Become a partner in our mission of building a world where every child is protected and can thrive.
MAKE A DONATION
When it comes to keeping children safe, it’s essential we pool our resources and capabilities to deliver our most robust response. In late October we hosted our inaugural Financial Symposium, which shone a light on the critical need for collaboration in the battle against child sexual abuse and exploitation. With nearly 100 key stakeholders joining together from various sectors of financial institutions, including financial crime, corporate affairs, and social impact teams, the event illuminated the pressing need for united action in protecting children.
The Symposium featured expert speakers who delved into emerging trends in child exploitation crimes. They provided invaluable insights for financial institutions, outlining practical measures to implement protocols and risk mitigation in their organisations. The event underscored the complexity of fighting against child sexual exploitation and abuse, emphasising that this daunting task transcends industry boundaries and permeates all aspects of our community.
We have the right people here today to fill us with hope… and to help build a safer world for children through our already world-leading financial and payments services in Australia.– Anna Bowden (CEO, ICMEC Australia)
Eliminating child sexual exploitation and abuse from our society, and keeping children safe, is a mammoth task. And this work extends beyond one industry. It has touch points across our whole society, requiring the facilitation of collaboration and information sharing to help key industry professionals protect children, a role that is central to our work at ICMEC Australia. This is especially true when it comes to following the online financial footprint of this crime. The regulatory obligations for financial institutions with respect to this crime are extensive. And for smaller financial institutions, it can be difficult to effectively apply their limited resources to best protect children at the same time as meeting reporting requirements.
The Symposium provided a platform for professionals from diverse backgrounds across Australia to engage in important discussions. Witnessing this collaborative effort was a stark reminder that the fight against child sexual abuse cannot be won by a single entity alone, and we were inspired by the positive feedback and proud of the essential conversations taking place on the day.
Operating under the Chatham House Rule, the event facilitated candid discussions among changemakers within the financial sector. All the presentations and panels emphasised a fundamental truth: children deserve the highest level of protection, and combating this heinous crime demands a robust collaborative response.
Throughout the day, we were confronted with the harsh realities of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation, a topic often omitted from public discourse. The Symposium highlighted that behind every suspicious matter report, every image, and every video, there exists a real child whose life has been irrevocably altered. The responsibility to protect these vulnerable children rests on society as a whole, emphasising the urgency for unwavering commitment to this cause.
As a relatively new organisation with a small team of experts, we are acutely aware that we cannot do this work without the support of a considerable number of passionate and committed individuals. We are grateful for the efforts of many who lean into this work, and the Symposium was the perfect opportunity to launch our Illuminate Program. Aptly named because this is a crime that thrives in the dark, the program will serve to recognise those who go above and beyond to help shine a light and protect children from harm.
We launched the program by honouring our first ICMEC Australia Ally, Jeremy Moller, Senior Advisor and Lawyer (Special Counsel), Risk Advisory at Norton Rose Fulbright. Jeremy has contributed many hours in an advisory capacity and has been a key supporter of our journey for almost five years. Instrumental in the establishment of the ICMEC Australia office, Jeremy has been a constant advocate and contributor to our work since. The Financial Symposium would not have been the success it was without his considerable input. We thank Jeremy for his tireless efforts and for graciously accepting this inaugural position, which will see him continue to support our work into the future.
Our inaugural Financial Symposium ultimately served as a beacon of hope, uniting stakeholders in a collective pledge to prioritise a strong response to this crime and create a safer future for all children, everywhere. This inspiring day illuminated the complex path forward, one paved with collaboration, awareness, innovation and an unyielding dedication to the protection of our children.
Tackling society’s most wicked problems is something that concerns many business leaders. And there are few more wicked than the online sexual exploitation of children. Offenders hide in the depths of the dark web – as well as the clear web – and sell, purchase, and trade illicit child sexual abuse material. Each image and video is a crime scene, and harms an innocent child.
When child sexual exploitation is facilitated online, it adds another level of difficulty to the detection of this crime, which offenders aim to capitalise in their ruthless attempts to harm and abuse children. But, contrary to common perception, this crime is not undetectable, creating many traceable digital footprints – including within financial systems.
Finding ways to connect these digital footprints is essential to identifying perpetrators, and makes cross-industry collaboration a key weapon in the fight against child sexual exploitation. Financial institutions play a vital role in responding to this crime, not only by collaborating with other key industries like law enforcement, government, regulators, and not-for-profits, but within their own organisation across various teams. Whilst technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation is a responsibility for financial crimes teams, ensuring that financial institutions meet their regulatory obligations, it’s also a prominent human rights concern that should be embedded in an ESG team’s priorities.
