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ICMEC Australia serves as a crucial advocate and resource in the fight against online child sexual exploitation (CSE). We are boldly confronting this issue when most would rather avoid it. Alongside our coalition of partners, we strive to proactively halt and prevent its occurrence.
Our mission is clear: to support and strengthen the professionals who detect, report, prosecute and prevent online CSE. As an independent not-for-profit organisation, we collaborate with various stakeholders, such as financial services and corporate entities, law enforcement, policymakers, academics, and NGOs, to develop strategies to protect children from harm.
Through commitment to data-driven initiatives, training and research, ICMEC Australia works tirelessly to prevent and combat CSE crimes, aiming to create a safer world for young children.
In Australia, more than one in four children are sexually abused (ACMS 2023). This statistic includes over one in three girls and almost one in five boys. The abuse of these children is a public health crisis. We are facing an epidemic.
The widespread use of online technology around the world is changing how children can be targeted and abused. Sadly, it allows perpetrators of child abuse to reach victims quickly through various ways. Any child, anywhere, can now become a potential victim if they or their abuser has access to a digital device. Further, the abuse can be recorded and distributed using online technology, causing repeated trauma for victims as the content is shared and reshared potentially millions of times.
It is crucial to understand that ‘online abuse’ is not only virtual. These are real children experiencing physical, psychological, and emotional harm. The term "online" refers to how these children are accessed and how their abuse is distributed or traded. This form of abuse is not lesser; in fact, it can be even more devastating.
The sexual abuse and exploitation of children, facilitated online, includes a range of offences, which include:
AI-generated CSAM
The use of AI to generate CSAM that looks like it involves real children (or based on images, audio or other depictions of real children).
Live streaming of abuse
Real-time broadcasting of the exploitation and abuse of children.
Online grooming
When an adult makes online contact with someone under the age of 16 with the intention of establishing a relationship to enable sexual abuse.
Travelling to offend
An expressed desire or intent either to travel to another location to sexually abuse a child, or to arrange for the victim to travel to meet the offender with the same intent.
Child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
The use of AI to generate CSAM that looks like it involves real children (or based on images, audio or other depictions of real children).
Image-based abuse
Real-time broadcasting of the exploitation and abuse of children.
Sexual extortion (sextortion)
Online blackmail where a perpetrator threatens to reveal explicit images of a person unless they give in to their demands, which are sometimes for financial gain.
Self-generated CSAM
Sexual images that are taken by a person of themselves where the person is under the age of 18.
For more extensive information and data on online child sexual exploitation and abuse in Australia, please refer to the ACCCE and the eSafety Commissioner.
The Childlight - Global Child Safety Institute estimates that in the past year alone, over 300 million children were subject to abuse behaviours online (Childlight, 2024).
According to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the most severe category of child sexual abuse material has doubled since 2020 (IWF, 2022).
Quarterly sextortion reports to eSafety increased from 600 in 2022 to 1700 in the same quarters of 2023 (eSafety, 2023).
In 2022, the IWF confirmed a total of 255,570 URLs contained images or videos of children suffering abuse (IWF, 2023).
eSafety reported that close to half of young people aged 14-17 in Australia had received a sexual message from someone online in the past year (eSafety, 2022).
Conversations with children on social gaming platforms can escalate into high-risk grooming situations within 19 seconds, with an average grooming time of just 45 minutes. (WeProtect, 2023).
ICMEC Australia acknowledges Traditional Owners throughout Australia and their continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and Elders past and present.
