Our response

At ICMEC Australia, we're turning the use of online technology to exploit children on its head. We support frontline workers in combatting child sexual abuse by leveraging technology and data-driven strategies to detect, report, prosecute, and prevent child exploitation.

For decades, the child protection sector has been working tirelessly to bring offenders of child sexual abuse to justice. This task is undoubtedly challenging. Their unrelenting commitment has led to thousands of convictions in Australia and saved countless children from harm.
While we do not serve on the frontlines with these officers, it’s our privilege to support them through several initiatives that strive to bolster their access to information, training, and resources. Our work aims to strengthen their ability to detect and investigate digital evidence of this crime.

As technology has advanced across all industries, several commercial sectors have seen perpetrators inadvertently exploit their platforms. A key focus for ICMEC Australia is the financial services industry, which has unfortunately seen its services used for payments related to Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and trafficking. Viewing or purchasing CSAM is a criminal offence in most countries, including Australia, and financial services organisations are obliged to detect and report related transactions under the AML/CTF Act.

Offenders usually try to disguise their illegal transactions, making it difficult for financial crime teams to detect them. Payments might be low in value, appear innocuous in their references, or be divided between multiple payment providers and banks. In Australia, 99.9% of all payment transactions are conducted digitally (ABA). This creates an immense opportunity to empower financial institutions to meet their regulatory requirements and proactively detect and prevent harm to vulnerable children.  

At ICMEC Australia, we provide financial institutions with information, data, and analytics to significantly strengthen their financial crime investigative capabilities. 

We also unite financial services companies together to form a collective front against child sexual exploitation (CSE). Information has been siloed within individual companies for too long, so we are fostering industry-wide partnerships to create a collaborative response.