Within moments of logging onto social media from her smartphone, a 13-year-old girl is approached by a manipulative predator with sickening and unspeakable motives.
The online space she has joined is popular among young people. It’s a place where they feel safe to engage with their peers in harmless fun, but countless monsters are lurking in plain sight.
Rather than talking to a child, on this occasion the pedophile has unknowingly approached a covert operative within the New South Wales Police Force’s elite Strike Force Trawler.
Detective Senior Constable Jenna Hams spends large parts of her days scouring the internet for those trying to groom and procure kids for sexual abuse purposes.
“Unfortunately, it’s very easy to find these types of people,” Ms. Hams told news.com.au.
“Once I know what platforms they’re targeting, and for the most part they’re platforms frequented by children, I’ll usually find an offender within the first few minutes.”
To coincide with Child Protection Week, news.com.au spent time with the NSW Police Child Exploitation Internet Unit (CEIU), which works around the clock to execute two missions.
The first is to identify and rescue the young people depicted in child abuse material, and the second is to hunt down those responsible for producing it.
When a monster is found, detectives begin a race against the clock to track them down and bring them to justice, often relying on a global law enforcement network and advanced technological capabilities.
Any child abuse material they are found with is analyzed by specialists with the goal of finding those young victims depicted.
The confronting nature of the job, staring evil in the face and being exposed to the worst kind of suffering, makes it perhaps the hardest in policing.
“Being in this role, I have seen the absolute worst of humanity, the absolute worst of human depravity, things that I didn’t know that people were capable of doing, wanting to see or wanting to hear,” Ms. Hams said.
“It’s opened my eyes in a way that’s unimaginable. I’ve seen things that I would never want anyone to see. Things that would make someone physically ill just hearing.”
Online, across popular platforms and within forums and chat rooms, predators gather to lure their next unsuspecting victims.
“Sometimes it’s purely sexual,” Ms. Hams explains.
The child might be coaxed into sending images or videos of a sexual nature, which can be shared widely with other pedophiles for their own horrifying gratification.
Sickeningly, sometimes these men – and they are overwhelmingly male offenders – “genuinely want a relationship with the child because they don’t have other functioning social relationships.”
“They might want to have that child as their girlfriend or boyfriend, which is really disturbing,” Ms. Hams said.
“And then other times they want to meet up and be the first person that child will have a sexual experience with, which is really daunting.”
Many of these predators operate in a fairly sophisticated manner, knowing which buttons to push and how to manipulate a very young mind, she said.
“They have a similar script, to the point now where I know they’ll say certain things. They all know how to groom a kid … compliments, making them feel special, like no one else understands them.
“They’ll explain how to keep it a secret, they’ll check what sort of home life the kids will have. A lot of the time they’ll target children they think are vulnerable and have a hard home life, because for them that’s an easy way [in] if they think there’s not enough supervision at home.”
There might be a perception in the public that pedophiles fit a certain mould, but Ms Hams said she has encountered predators facing into every kind of demographic.
A review of arrest and prosecution records over the past few years reveals pedophiles working in education, healthcare, sports and recreation, and the legal industry.
“They’re everything from middle-aged married men with children to quite young people,” she said. “I have no expectations about their background or where they fit within the community. A lot of the time they’re functioning members of society.
“They can be very manipulative, and when I’m on the other side of that I find it hard to digest … the lengths they’ll go to in order to groom a kid, to convince them that this much older person is safe, and someone they might like to meet up with or have sexual interactions with.
“The way that some humans can act in such a depraved way has really opened my eyes.”
The rapid pace with which social media platforms evolve, or new online spaces are formed, poses a challenge.
And new technological advancements, like artificial intelligence, offer offenders new ways of masking their true identify.
“We’re definitely seeing offenders utilizing AI to pretend to be other people,” Ms. Hams said.
Obviously, Ms. Hams can’t go home and discuss the horrors of her work with her loved ones, but she is part of a close-knit team that offers support and encouragement.
“They’re amazing,” she said.
“As soon as there’s a [case], even if it’s my [case], everyone gets on board. Everyone helps with the investigative part, the search warrant, the arrest. Everyone puts in. No one’s greedy with their time, everyone helps each other out, and I think that’s what helps us keep going.
“Being in such a supportive environment, being with people that you can discuss this type of stuff – being able to openly talk about it, especially the things that might upset me – that’s what [helps].
“We all have a shared passion, which is to protect children.”
The sheer number of pedophiles infiltrating online spaces where young people gather is well beyond what the community might appreciate.
Sometimes, the volume of work can take its toll on members of the CEIU.
“But when we identify these people and we’re able to charge and prosecute them, that gives me hope that at least maybe I’ve saved just one more kid,” Ms. Hams said.
“And if I come to work and I put 110 per cent in, if I can just save as many kids as possible, then that’s what gets me up in the morning.”
Most young Australians get their first smartphone around the start of high school, research indicates, with half receiving one between the ages of 10- and 12-years-old.
Data crunched a decade ago by the Australian Bureau of Statistic revealed kids as young as five had their own mobile phone.
Earlier this year, digital wellbeing researcher and author Joanne Orlando told news.com.au that an “alarming” number of parents aren’t adequately educating their children about safety.
“Conversations about online safety needs to start as soon as a child is using the internet, otherwise children can get into lots of hot water,” Dr. Orlando said.
“Many social apps such as TikTok opens access to other people that their parents might not know, people who are outside their families. So there is that risk of random contact.”
Ms. Hams urged young people to be vigilant about communicating with strangers online and be suspicious of any requests for inappropriate material or conversations.
“I think the internet can be used for so much good. You can make friends from all over the world, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
“When people start to show you intentions of wanting a little bit more, like a sexual relationship or wanting you to do things that don’t feel comfortable doing, just trust your instincts.
“Talk to someone about it before you send a picture because we’ve definitely seen an increase in sexual extortion as well, where kids are believing that they’re meeting someone who’s like-minded and really great.
“Then they’re being encouraged to do things that they otherwise might not have and the results of that are really sad.”
Anyone with information about criminal activity can make an anonymous report with Crime Stoppers by calling 1800 333 000 or visiting crimestoppers.com.au
