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.

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.

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.

Ahead of presenting at the COBA Financial Crimes Symposium on 12th July, ICMEC Australia Chair, Kara Nicholls, shares her thoughts about how ESG practices achieve better outcomes when approached from the perspective of those who have the lived experience of the problems that organisations are trying to help solve, especially in the case of child sexual exploitation.

The corporate framework set out for Environment, Social and Governance issues has traditionally been created very much from the perspective of the organisation. One of the primary reasons for this is that mitigation of risk is a major concern for organisations, especially in the world of banking and finance.

Having managed the governance function of a major financial institution following the conclusion of the Banking Royal Commission, I have experienced first-hand the role that risk management plays in organisational processes and priorities in relation to ESG issues.

From a risk and governance perspective, a bank or financial institution needs to have effective and adequate systems and processes for a myriad of matters, including: ensuring that they aren’t party to or facilitating criminal activities; regulatory engagement such as identifying and reporting suspicious transactions to AUSTRAC; and protecting customers’ financial assets and interests. Often, when these processes are considered primarily through a risk mitigation and regulation lens, it is understandable how they may lose sight of the human aspect of why these activities are important, and the impact they have on people and the communities in which they operate.

By flipping the switch on how we consider ESG frameworks and processes, the results can be impactful, and life changing. Approaching these issues with a strong people, community and ESG lens can change how an organisation plans, prepares and responds, leading to significantly better outcomes for customers, the organisation, its communities and the economy.

And nothing illustrates this better than how a financial institution manages the detection and reporting of child sexual exploitation (CSE). CSE facilitated online is one of the fastest growing crimes globally. And like it or not, financial institutions play a vital and pivotal role in protecting children from harm.

With our reliance on technology and access to the internet continuing to increase, the methods and opportunities to harm children are also growing at scale. The traditional public perception of this crime, somewhat perpetuated by the media coverage of the Royal Commission into the Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse, is centred on a certain stereotype. However, the victims and perpetrators of this crime come from all walks of life, which means both can be customers of any financial institution.

The changing nature of sexual crimes against children, along with the opportunities for new ways to abuse and exploit children through technology and online connection, has increased the necessity for banks and financial institutions to ensure that they remain vigilant, agile and engaged with the problem and become part of the solution. Crimes such as live streaming of abuse, coerced self-generated child sexual abuse material, child sextortion and more are on the rise. These crimes can all leave a digital financial footprint.

Unlike other financial crimes, such as money laundering for example, detecting child sexual exploitation in a financial context is difficult. The low value, often seemingly innocuous transactions are hard to pinpoint and identify.

The consequences of CSE for victims and their families can be tragically swift and devastatingly long lasting, impacting almost every aspect of their, and their family’s lives. This is the unquantifiable cost of CSE to the victim-survivor. There is also the impact on our health and medical systems and the economy.
We need to re-imagine how we consider ESG as we know that the expectations of our customers and our members/shareholders are high. We need to earn and retain our social licence to operate. It is not only important, it is crucial that we embed into our ESG approach, systems and processes thinking that puts prevention and the victim-survivor at the centre, as then we are striving to meet and exceed our stakeholders’ expectations, and seek to deliver the long-term positive social impact for customers and employees.

The true cost and savings of an authentic approach to ESG practices is ultimately a human one. And this is at the heart of every customer-owned banking institution.

Kara Nicholls is the Chair of ICMEC Australia. She has over 27 years’ experience in senior executive positions across ASX listed, private entity, startup and NFP organisations, and has held both corporate and NFP board Chair positions. This article was first published by COBA for their members, and is reproduced with permission.

It seems that we can’t turn on any device, go to any platform or view any news feed without seeing a mention of AI, specifically generative AI. Whether it’s professionals worried about the implications that recently released apps like ChatGPT might have on the security of their jobs, or evangelists espousing the great benefits that companies will reap from this time-saving productivity machine, the debates continue fiercely.

But one area that has far more potential to be impacted, and with much greater and devastating consequences, is the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. For those working in the child sexual exploitation (CSE) response community, the discussion also swings between the concepts of fear about potential negative outcomes, and hope that we could be looking at a powerful tool for those tracking down perpetrators.

