Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to share with you a terrifying message received by a 14-year-old Adelaide boy recently. Imagine, as a child, parent or grandparent, receiving this message:

Hey this is the end of your life. I am sending your nudes to the world now.

So I am swinging it to all your followers first and your team and your school page and your family and friends. To all your comments and tags.

So just comply and do what I want ok. If you try to block me that's the end of your life so just comply that's the end ok.

Attached to that Instagram text was a photo of the teenager's profile, along with a random picture of genitalia that was absolutely not his. Sextortion works like this—criminals preying on children through social media platforms and demanding money. It's where the extorter tricks children into sending a compromising photo and then threatens to leak those photographs, or the extorter threatens to send a fake photo to everyone in the recipient's communication feed or to schools, clubs or anywhere the young person is connected to in their feed. Children online during school holidays—likely with more cash or gift cards than usual—are targeted.

In this example, without parental knowledge of social media risk and without parents intervening, the consequences could have been enduring and catastrophic. Luckily, in this case, the parents routinely and actively monitored the child's social media and immediately reported the message to police. Then they contacted the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, the ACCCE, an organisation established by the coalition to act on these matters. The ACCCE has seen a 100-fold increase in reports of sextortion crimes in 2023 compared to the previous year. More than 90 per cent of victims are young boys. I encourage everyone to know more about protecting our children from sextortion and check out the ACCCE website for—

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Senator Payman.