In today’s digital age, where technology facilitates both progress and peril, there is an expectation and a responsibility for financial institutions to ensure the safety of their customers of all ages. As offenders are relentless in their attempts to reach children, and the capabilities of the online world diversify, financial institutions play a pivotal role in safeguarding our society’s most vulnerable from abuse and exploitation.
This crime has many touch points across various industries, which means the response must be all-encompassing. No one organisation can do this alone. And the pivotal role of financial institutions in ‘following the money’ can significantly shift the needle in identifying perpetrators and locating their victims.
Whilst financial institution analysts employ sophisticated methods in detecting CSE-related transactions within their systems, their almost innocuous nature can make it like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. And the ever-evolving perpetrator tactics means that continual training and the adoption of new tools are necessary aspects of this work. Employing the regulated techniques and taking a proactive approach to detecting this crime can both mitigate the risk to an institution, and help law enforcement save more children from harm.
But a comprehensive response to online child sexual exploitation must involve teams from all corners of a financial institution – from financial crimes to risk mitigation, human rights & ESG to corporate affairs. When all these teams incorporate the detection, reporting and prevention of CSE into their work, it can contribute to a financial institution’s overall positive social impact. By elevating awareness across the whole organisation it can inspire teams to find sustainable, meaningful solutions across the board that can lead to the detection and ultimately the prevention of this heinous crime. This is where inter- and intra-organisation collaborative approaches are critical.
Collaboration is the backbone to fighting against child sexual exploitation. Financial institutions work closely with law enforcement, government, regulators, and NGOs to efficiently and effectively identify evidence of child sexual exploitation. These partnerships form a strong network of industries committed to protecting children and prosecuting offenders. Creating an expanded organisational focus on CSE can lead to even better partnerships outside of the organisation, and ultimately yield better outcomes for children.
At ICMEC Australia, we understand that collaboration amplifies our ability to enhance the detection, reporting, prosecution, and prevention of child sexual exploitation. We exist to help our stakeholders engaged in child protection to increase their capacity to detect CSE and collaborate with one another to prevent this heinous crime.
Our upcoming Financial Symposium is taking place on Wednesday 25th October, and will bring together leaders from all facets of financial institutions who all have a role to play in fighting this crime. An exclusive event for financial institutions, the Symposium will include a comprehensive program where experts in the CSE response ecosystem will share their key insights for financial services organisations to bolster their capabilities to detect and report CSE transactions.
With collaboration being so important to the success of combating this crime, this will be the perfect opportunity to forge key industry connections and partner to save children from abuse and exploitation.
Over the last two years ICMEC Australia has achieved a great deal in what could be termed our startup period.
Founding a new entity in Australia, even one that comes with an international pedigree, means being focused on establishing systems and processes, building the right team and developing strong connections in the local sector.
Having fulfilled these important foundations with the help of a vast network of stakeholders who have been willing to lean in on our important mission, we are now ready to move to the next phase of realising some ambitious outcomes aimed at helping to detect, report, prosecute and prevent child sexual exploitation (CSE) facilitated online.
We’re incredibly fortunate, by design, to have one of Australia’s leading experts in outcomes measurement and evaluation on the team, who will be taking the lead in optimising the delivery of impact across our organisation.
We’re excited to announce that Tiphanie Au has transitioned her role from Head of Child Protection Fund (CPF) to Head of Impact, expanding her investment and funding portfolio to include our organisation’s overall impact strategy, measurement and reporting. Not only will this allow us to demonstrate how we add value, but it will also ensure that we are directing our efforts in the right places and that we are focused on the important things that can help shift the needle further on saving children from harm.
Tiphanie’s work with the CPF will remain an important part of her role and our organisation, including more targeted funding to catalyse collaborative data, technological and/or preventative solutions that directly align with the priorities of our work streams and theory of change.
Tiphanie will also be working with our in-house teams and external stakeholders to commission valuable research to strengthen the knowledge and evidence-base of CSE and support a coherent and collaborative approach to tackling this heinous crime.
This is an exciting phase for the organisation as we embed our mission more deeply through enhanced programs and projects built on the solid foundations of a well-designed impact measurement and evaluation framework.