There is no question that this technology, which is now easily and often freely available, could be used to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The concept of computer generated CSAM is certainly not new. Children have already been subjected to image-based abuse using deep fake technology, as we saw in our May Monthly Brown Bag presentation. But generative AI technology, now available to anyone, is taking this abuse to new level. And it has many in the sector worried, especially by the speed with which the technology has been made available with seemingly no consideration given to what guardrails we might need to put in place.

But we can learn from the past and ensure that we install proper protections for children before it’s too late. The situation with AI has been compared to the introduction and rapid expansion of social media platforms, which were left to their own devices to write the rule book.

Whilst it appears that AI companies like OpenAI have already put measures in place to prevent the creation of CSAM using their technology, open-source platforms have been much slower to consider such protections, if they’ve even included them at all. And it’s these platforms that are enabling the product of Al-generated CSAM. These open-source platforms, many based on a model created by Meta called LLaMA, have strong support from those who claim that they will be the vehicle for accelerated innovation. But they also facilitate easy production of abuse material, using images of real children as source material.

The harms and impact of AI-generated CSAM are significant. The image-based abuse of a child whose picture is has been used to create CSAM, the revictimisation of children by producing additional and progressively violent computer-generated versions of their abuse, or the potential for the material triggering an interest in CSAM that escalates to contact offending, are all potential issues. The images might be ‘fake’, but the dangers and abuse are real.

Researchers from Thorn and the Stanford Internet Observatory have released a research paper this week that examined the potential implications of photorealistic CSAM produced by generative Al. They found that less than 1 percent of CSAM found in known predatory communities was photorealistic Al-generated images. But in a New York Times article, David Thiel, Chief Technologist at the Stanford Internet Observatory and co-author of the report said that “within a year, we’re going to be reaching very much a problem state in this area.”

Regulators around the world have acknowledged the potential for harm created by this technology and recognise that we need strong and cohesive regulation worldwide. Several regions, including Europe, the US, Canada and Australia, which is currently conducting community consultation into Al regulation, are at various stages of introducing legislation to regulate AI.

And just as in the physical world, where our law enforcers are subject to both administering and being administered by the law, Al regulation will incorporate appropriate protections for citizens as investigators harness the powerful potential of Al tools to help them detect, report and prosecute AI-generated CSAM.

If you’re interested in hearing more about AI and its implications for child sexual abuse, Colm Gannon will expand on these concepts at our June Monthly Brown Bag event. Make sure you register today.

As a relatively new organisation in Australia, with a passionate team bringing expertise from a variety of backgrounds, finding ways that our people can connect fully to our cause and mission is paramount.

The Youth, Technology and Virtual Communities (YTVC) conference run by Queensland Police Service’s Task Force Argos on the Gold Coast in April was the perfect opportunity for us to learn more about how our stakeholders are approaching the challenges they face. As a sponsor of the conference, several of our team were able to join 500 other delegates in learning the latest trends and insights from the Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) response community, immersing themselves in this difficult but vital subject.

Being surrounded by some of the world’s leading experts in CSE was certainly a valuable and eye-opening education for the team. And one of the great benefits in attending the conference was the opportunity to connect with some of our key sector stakeholders in person, many for the first time.

The three-day event was fast-paced and packed with insightful and informative sessions. The team heard about in-depth case studies that revealed the lengths perpetrators will go to access children and avoid detection, as well as the commitment, out-of-the-box thinking, and skill of the law enforcement officers on their trail. Alongside these case studies were presentations on innovative initiatives and programs to help prevent child sexual abuse, as well as several recent research studies into perpetrator behaviour.

Each of the presenters were concerned with how we disrupt the conditions that make child sexual abuse facilitated online possible. And for many of the presenters their focus was on shifting the intervention point to disrupting the crime before it takes place.

The Reverend Desmond Tutu is often acknowledged for his quote: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” This sentiment was certainly shared in many of the presentations at YTVC.

The one recurring theme in almost all the presentations was that we can’t tackle this problem alone. Whether it’s law enforcement collaborating across borders to identify and catch perpetrators, LEAs working with financial institutions and the private sector to develop new technological innovations, or academics and regulators collaborating on research data to provide important insights and risk indicators, the key focus was on how much greater the outcomes are when we pool our resources and knowledge to tackle the issue from a multitude of angles.

