Crackdown on Cyber Predators

Link to Original: http://3degree.cci.ecu.edu.au/articles/view/326

Crackdown on Cyber Predators
By Glenn Knight
09 May 2006

According to the FBI, one in four kids, aged 10-17, has been exposed to unwanted sexual material online. Children are increasingly being targeted by paedophiles who use the Internet to exploit children. The WA Police are fighting back!

WA Police now have a specialist team targeting paedophiles who use the Internet as a means to sexually exploit children. The team in conjunction with new laws introduced last month will give police greater powers in protecting those vulnerable to cyber-predators.

In statements released this month Attorney General Jim McGinty has said that police will be able to pose and conduct sting operations under the new laws.

"Under these new laws, paedophiles will no longer have the anonymity of the Internet to prey on young children because police will be using the Internet to turn the tables on these perverts,” said McGinty.

The team will be able to go online and uncover people who use the Internet and trawl chat rooms searching for potential victims.

"Sexual predators are notorious for using chat rooms to 'groom' children by having sexually explicit on-line conversations and sending obscene images," McGinty said.

The new taskforce comes as Australia is recognised as being one of five nations out of 184 nations studied found to be effectively cracking down on child pornography.

The research carried out by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children found that Australia, France, Belgium, South Africa and the United States have sufficient legislation for dealing with the issue.

The proliferation of the problem has recently resulted in the United States government holding congressional hearings into the issue. They came after New York Times investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald discovered details about how the predators operate and how with apparent ease they are able to seduce their victims through the internet.

Eichenwald told the hearings how some companies knowingly and unknowingly profit from child pornography. Companies such as web cam services and credit card payment providers are helping to facilitate the predator/victim dynamic. One such victim was teenager Justin Berry.

Berry said at the hearing that from age 13 (now 19) he was lured into the world of child pornography. What began as seemingly innocent chat requests from unknown men escalated over 5 years to where Berry was being molested and performing sexual acts for a web-cam audience through his own website.

"I was paid by more than 1,000 men to strip naked, masturbate and even have sex with female prostitutes while on camera," said Berry to the congressional hearing.

During that five year period Berry was repeatedly molested and abused by men he met through the internet. Lured by money, gifts and drugs he tells how he became almost a willing participant in the behaviour. He also told the hearings that it was relatively easy for predators to find victims due to the nature of the internet.

Eichenwald’s told the congressional hearings that his investigation found that sites such as My Space and Buddy Pic were being used as a virtual catalogue for paedophiles.

“Using these sites in combination, predators can search for children, by age, location and sex. They can obtain enormous amounts of identifying data,” he said.

Both Eichenwald and Berry agree that more needs to be done to stop the cyber predators and that law enforcement agencies need to be more aggressive in their actions.

Taking the fight to the Internet has proven to be successful for Queensland Police in the past. Task Force Argos, which ran from June 2003 to September 2004, showed that 76% of cases involved the suspects being arrested for an offence within a month of first making contact with a child.

Inspector Kellie Properjohn from the WA Police Major Crime Division said the Queensland example showed remarkable results and gave promise to the WA team.

"In 68% of cases the adult sought offline contact with the child. In 48% of cases the adult suspect was arrested at the intended rendezvous with the child," he said.

The Criminal Code Amendment (Cyber Predators) Bill 2005, will also make it an offence for electronic media to be used to procure children for sexual activity or behaviour.

The new laws carry prison terms of up to ten years for those convicted of procuring for sexual or indecent activity, or supplying indecent material to a child that they thought was under the age of the thirteen.

A five year jail sentence faces those offenders if the child is between the ages of thirteen and sixteen.

The new cyber predator team will also have the capability to share information with other state and international police agencies. It is hoped that this will lead to greater detection and apprehension of child sex offenders not only within Australia but internationally.

Agencies such as the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have adopted similar tactics with success. They developed the Innocent Images National Initiative (IINI), to combat an increased proliferation of child pornography and child sexual exploitation facilitated by the Internet.

Using tactics similar to the WA Police, between 1996 and 2005, IINI saw an increase of 2026% in the number of cases in the area investigated by the FBI. This saw a resulting increase of 2325% in arrests and summons for child sexual offences.

In conjunction with the new laws, programs will be developed to better educate children and their parents about the hazards of the Internet.

State, Territorial and Federal Police have already produced a booklet called Who’s chatting to your kids? that points out that ultimately, child safety rests with parents.