling myths of grooming occurring over long periods of time, allowing for identification and intervention.
Instead, evidence reveals that grooming can take multiple forms (often involving the deception of posing as another young person), and the grooming process, including the solicitation of images, can occur over a matter of hours, often with devastating consequences.
At particular risk are young people in out-of-home care, who identify as LGBTIQ+, who have multicultural or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, or who are living with a disability. Children from these cohorts are increasingly seeking connection via online platforms.
The notion of ‘stranger danger’ is not effective here. In around 50–70 percent of cases of online child sexual abuse, the abuser is known to the child.
Research shows that adolescents who are known to the victim inflict the highest proportion of child sexual abuse, with adolescents in a romantic relationship close behind.
Nonconsensual sexting and/or distribution of self-generated images are increasingly associated with acrimonious adolescent relationships.
According to a 2022 report by the World Health Organisation, almost all the nonconsensual-distribution offenders against youth were themselves young people.
‘Grooming can take multiple forms (often involving the deception of posing as another young person), and the grooming process, including the solicitation of images, can occur over a matter of hours, often with devastating consequences.’
Access to technology
Any conversation about increased unsupervised access to technology must address one key consequence: heightened exposure to pornographic content, whether stumbled upon innocently or sought out deliberately.
In Australia boys are, on average, aged 13 years at the time of their first exposure to pornography.
Exposure to pornography can strengthen attitudes supportive of sexual violence and violence against women and harmful sexual behaviour between adolescents.
A report from the eSafety Commissioner in 2023 revealed that young people described online pornography as an avenue to learn about sex.
Mitigating this problem from a schools standpoint faces numerous challenges, especially around consistency and quality of preventative education.
Myths and misconceptions that age-appropriate sexual health and safety education in schools ‘promotes’ sex, and that sexual abuse is ‘happening elsewhere’, continue to hamper the urgent discussion needed to increase sexual safety knowledge in Australian schools.
Providing sexual abuse evention programmes
The Victorian Child Safe Standards for education providers state that young people should be offered access to sexual abuse prevention programmes and to relevant information in an age-appropriate way.
There’s a need to build our confidence and capacity to educate young people in this space.
At minimum, Australia needs a well-resourced, consistently implemented, and rigorous sexual health and safety education programme that builds upon the existing Respectful Relationships curriculum.
One such professional learning programme designed to meet these challenges is Power to Kids, from the MacKillop Institute, designed to strengthen prevention and responses to child sexual abuse, harmful sexual behaviour and dating violence for young people in residential care and school settings.
We often hear from schools of the need for deeper training for educators to build their knowledge and capacity to better prevent, identify and respond to indicators of abuse.
The long-standing gap in sex education is now impacting the confidence of the current generation of teachers who have been charged with the responsibility to teach the next generation.
Educators require the support of their school system leaders, parents and the wider school community to put that training into practice.
They need to have confidence that having sensitive and informed conversations with young people about sexual safety will be viewed as aligned with the duty of care to keep children safe and will not result in punitive action.
We also need to get better at fostering proactive conversations around ways to seek help.
A key strategy we teach through the Power to Kids programme is having ‘brave conversations’ around sexual safety.
Aligned with the One Talk at a Time campaign, it is important that parents/carers and educators raise sexual safety topics proactively when opportunities arise, and ask questions or raise concerns when they notice possible indicators of abuse.
Creating safe environments
The Royal Commission confirmed that it can take over 20 years for a child to disclose sexual abuse.
Disclosures can be partial and nonlinear and are more likely to be made to a peer or sibling. This means that having proactive conversations can help establish safe environments for young people to come forward, ask questions or seek support when needed.
The other important reality for parents to grapple with is that their child may be the one causing harm. Creating safe environments for young people to share potentially problematic behaviours and have them addressed are just as critical.
A common anxiety among professionals working with young people is that addressing child sexual abuse is too daunting a problem.
There is a wide perception that the problem of child sexual abuse to ‘too big’ or ‘too hard’ to take action that will make a meaningful impact. This can lead to a sense of helplessness, being overwhelmed, which can lead to a lack of public engagement.
That lack of engagement has been a longstanding concern.
Research conducted by ACCCE in 2020 revealed that many parents, carers, and educators hold negative attitudes towards the topic, but this hinders their ability to implement effective prevention measures by ‘disassociation or limited engagement’.
To make things additionally complicated, victim-blaming is more likely in instances of online sexual abuse.
The ACCCE report revealed that 80 percent of parents/carers would respond with anger at their child if they found out they had shared images online, and 73 percent would be angry if their child spoke with strangers online.
‘Many participants reported that they would be more angry at their child in the instance of online child sexual exploitation than if the abuse happened in the offline world.
This was because they assumed their children should “know better” and could easily “just switch off” the device to protect themselves’. Some parents also reported they would not report or seek help due to shame and embarrassment of perceived ‘bad parenting’.
Despite these beliefs, 89 percent of parents believed their children would tell them if something happened to them online.
Ultimately, shame and stigma can still overshadow our desire to protect and believe our children.
Unchecked, our discomfort can prevent us from educating ourselves and our children, and prevent us from listening, believing and responding to children when they come forward.
What to do
To effectively address child sexual abuse, we need to foster a sense of shared responsibility among technology companies, corporations, financial institutions, law enforcement, schools, and therapeutic services.
Collaboration across all aspects of prevention and response is essential. Victim-survivors have highlighted the need for greater consistency in quality, trauma-informed practices, collaborative problem-solving, information sharing, and communication within the service system.
Additionally, it’s important to acknowledge that our attitudes towards sexual abuse are often shaped by our personal experiences and education, which may include trauma.
It’s crucial to acknowledge that many educators, parents, and carers may have experienced abuse themselves. Self-care is essential as we educate ourselves on this important issue.
A shift in public attitudes will require an investment in both prevention strategies and effective responses for victims of abuse.
That means developing proactive approaches that encourage open conversations with young people, encourage help-seeking, and foster safe environments for discussing sexual safety.
- First published in Eureka Street
- Smeeta Singh is National Programs Director Power to Kids, a professional learning programme within The MacKillop Institute that strengthens prevention and responses to child sexual abuse, harmful sexual behaviour and dating violence for young people in residential care and school settings.