What to do if you're victim of Australian school pornography site
Victims who have been caught up in an Australian high school sick pornography ring may be able put a stop their photos being leaked further.
Over 70 Australian schools had become “targets” of teen boys who have secretly traded graphic sexual images of peers among each other without the victim's consent.
Young women and girls from across the country have reported the photos to authorities at an alarming rate after they found them plastered across a sick pornography ring, ones they never expected to surface.
The website shows a variety of photos, some include sickening close-ups of young victims’ genitalia.
In other cases, sickening videos showed young women performing sexual acts.
It is believed the website, in the format of a message chat forum, is frequented by Australians but hosted outside of the country.
Acting Children’s e-Safety Commissioner, Andree Wright, told news.com that since Monday, she has received numerous calls from panicked young girls who are victims of the porn site.
Ms Wright works with a team of former police detectives at the group's Pyrmont headquarters and said the website is “the issue of the moment”.
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“Over the last few days we’ve received contacts about this site from girls with a range of concerns,” Ms Wright said.
She said Australian women and girls are coming to her because they feel lost on where to go and what to do after their photos were leaked publicly without consent.
"They don’t know who put the pictures online or who is hosting them." Mrs Wright said.
The organisation is said to have powers above those wielded by police and may be able to assist victims to remove a photo once that person has reported an incident.
Ms Wright said victims can help to put stop to photos being leaked further by taking screen shots and noting web addresses to where the photo was found.
“For example, if we know there’s an image of an underage girl online but it’s being hosted overseas, we can contact offices in that country through our network and they will look at it under their own laws," Mrs Wright said.
She noted that it is a "challenge" to do this, but some photos are able to be removed.
Ms Wright also said people should Google search their name to check what other material is out there and request it to be removed from those sites.
If the host won't take the photo down, victims should use Google to track down specific details of the website and to report it, which should break down any link to that site for the particular image.
However, Australian National University cyber crime expert Roderic Broadhurst said it is mostly impossible to get the photos offline and catch those behind the site.
"We sometimes call them bulletproof ISP locations, jurisdictions that don't have standard cyber crime legislation, that don't have laws that enable people who use those sites to be extradited," he told AAP.
"They operate through proxies, in other words, they shift around their location. Although a service might be located in one place, it appears to be operating from another.
"If those images sit on a database in a foreign jurisdiction, where you don't have mutual legal assistance, how are we to recover them or stop them moving around?
"There's no control, no guarantee of getting them back. These young women possibly have to live with the fact these images are out there forever."
Why is it so difficult to get nude photos offline?
Cyber crime can involve a victim in one country, an offender in another country and content from a third.
Information can be encrypted (or written in code) and sent through a series of proxies (or indirect network services) so the last address is not the original source.
This makes it difficult to find the original, but even if it's possible, there's still a code to crack.
Site operators are usually based in countries with lax cyber crime legislation and no mutual legal assistance agreements.
Help stop online child abuse - If you see something that’s not quite right, report it to the [esafety.gov.au/reportillegalcontent|Children's e-safety commisson].
Police have urged anyone who believe they have fallen victim to this site to report it to Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or the Child Protection Helpline on 132 111.
If you or someone you know has been impacted by sexual assault or exploitation support is available at 1800 RESPECT and Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800.
