21st Century Child Abuse: A Conversation with Michael Salter, one of the World’s Leading Researchers on Modern Forms of Victimization.

Professor Michael Salter is the Director of Childlight UNSW, the Australasian hub of Childlight, the Global Child Safety Institute, which undertakes research for impact on child sexual abuse and exploitation. Childlight UNSW is based in School of Social Sciences at UNSW, where Professor Salter conducts national and international research on child sexual exploitation, gender-based violence and complex trauma. His published work includes the books Organised Sexual Abuse (2013, Routledge) and Crime, Justice and Social Media (2017, Routledge) and over sixty papers in international journals and edited collections. His research engages with policy and practice across multiple sectors, including mental health, social work, law enforcement and internet regulation.

Professor Salter is Chair of the Grace Tame Foundation and a past president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) where he has served on the Board of Directors since 2018, and on the Scientific Committee since 2015. He sits on the editorial boards of the journals Child Abuse Review and the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation. Dr Salter is a member of a number of advisory groups, including the Advisory Group of the National Plan To Prevent Violence Against Women and Their Children, the Expert Advisory Group of the eSafety Commissioner, and the Expert Advisory Committee of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. 

Source: https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/professor-michael-alan-salter 

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:19:15
Unknown
You're listening to Radio Kim. We value the sense of community that connects people and helps them find ways to move forward. Join us on our journey to prevent child abuse and neglect.

00:00:19:15 - 00:00:32:11
Unknown
Welcome and welcome back. This is Radio Kempe. I'm Warren Binford with the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Colorado. Thank you for joining us today.

00:00:38:12 - 00:01:05:12
Unknown
Generally, when we refer to 21st century child abuse, we're talking about child abuse or neglect. That's become increasingly prevalent in the last 25 years, such as online and tech facilitated child abuse, including Csam, which is short for child sex abuse material, live streaming, the abuse of children, luring, grooming and solicit solicitation on platforms, child trafficking, online sextortion, etc..

00:01:05:14 - 00:01:28:22
Unknown
So far, we've talked to industry leaders from Google and Snapchat, policy leaders like Ernie Allen and Julie Inman Grant, the Safety Commissioner of Australia and some of the top researchers in the world. Today will be the ninth episode in our 21st century child abuse series, and we have the honor of speaking to Michael Salter. I've been a huge fangirl of Michael's for a decade now.

00:01:28:24 - 00:01:49:20
Unknown
Michael is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and recently became the director of the Child Light East Asia and Pacific Hub. He has published at least 135 works, including some of the most compelling studies and analyzes that I've read in many years. We are so lucky to have you here today, Michael. Thank you for joining us.

00:01:49:22 - 00:02:12:22
Unknown
Absolute pleasure to be with you, Warren. So tell us, how did you first get involved in 21st century child abuse? It's a great question. I got involved around the turn of the century. So I'm in my late teens, which was the late 90s, a little while ago now, a really good friend of mine was disclosing to me pretty serious sexual exploitation.

00:02:12:22 - 00:02:35:03
Unknown
What we probably now call trafficking. And she talked to me about this privately for a couple of years. And then it was with some shock that in the early 2000s on the front page of the state newspaper, there was a journalist reporting about allegations of a network of men who sexually abused kids, and they manufactured child abuse material.

00:02:35:05 - 00:02:55:16
Unknown
But those very specific details in that reporting that matched up with what my friend had been disclosing in private to me for a couple of years. And so at this point, me in my early 20s, I sort of connected with the journalist who referred me to a psychologist who was sort of managing this group of victims who were all disclosing the same abuse as my friend.

00:02:55:16 - 00:03:17:05
Unknown
And it went from there. And so I had a number of years where sometimes I was actually living with her in quite a supportive role. She was very impacted by sexual abuse. Really struggled with her eating, her sleeping, just basic sort of life skills. And just got to witness what her life was like and also just the systemic failures around her.

00:03:17:06 - 00:03:38:11
Unknown
There was no health system for her. There was no crisis intervention. Our intersection with law enforcement were really challenging because police just couldn't understand her behavior. And at a certain point, I thought, you know, I think I'm going to have to do something about this for a job. So that's how I ended up going back to school, getting a PhD.

00:03:38:13 - 00:03:42:00
Unknown
And he. Here we are.

00:03:43:21 - 00:04:11:24
Unknown
I'm so grateful that you entered this field. Michael you've been so many wonderful contributions. One of the most exciting things that's happened recently is you became the director of the, you know, regional director for Child Light International. Can you tell us a little bit about that organization and the work that you're doing with them? So Childline is a partnership actually between the University of Edinburgh and the Human Dignity Foundation.