We extend our congratulations to Tiphanie on her new role and look forward to sharing our future impact reports.
Our September Monthly Brown Bag event was an in depth discussion about some of the challenges that arise for those detecting, reporting, prosecuting and preventing child sexual exploitation.
During this event Madonna King, award-winning journalist and author of Saving Our Kids, interviewed Jon Rouse APM, ICMEC Australia Board Director and former Head of Taskforce Argos, to gain his thoughts about the key role of collaboration across various industries when it comes to protecting children from harm.
Understanding how each organisation fits into the jigsaw puzzle that is child protection requires cross-industry collaboration. Jon and Madonna’s discussion highlights some of the ways that law enforcement and financial institutions, in particular, can work together to identify perpetrators and their victims.
View the recording below for a limited time.*
*Recording available until 31 December 2024
Earlier this month, Australia recognised National Child Protection Week. It was a key reminder for us all that every child, in every community, deserves a fair go. For ICMEC Australia and our stakeholders, every week is about child protection. Keeping children safe is at the heart of the work that we do collectively across the child protection space.
Our National Child Protection Week campaign involved a series of resources highlighting aspects of a new book by Madonna King called Saving Our Kids, which delves into the difficult crime of online child sexual exploitation (CSE) and was published late last month. It’s a powerful book that sheds light on the darkness of this crime, sharing how important our response is to saving children from harm. Written in collaboration with ICMEC Australia Non-Executive Director and retired Detective Inspector, Jon Rouse APM, the book features several ICMEC Australia team members and shows how this crime is escalating with the aid of rapidly evolving technology.
As a team we’re collectively passionate about protecting children from harm, each of us combining our individual skills to further our mission to support our industry stakeholders to fight this crime. We all have deeply personal reasons for wanting to make a change, below we examine why some of our key team members are compelled to do the work they do.
Offenders are continuously working to manipulate any mechanism or online platform that enables their ability to harm children. In the 2021-22 financial year, the ACCCE Child Protection Triage Unit received more than 36,000 reports of child sexual exploitation. The sexual exploitation of children, facilitated online, has real life consequences and cannot be ignored.
However, the true extent of this crime may never be known. It impacts so many young people, many of whom are unable to report at the time of their abuse. On average, it takes 24 years for a victim-survivor to disclose, which is why it’s so important to keep the victim-survivor voice at the centre of navigating our response.
This is a guiding light for ICMEC Australia’s CEO Anna Bowden. A victim-survivor herself, Anna continuously emphasises the importance of supporting survivors, and that our work must centre around preventing children from being abused and exploited.
“I am driven to help give victim-survivors a voice where they can’t find their own. The man who abused me is now behind bars decades later, but it wasn’t my voice who put him there. Our work helps to find the evidence that speaks on behalf of the victims of this horrific crime.” – Anna Bowden, CEO, ICMEC Australia
Understanding the extent to which children are abused and exploited is shocking and confronting, but this means that our work as a response community is critical. One in four Australians have experienced child sexual abuse (ACMS 2023). We cannot ignore the extent of this crime. Research shows that on average, 26% of victim-survivors of child sexual abuse never disclose the abuse.
ICMEC Australia’s Head of Capacity and Prevention, Dannielle Kelly, understands this from her many years working in the child protection space.
“I speak out for all the little people who can’t. If we don’t fight for them…who will?” – Danielle Kelly, Head of Capacity and Prevention, ICMEC Australia
This is what drives Dannielle’s work with stakeholders in Law Enforcement, NGOs and academia. By working collaboratively, and supporting the work of other organisations in the sector, we can create a more comprehensive response to this crime.
ICMEC Australia’s work focuses on supporting cross-industry data and technology solutions to help prevent technology-assisted child sexual exploitation. By facilitating our stakeholders to build their capacity in fighting this crime, we can help to improve the reporting, detection, prosecution and prevention of child sexual exploitation. Our Head of Child Protection Fund, Tiphanie Au, who is experienced in social impact investing, is particularly drawn to disrupting this crime through data-driven solutions.
“All social problems are hard, but when children are involved, it pulls on the heart. Child exploitation is very confronting and until I began working in the field, I was not aware of the scale of the problem. Now it’s what gets me up in the morning and drives me to work so hard in this role.”– Tiphanie Au, Head of Child Protection Fund, ICMEC Australia
To help financial intelligence teams pinpoint more transactions linked to child sexual exploitation and shift the needle on protecting children, the ICMEC Australia Data Products team is developing a first of its kind product in Australia. This product will help enhance the detection of suspicious transactions of child sexual exploitation as they leave their financial footprint across the internet.
