Online child safety experts put pressure on Australian government

In an open letter, child protection and anti-slavery organisations urge the Australian government and technology companies to take stronger action to stop the ongoing sexual abuse of children online. Meanwhile, Christians are being called upon to support the fight for child safety.

The open joint letter was sent earlier this month (September 2024) to Michelle Rowland MP, Minister for Communications for the Australian Government. It was sent in time for the government’s review of the country’s Online Safety Act, which addresses “new and emerging dangers”.

In particular, the child protection and anti-slavery groups want the existing law to be amended to make tech companies in Australia more responsible for stopping the production and distribution of disgusting material “on their platforms and services, including via live-streamed video”.

In the letter, the experts call for the voluntary Duty of Care framework of industry codes and standards for digital service providers to be made legally binding. At the same time, strengthening the Online Safety Act should include “safety by design” for device manufacturers when creating new products and services – adding that penalties should be imposed for non-compliance with these requirements. Finally, digital service providers should be legally required to report any suspected child abuse.

The letter also cited a national survey that found that 7.5 percent of Australian men, out of 2,000 respondents, admitted to committing online child sex crimes. These men were “avid users of youth-focused social media platforms.”

According to the experts, compared to normal, non-predatory Australian men, these predators are more likely to use YouTube, Instagram, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Skype, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger.

According to experts, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation has specifically mapped online sexual abuse of Australian children.

“Australian children as young as eight years old are being forced by online predators to perform sexual acts that are live-streamed. They often record the videos and share them on the darknet. They then blackmail the victims into producing more explicit content.”

Concerns about some social media sites are a major concern. The letter criticizes the website ‘OnlyFans’. This website is known for paid sex subscriptions and according to experts there is sexual abuse of children, sometimes with the involvement of parents and caregivers.

“In the case of live-streamed child sexual abuse, vulnerable children who may not themselves be end users of the technology experience repeated sexual abuse by a trusted adult, which is live-streamed to paying sex offenders around the world, including in Australia,” the experts said in the letter.

The Australian Institute for Criminology (AIC), cited in the letter, found that “popular video calling platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Skype have been used by Australian predatory men to watch live-streamed child sexual abuse in vulnerable countries such as the Philippines.”

IJM Australia, one of the signatories to the letter, does not do casework in Australia, but works with authorities in the Philippines to target criminal predators who exploit children there and “to prevent other traffickers from abusing children in the first place.” This work includes rescuing victims, providing pro bono (free) legal aid to child survivors, and providing aftercare specialists to provide survivors with long-term psychological support on their road to recovery.

David Braga, Chief Executive Officer of IJM Australia, defined online child sexual exploitation as a crime where “children are sexually abused by traffickers who livestream their abuse to perpetrators who direct and pay for it anywhere in the world, including Australia.”

Nearly half a million children in the Philippines are trafficked to produce child abuse material for paying customers, Braga said in comments sent to Christian Daily International. He added that Australian offenders are the third-largest consumers, after the US and the UK

“Through International Justice Mission’s open letter to the Minister for Communications, we, along with leading experts in anti-slavery and child protection, are calling on the Australian Government to urgently impose legal obligations on technology companies to prevent their platforms from being used to live stream child sexual abuse,” Braga said.

Braga added that the IJM wants the Australian government to “do more” to protect young people from online sexual exploitation by strengthening existing laws.

“We are calling on technology companies to face higher fines if they fail to meet their online safety obligations under Australian law – including fines of up to 10 percent of annual turnover for digital service providers,” Braga said.

“Online service providers should be subject to an enforceable duty of care. The responsibility should lie with them to ensure that their technical design, their business model, their algorithms do not facilitate the online sexual exploitation of children and that their products cannot be misused to create, distribute or consume child abuse material.”

According to Braga, it is especially important that children can be safe online. According to him, the realistic possibility for this lies with companies that are responsible for managing the internet and meeting the needs of consumers.

“Service providers, device manufacturers and operating system vendors have the power, resources and technical capabilities to prevent the creation and distribution of child abuse material in the first place, and they should be required to do so,” he said.

“Service providers who break the law and fail to protect children exposed to their products should pay the consequences of their failure.

“Stronger and enforceable measures are crucial to delivering an Online Safety Act that will prevent Australian offenders from harming children, wherever they are in the world.”

In addition to the open letter, IJM Australia is asking for broad support from churches, local organisations and individuals to advocate for better legislation and robust implementation of such laws.

“IJM Australia invites Australians, including Australian Christians, to advocate with their federal parliamentarians for stronger online safety laws that protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse,” Braga said.

The organization is asking Christians to respond to the prophet Isaiah’s call for God’s people to “seek justice” and “help the oppressed,” said Briony Camp, IJM Policy & Campaigns Lead. “Many Australian churches already support IJM’s work in the Philippines by partnering with us financially and through prayer,” she added.

Carol Ronken, director of research at Bravehearts, an Australian child protection organisation, said the rights group had signed the open letter “because we recognise this is a growing risk if we don’t all take action.”

“Those of us working ‘on the ground’ are more aware of the vulnerabilities children and young people face in an increasingly technology-dependent world,” Ronken said. “We saw a huge increase in young people reaching out to others online during COVID restrictions, and an equal increase in those seeking to sexually exploit children using social media, gaming, youth-focused sites, etc., to meet and seduce children. These trends have only continued to grow.”

Ronken added that implementing stronger legislation is crucial to hold the tech sector accountable and enforce a duty of care to “prevent harm on platforms, including harmful content, responding quickly to reported harm and considering risks to children when developing technology is critical.”

Everyone has a responsibility to protect children and young people, Ronken stressed. Empowering and educating young people of all ages about the risks of exploitation in a responsible way was “critical” to making them less vulnerable. She pointed to an additional problem found in an unpublished study, namely that while 12 percent of child sexual exploitation images were created by adults, most images (74 percent) were generated by young people.

“The online space is increasingly a place where children and young people find support and connection, but there are risks, including exposure to inappropriate material, contact/grooming by offenders, physical dangers such as meeting people they have met online, exploitation, sexting and harassment or bullying. We need to have those courageous conversations with the children and young people in our lives.”

According to Ronken, churches can “play a crucial role” in the fight for the safety of young people by creating “child-safe environments.”

Signatories to the open letter included International Justice Mission Australia (IJM Australia), a Christian organisation, along with the United Church in Australia, Office of the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Be Slavery Free, ICMEC Australia, Bravehearts, Hagar, A21 Australia, ACRATH and ACU: the Institute of Child Protection Studies.