00:04:12:01 - 00:04:52:10
Unknown
So Childline has this incredible sort of ambition. And I do think that for me, it's sort of a world first, because the data around child sexual abuse is really quite fragmented. We've got some, I think, really good high level studies, but they're few and far between. And I just mean from an epidemiological point of view, they just hasn't been enough investment in the measurement of child sexual abuse, understanding risk factors, and also just drilling into some of the methodological challenges that child sexual abuse presents, where we need to be methodologically really innovative if we're going to get around the secrecy of child sexual abuse, and also just some of the challenges of measuring serious

00:04:52:10 - 00:05:20:11
Unknown
criminal activity against kids. So, Todd, let's focus is really on data. It's on gathering the evidence, investing in it, also supporting our partners to build data systems. We can't assume that the data is just out there sitting with police or sitting with not for profits or sitting out there in the service sector. Sometimes it's also about working with our partners to think, how do you build systems within your organizations that can collect data?

00:05:20:15 - 00:05:43:09
Unknown
That's then going to be beneficial for victims and survivors and for the different work that we we do. Child, that ambition is very much global, although it's headquartered in Scotland. And so we really have the privilege here at the University of New South Wales of being the first regional hub, where we work in partnership with our friends in Scotland.

00:05:43:11 - 00:06:10:19
Unknown
But we're really their ambassadors here in Australia and in to the region. And that local focus is important. You know, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, it's a very, very particular context. It's important that when we're doing that work and when we're collaborating with partners in the region, we understand that local context and certainly child that has ambitions, to stand up other hubs in other regions around the world.

00:06:10:19 - 00:06:41:06
Unknown
the studies that you recently published with Child Like, really focuses on, financial behaviors and how you can look at online, financial behavior in order to try and ascertain whether someone, whether or not someone is engaging in child sex abuse. Can you tell us a little bit more about that research and analysis? So as this is a really exciting angle of research, that particular study or that particular data came out of our perpetration prevalence study.

00:06:41:07 - 00:07:10:00
Unknown
So we conducted the world's largest study on the prevalence of the perpetration of child sexual abuse. So 2000 men in Australia, that was a nationally representative sample, also 1500 men in the US, in the UK. So 5000 men overall. We asked them a range of questions, including about just online financial behavior, as well as whether or not they were sexually abusing children and whether they had an interest in sexually abusing children.

00:07:10:02 - 00:07:37:05
Unknown
What we found was that many sexually abused children online, quite substantially visible to the finance sector, the sexually abusing kids online, but they're actually using a range of other online services. And so what were they able to do from that survey data is start to point to red flags for the finance sector so that they can start to classify some of their clients into a higher risk category.

00:07:37:07 - 00:08:04:11
Unknown
Nothing that we identified in our study necessarily means that, a man is a child sex offender, but what it means is that the banks can start to narrow down their focus onto subsets of clients, who may be engaging or who look like they are engaging in high risk activities. And perhaps they deserve closer scrutiny. I think the benefit here of focusing in on financial activity, I think there's two pieces.

00:08:04:13 - 00:08:33:12
Unknown
I do feel that child sexual abuse is becoming increasingly financialized. I think it's increasingly intersecting with the exchange of currency and that makes them visible to the finance sector. But the finance sector is also much more heavily regulated than the technology sector. They actually have a range of compliance obligations around irregular or illegal transactions. And in that respect, they're, I think, a much more friendly partner for us when we're looking to disrupt online child sexual abuse.

00:08:33:18 - 00:08:58:12
Unknown
Whereas sometimes we hit a bit of a wall with the technology sector, because they're not obliged by law to be particularly proactive around child sexual abuse. Why do you think that is? Why isn't the tech industry incentivized to be more proactive? I think there's a few reasons. I mean, frankly, there's, a broader collective investment in financial regulation.

00:08:58:14 - 00:09:25:20
Unknown
Because if the finance sector's not regulated, then the wealthiest individuals in society, have, you know, things get stolen. You know, they they need the finance sector to run. Well, and as a result, it runs, you know, relatively well. Obviously, there's some, loopholes in, the finance sector that we might want to, close, but there's reasons why the finance sector is as well regulated as it is the technology sector.