Our Head of Data Products, Warren Bulmer, has had a formidable career in law enforcement and product ownership that’s an incredible asset to our work. His experience on the frontline fighting this crime, alongside law enforcement officers from all over the world, has seen many victims identified and children rescued from harm all over the world.
Our data-driven solutions can only contribute to the enhanced detection, reporting, prosecution and prevention of CSE with the support of our stakeholders, in particular in financial crime. Our Head of Collaboration, Rosie Campo, works tirelessly with key leaders in financial institutions to ensure that we understand their needs and can facilitate the right solutions to help them with their work.
“I am working to protect children as I believe we should protect the vulnerable from a crime that ultimately destroys their innocence and childhood. Every child deserves to grow up being a kid and we have the opportunity to help them have that by working together to fight CSE.” – Rosie Campo, Head of Collaboration, ICMEC Australia
The team at ICMEC Australia is dedicated to making the world a safer place for young people by partnering to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation. And we know that no one organisation can do this alone.
Let’s continue working together to fight against this heinous crime and keep our children safe.
For National Child Protection Week 2023, ICMEC Australia recognised the tireless work of all sectors of the response community in a content series released via LinkedIn that highlights a new book, Saving Our Kids, by award-winning journalist Madonna King. This book, featuring several of the ICMEC Australia team, is fast becoming essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the dangers faced by children in their lives, and how we can better respond.
These five resources are a useful summary of this complex crime and how to work collaboratively, across industries, to protect children from abuse and exploitation.
National Child Protection Week takes place in the first week of September in Australia. A NAPCAN initiative, this week reminds us that every child deserves a safe childhood – and that cross-industry collaboration is vital to this conclusion.
Madonna King’s new book, ‘Saving Our Kids’ was written in collaboration with ICMEC Australia Board Member Jon Rouse APM, and emphasises the importance of a collaborative response to child sexual exploitation and saving children from harm. During 2023’s National Child Protection Week, ICMEC Australia created a series of resources that highlight this important book, our partners working to protect children from the horrible crime of sexual abuse and exploitation, and how we can all contribute to protecting children.
These resources are available for free download, and include:
Every child deserves to grow up free from abuse and exploitation.
We all have a role to play when it comes to protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation. As a response community, and a society in general, one of the easiest ways that we can contribute to creating better and safer outcomes for children is by using consistent and correct language.
The words that we use matter.
Whoever you are, we can work together to help make the world a safer place for children by supporting victim-survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation by engaging in meaningful public discourse with the appropriate terminology. The Luxembourg Guidelines ‘for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse’ were developed in 2016, and set a global standard for the correct language to use when discussing this heinous crime.
Using victim-centric, trauma-informed language helps create a safe environment for children to report abuse, and remove the stigma that has surrounded this crime for too long.
ICMEC Australia has created a summary of the Luxembourg Guidelines for reference on the right terminology to use when discussing this crime.
A child can never give consent. The sexual abuse of a child is just that – abuse. This abhorrent crime must be called what it is and we need to begin with the foundations, by ensuring that the correct terminology is entrenched in our legislation.
We may not realise it, but the words we use when we speak about child sexual abuse have immense power. They can change our perception as a society about this issue, and they can either shame or empower a victim-survivor of this crime.
Our general discomfort with the topic of child sexual abuse has historically led to the use of language which deprioritises the safety of children in Australia’s legislation. The State and Territory laws are inconsistent in their definitions, with many states having referred to the ‘persistent sexual abuse of a child’ as a ‘relationship’.
Recognising the harm and stigma that this causes victim-survivors, The Grace Tame Foundation launched their ‘Harmony Campaign’ in February 2022, which is aimed at making child sexual abuse laws consistent across all jurisdictions in Australia. The disparities around the age of consent, the definition of sexual intercourse, what consent is and grooming, as well as the language used to describe the crime, trivialise the experiences of victims and are often exploited by perpetrators.
The former Australian of the Year has been relentless in her pursuit of these changes, seeing success across the country in how State and Territory legislation refers to the crime. As at August 2023, the word ‘relationship’ has been removed nationwide from the heading of the criminal offence of the ‘persistent sexual abuse of a child’. This is a significant achievement, and the first step towards their aim of removing the word ‘relationship’ from all parts of the offence of child sexual abuse in every jurisdiction.