Which is precisely our purpose as an organisation, to support and facilitate those organisations working to detect, report and prosecute this crime. And to offer our assistance to those organisations who are working upstream towards preventing the crime from occurring in the first place.

Sharing our collaborative experience with some of our stakeholders in our panel session at the event and seeing this theme echoed throughout the conference was both inspiring and affirming for the team.

The internet has revolutionised many aspects of life, including the exponential growth of CSE. Despite this, YTVC demonstrated that so many different organisations and industries within the sector are willing to do what it takes to help end child sexual exploitation.

With the magnitude of this problem, it would be easy to become discouraged. But, as was the message from many conference presenters, focusing on the opportunities for change and maintaining a victim-centric approach to our work helps to keep people in the game and save children from abuse and exploitation.

After all, this is why we’re all here.

Throughout childhood in Australia, more than 1 in 3 girls and almost 1 in 4 boys experience sexual abuse.

The sexual abuse of children is one of the most wicked crimes, exploiting some of the most vulnerable in our society. Our approach to protecting young people and preserving their childhood not only impacts their physical and mental wellbeing, it also determines the quality of their future and how we shape society as a whole into the future.

Since the advent of the internet more than two decades ago, the rate at which children are harmed has been escalating year on year. Each time contact abuse is filmed or photographed, or a child is coerced into self-generating child sexual abuse imagery, the mere existence of these images or videos is re-traumatising for victim survivors. In 2021-22, the ACCCE received more than 36,000 reports of online child sexual exploitation. And each instance of an image or video is evidence of a crime.

Just as we have regulation to protect children in the physical world, we need the same for the online space. Perhaps more so given the ease with which criminals can hide their identities and location when acting online. While children haven’t always been afforded protection, since the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, it is now accepted that children have the right to be protected and live a life free from abuse and neglect.

And, whilst in principle these rights also apply in the online space, regulating the internet presents unique challenges for those with the job of protecting children.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner is making waves internationally as the first dedicated online safety regulator tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. Our Online Safety Act, enacted in 2021, was momentous legislation, paving the way for an influx of online safety legislation globally that aims to create a safer online environment for children.

Under this legislation, eSafety began the rigorous process of developing a series of Industry Codes for various online platforms and technology companies to ensure that they have sufficient measures to prevent the online sexual harm of children. The platforms and software delivered by these organisations are often manipulated by offenders to harm, abuse, and exploit children. The second round of this process began in February this year, after Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told industry that the draft codes they delivered at the end of 2022 do not provide adequate community safeguards. During this process the community was once again given the opportunity to submit feedback on the proposed Codes prior to industry submitting the next iteration at the end of March 2023.

While we’re waiting for the outcome of the eSafety Commissioner’s review of the draft Industry Codes in the coming months, we’ve been interested to observe the increased legislative activities around the world in relation to the online safety of children. Although each jurisdiction quite rightly remains responsible for their own legislation, the internet and, therefore this crime, crosses borders. Each country needs to regulate based on their own laws, but having some coherence and alignment of approach will facilitate a better overall outcome for children.

France has made significant strides in recent months towards implementing strong regulatory measures to protect children from online harms, both in terms of restricting their access to harmful adult content and their ability to have unrestricted access to online social platforms. Last month, French MPs adopted legislation restricting social media access to children under 15 without explicit parental approval. This is a positive step forward, however the Bill still needs to pass the plenary session and the Senate before it can be implemented. Age verification is a measure that continues to be a consideration for both policymakers and internet companies, and France has made their position clear with this legislative change.

Meanwhile in the UK, the proposed Online Safety Bill places a responsibility on all online platforms to protect children from harm and remove child sexual abuse material. If this legislation is passed, platforms will have to proactively prevent that material from reaching users. The UK government has also received an open letter in recent weeks calling into question clauses that would allow Ofcom to compel communications providers to take action to prevent harm to users, specifically in relation to end-to-end encryption of messages. This demonstrates the difficult task that faces regulators in preventing the online abuse of children. And whilst the online platforms aren’t to blame for CSE material travelling around the internet – that responsibility rests squarely with those who commit this crime – they do have an obligation to make their platforms as safe as possible for children.

