Subj : Police receiving 200 online sextortion referrals a month To : All From : News Date : Tue Apr 23 2024 12:54 pm New Zealand police said reports from victims and online offenders of child exploitation have "quadrupled" in the last five years. Warning: This article details online abuse. In 2023, New Zealand authorities received nearly 19,865 referrals from America's National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Between 2022 and 2023, another 5000 referrals came from Cyber Tipline, a service run by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Members of the public and organisations such as social media sites notify NCMEC about sexually explicit content involving children, including child sexual abuse images located on their platforms. The centre then notified relevant local law enforcement agencies around the world. 'A cause for increased concern' NCMEC has received a total of 36.2 million reports over the last year through the Cyber Tipline. Cases involving young Kiwis, made up only a small number of these reports, but followed a similar trend by increasing sharply. Of the 36.2 million reports received by NCMEC, New Zealand agencies who work in this field - including Internal Affairs, Customs and Police - received 19,865 referrals in 2023, up from just over 15,000 in 2022. Detective Senior Sergeant Kepal Richards - officer in charge of New Zealand Police online child exploitation across New Zealand team (OCEANZ) - said: "Reports from NCMEC which contain information about victims and online offenders here in New Zealand have almost quadrupled in the last five years alone. "These latest statistics unfortunately are not surprising, but should be cause for increased concern. "Police work closely with Department of Internal Affairs and the New Zealand Customs Service, in an effort to prevent further victims. "We do this by carrying out investigations, and working to inform and provide awareness of the issue and its warning signs to our young people, their parents and guardians." Richards said New Zealand Police currently received around 200 referrals per month from the NCMEC centre. "Each referral is risk assessed by dedicated investigators in the OCEANZ team to identify cases requiring immediate action to safeguard children, or to identify and hold to account those responsible for causing harm. "An initial investigation is completed at OCEANZ before it is sent to local district Child Protection Teams who investigate the matters to their conclusion," said Richards. Selfies found in offenders collections Police have a number of pathways available after a referral was received. Some people were arrested and charged, where offending was identified, but other routes include prevention visits and conversations, particularly when it involved a young person. Police chief customs officer of the child exploitation operations team Simon Peterson said: "Behind every one of these reports is an online user, here in New Zealand, who may pose a real threat to our communities and our tamariki, in particular. "These are also not nuisance crimes - the majority of objectionable material that New Zealand agencies deal with show real children being harmed through often-horrific sexual abuse. Ever-increasing reporting of online offending is a clear marker for increasing global demand, and victimisation, of our society's most vulnerable." "Customs continues to work shoulder-to-shoulder with our colleagues in Police and the Department of Internal Affairs to not only manage and respond to NCMEC reporting, but to do the best we can to keep our children safe from this heart-breaking abuse, happening both here in New Zealand and across the world," said Peterson. Tim Houston, manager of the digital child exploitation team at the department of internal affairs, said children and young people needed to be aware that any information they shared with unknown persons or profiles online could be used against them. "We regularly encounter intimate content that children and young persons have generated of themselves within the collections of child sexual exploitation material possessed by offenders," he said. The advice to young people and parents was to remain vigilant online, be 100% sure of who they were communicating with. If they suspected they were engaging with an adult posing as another child - report it. Keep It Real Online provided esources to tamariki, parents, and educators about staying safe online. When conversations become blackmail Detective Senior Sergeant Richards said: "While just over half of our sextortion victims are young males between the ages of 13 and 21, it can affect anyone of any age, so we ask everyone online to be vigilant and mindful of their safety. "Sextortion is a global issue and as technology continues to advance so too does methods for targeting victims. "Often offshore offenders are responsible, persuading victims to send sexually explicit content before blackmailing them by threating to post them online, or share them with people close to the victim. "It's an issue that continues to be a challenge, with Police currently receiving an average of 42 complaints a month through Police reporting channels, involving both adult and child victims." The offending generally began with a direct message sent to the victim on social media through a convincing, yet fake, account. The victim was then asked to continue chatting on a different app, and the conversation often became sexualised. From there, victims were asked to share images, in some cases sexually explicit images, which were then used to blackmail them. In some cases, offenders reported altered seemingly innocent images to look explicit. NCMEC has recently created an interactive video for people, including parents, to get a glimpse of what it is like to be a victim of sextortion. This assisted in understanding the experience, to foster informed conversations around the topic and gives advice on how to seek help. Online child exploitation is a crime. New Zealand Police have multiple ways in which reports of this serious offending can be received. In an emergency, call 111. Alternatively, you can call 105 or complete a report online. --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Windows/64) * Origin: S.W.A.T.S BBS Telnet swatsbbs.ddns.net:2323 (63:10/102) .