“Softened wording doesn’t reflect the gravity of the crime, it feeds into victim-blaming attitudes, eases the conscience of perpetrators and gives license to characterise abuse as romance.”
The Grace Tame Foundation, Harmony Campaign
Grace Tame has been a powerful advocate for the voice of victim-survivors of child sexual abuse, reminding us through her tireless work that children deserve our commitment to protecting them from harm. Despite how confronting this crime is, we need to engage in public conversations in a mindful and trauma-informed way to remove the stigma surrounding the issue. With the Australian Child Maltreatment Study revealing that 28.5% of Australians have experienced child sexual abuse, this epidemic is not something that we can ignore. It may be difficult to speak about, but children need us to lean into the discomfort to both acknowledge the pain and trauma of victim-survivors and prevent more children from being abused.
With recent high profile media cases shing a spotlight on the issue of child sexual abuse we are currently experiencing an increase in the public conversation surrounding the issue, particularly relating to changes we need to make to current systems in order to protect children from abuse and exploitation. An increase in discourse means an increase in the need for a better understanding of how we refer to this abuse, and how that discussion impacts victim-survivors. The new reporting guidelines for media reporting on child sexual abuse, developed for the National Office for Child Safety (NOCS) are designed to keep the victim-survivor voice at the centre of this topic.
The work of The Grace Tame Foundation affirms just how important, and guiding, the victim-survivor voice is in shaping both our response to and perception of child sexual abuse.
Whether you have an active role in child protection, you’re a parent, you work in the child care sector, or simply as a member of society, we can all play an active role in supporting victim-survivors. And the easiest to do this is by engaging in meaningful public discourse using the most appropriate language. In 2016 ‘The Terminology Guidelines for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse’ were adopted in Luxembourg, establishing a global standard for terminology in relation to child sexual abuse. This is a helpful and comprehensive guide used by many organisations involved in working against this crime. ICMEC Australia has created a simple summary of these global standards for those who would like to start the process of better understanding the correct terminology.
We are encouraged by the achievements of The Grace Tame Foundation in championing the rights of victim-survivors of child sexual abuse. Every milestone that is documented in the media creates more public awareness of this crime. But their Harmony Campaign is not finished. Laws in most states and territories across Australia (except Victoria and Western Australia) continue to use the term ‘relationship’ in other parts of the offence legislation. Using trauma-informed language is essential in helping children feel safe and supported enough to report abuse and to recognise harmful behaviour. It takes champions like Grace Tame to share the victim-survivor voice. Now let’s work together to help her and other advocates remove the stigma that has surrounded sexual abuse and exploitation for too long.
If you, or anyone you know, needs help, find support services available here.
Ensuring that we remain at the forefront of the technology and industry developments that impact child sexual exploitation facilitated online is essential to the success of our mission. Our ability to support our collaborative network of partners in their fight to protect children is influenced significantly by the experts who generously share their knowledge and time to help steer our organisation into the future.
We are delighted to announce that we have appointed one of these industry experts, Colm Gannon, as a non-executive director to the ICMEC Australia board. Colm brings extensive experience in digital safety, cybercrime investigations and software development, combined with over 20 years in law enforcement, to his position on our board.
During his time in law enforcement, which began in his homeland of Ireland, Colm was involved in national and international investigations and prosecutions relating to online harms, child sexual abuse and exploitation, violent extremism, and harmful online communications. He is now a Product Manager with Irish-based organisation, Rigr AI. In this role Colm is responsible for policy development, including child protection, privacy impact assessment and, legal and ethical assessments for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning implementations.
Colm’s commitment to protecting children from abuse has seen him represent the New Zealand government as a subject matter expert before the United Nations Committee for the Rights of Children, in addition to training law enforcement, prosecutors and judges on combatting OSEC on behalf of Europol.
Colm’s list of achievements seems endless, and we already experienced the value he brings to our organisation when he presented on the subject of AI at the June Monthly Brown Bag event, our most popular so far.
With the break-neck speed that Al and machine learning is advancing and proliferating our online world, we are acutely aware that it is essential to keep a firm eye on advancements in this space.
Colm’s expertise and involvement in key development projects in AI and machine learning will provide a window into what might be on the horizon for OSEC. And it will ensure that we keep pace with the additional impacts that these advancements will have on our ability to help organisations detect, report, prosecute and prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Céad míle fáilte Colm.
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.