Regulators like eSafety are well-positioned to provide a clear framework for platforms and organisations to work within. The new Global Online Safety Regulators Network, headed by eSafety, demonstrates the importance of a collaborative response to this crime. The intention with the network is to create a more coherent approach to the problem on a global scale. Currently Australia, Fiji, Ireland and the UK have committed to regulatory collaboration and cohesion, with the aim to increase the network over time.

Whilst regulatory involvement in the issue of child sexual exploitation facilitated online is essential, the complexities of CSE means that a multi-pronged approach is critical to enhancing the detection, reporting, and prosecution of this crime. Legislation provides a clear framework and sets out the direction and expectations for how the other organisations in the CSE response ecosystem need to prioritise the safety of children.

We know that offenders communicate and collaborate in forums and communities, helping each other elude detection by sharing information and tips. A collaborative response underpinned by strong and clear legislation is our best chance of disrupting the perpetrator networks.

And we need collaboration at all levels, including the development of strong regulatory guidelines. Each contributor to the CSE response ecosystem brings their different perspective and experience, which is vital to the consistent review and stakeholder input needed. This ensures that the regulation reflects what’s needed to make the online world safe for children.

We’re eager to see the outcome of the eSafety Commissioner’s review of the Codes and the potential impacts when they are applied at a practical level. The collaborative process in developing them has been important to bring all the parties together in a robust discussion that has ultimately brought the issue of online child safety to the fore.

We’re excited to announce one of Australia’s corporate governance leaders, Kara Nicholls as the new Non-Executive Chair of ICMEC Australia.

Over the last nine months our team has almost quadrupled in size to add the essential specialised skills needed to deliver on the next phase of our important mission, shifting gears to embed the organisation as a key player within the child sexual exploitation (CSE) disruption ecosystem.

Reaching this growth milestone and establishing the foundations for achieving significant and impactful partnership and data collaboration targets was the goal of founding CEO and Executive Chair, Paul McCarney. And this has been the catalyst in his handing over the board reins to Kara.

“I’ve been involved in founding over 10 companies, but this four year journey has made me the proudest of what has been created in such a short space of time,” said Paul. “It excites me and fills my heart to think of the impact that the organisation will have in the future.”

“I’d like to thank Paul for his vision and the legacy he’s created for the team to contribute to such an important mission,” said Anna Bowden, ICMEC Australia CEO.

Kara brings deep governance skills and previous experience as a NFP Chair through to ensuring that we continue to meet the targets of the next phase of our journey.

Her career experience includes over 27 years’ experience in senior executive roles in global equity capital markets, commercial, regulatory, and corporate governance across ASX listed, private entity, startup and NFP organisations.

She has also previously held the positions of Chair and Independent, Non-Executive Director of Gidget Foundation Australia, a non-profit organisation supporting the emotional wellbeing of expectant and new parents, and Chair of the Nominations Committee, and Member of the Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance Advisory Board for Macquarie University.
She is currently a Non-Executive Director of Zoom2u Technologies Limited, Chair of their Audit & Risk Committee, and a member of their Sustainability Committee. In addition, she is the inaugural independent member of the Australian Medical Association (NSW)’s Audit & Risk Committee and a Non-Executive Director of social enterprise organisation, Ripple Learning Limited.

“Kara’s specialist expertise in governance and risk, combined with her senior level management and executive skills will be invaluable to steering us through this next pivotal stage of the organisation’s evolution, and will assist the Board in guiding us to deliver on our mission to enhance detection, reporting and prosecution of child sexual exploitation,” said Anna.

“I am delighted to be joining the board of ICMEC Australia. It’s a privilege and honour to serve as Chair of the Board. I look forward to working with the management team, my fellow directors, our collaboration partners, and our stakeholders to deliver on our strategy. I’m committed to supporting the organisation’s vision and mission, to collectively make a difference by facilitating meaningful change through collaboration and data driven innovation, disrupting perpetrator tactics, and working to safeguard vulnerable children.”