This article contains references to child sexual abuse and harm.
Australia is quietly confronting a national crisis: one in every four Australian children has been a victim of child sexual abuse, according to a study released by The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS), with girls double the risk of boys. You would never guess the scale of this crisis, given the lack of urgency from our national discourse.
Over 40,000 verified reports of online child sexual exploitation were made to The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) in 2022–23. That’s over 100 reports every day. And these numbers are trending upwards. Cases of sextortion have soared by 400 per cent in some states in the last 18 months.
Young people are navigating a digital world where one in seven minors are asked for nudes by a stranger online on a weekly or even a daily basis. This complex moral and social challenge demands our collective attention, because despite ongoing research and reports calling for urgent national action, public awareness remains low.
The vast majority of four-year-olds are using the internet in some capacity, according to research. By the time those children turn 11 years old, the majority of children are using it unsupervised. A report in 2022 revealed that of all 9–12-year-olds, the majority (two out of three) interact with unfamiliar adults online. One in six children have had romantic or sexual conversations with an online-only contact. There is no longer an ‘online’ and ‘real’ world dichotomy here; for young people online is the world in which they live, meet friends and navigate relationships.
Perpetrators of online sexual exploitation are accessing children through gaming, chat functions, video calls, dating apps, social media applications and other platforms. Recent cases of sextortion in Australia are dispelling myths of grooming occurring over long periods of time, allowing for identification and intervention. Instead, evidence reveals that grooming can take multiple forms (often involving the deception of posing as another young person), and the grooming process, including the solicitation of images, can occur over a matter of hours, often with devastating consequences.
At particular risk are young people in out-of-home care, who identify as LGBTIQ+, who have multicultural or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, or who are living with a disability. Children from these cohorts are increasingly seeking connection via online platforms.
The notion of ‘stranger danger’ is not effective here. In around 50–70 per cent of cases of online child