00:09:25:22 - 00:09:55:03
Unknown
As it really emerged and commercialized in the mid 1990s, was quite successful, particularly in the United States and particularly Silicon Valley, in carving out what we now call a space of internet exceptional ism. The technology sector was able to make an argument to legislators in the United States that the technology sector was somehow different, that it should not be regulated in the way that other media sectors or other communication sectors were regulated.

00:09:55:05 - 00:10:25:02
Unknown
You know, in the US, law enforcement was ringing the alarm bells from the early 90s around the internet. They were saying, if you don't build in child safety, protections into, online communications, we will see an explosion of child sexual abuse. And that is exactly what has happened. At the same time, the technology sector, not only in the US but in my country, all around the world, governments were really interested in the economic potential of the technology sector.

00:10:25:03 - 00:10:48:24
Unknown
They did not want to constrain the sector with quote unquote, red tape and regulation. And that was their position well into the 20 tens. And governments, other authorities just were not ringing the alarm bells around the escalating rates of online child sexual exploitation until, frankly, I think the last 5 or 6 years, it's really when we've seen that that turn around.

00:10:49:01 - 00:11:13:13
Unknown
So at the moment, we just don't have the legislative frameworks in place, in order to ensure that the technology sector is keeping children in front of mind. Obviously, you've got some quite active legislative battles ongoing in the United States at the moment. We're seeing a number of bills being pushed and pulled and pushed in the different ways, in Washington.

00:11:13:15 - 00:11:36:02
Unknown
We're seeing similar sorts of, struggles in Europe, particularly around, child sexual abuse material. Here in Australia, we've got a fantastic regulatory regime. I'm a huge fan of the Esafety Commissioner. I really think she's one of the best regulators, in the world. Her office is really smart, so I have a lot of respect for them.

00:11:36:04 - 00:12:02:04
Unknown
The challenge for us in Australia is, with all due respect to my fellow Australians, we're sort of the mouse that roars. We only have so much power on the world stage when most of these technology sectors, their centers of power, are in the US, they are in Europe. So I think we punch above our weight, but our ability to bring the tech sector to heel on our own is pretty limited, and we're really dependent on that global cooperation.

00:12:02:06 - 00:12:29:17
Unknown
Yeah. I actually wanted to ask you a little bit about public support for, child safety online, which you recently published, some research that shows that the overwhelming majority of the public support regulations to help keep children safe online. And yet it feels like the media is constantly attacking Australia's safety commissioner. It feels like the tech industry is constantly attacking her.

00:12:29:23 - 00:13:01:16
Unknown
And when I look at research in the United States, there is overwhelming public support for regulations that promote child safety online. Here too. But we don't have someone at the national level like Julie, who's in charge of really moving this forward despite all these attacks on on regulation. And I know that the tech industry, and particularly social media has threatened to pull out of Australia entirely because of the regulations that have been implemented there recently.

00:13:01:21 - 00:13:43:05
Unknown
Do you take that seriously? Do you think that social media will pull out of Australia because they are required to do more to protect children online, and children do have limited access to social media because of the harms it poses to them. So I think there's a couple of pieces here. You're absolutely right about public opinion. Public opinion in Australia, in the United States and in Europe, every single poll shows over whelming public support and escalating public concern around sexual abuse of kids online and in general, the conduct, of the technology sector, the really predatory, profit driven, incredibly dangerous behavior that we see from the technology sector.

00:13:43:08 - 00:14:08:12
Unknown
The public is absolutely sick of it. We've always had an issue when it comes to child sexual abuse about the culture of journalism. We have always had that problem. Journalists do not simply reflect the opinion of the public. Journalism is a profession. It is itself an industry. And we need to think about where journalists come from and also what their sort of culture and their interests are.

00:14:08:14 - 00:14:32:13
Unknown
By and large, journalists, with a few exceptions, you know, have not been great allies for us in the fight against child sexual abuse, to be frank. When we look at news coverage of online child sexual abuse, journalists who cover particular incidents or crime types, but there's been a failure to put the pieces together and to hold the technology sector accountable.

00:14:32:15 - 00:15:16:22
Unknown
For example, here in Australia relatively recently, we had the president of signal, Meredith Whittaker, who came on a bit of a tour of Australia at the same time that the Esafety commissioner was actually releasing some quite important policy around online regulation. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the president of signal was here on the same day that that announcement occurred, and we just had absolutely glowing, discussions and presentations of signals, not just pro encryption agenda, but, you know, Meredith Whittaker has been very, very active, particularly in Europe, but globally in opposing regulation that requires proactive detection of child sexual abuse material in encrypted environments.

00:15:16:24 - 00:15:41:09
Unknown
And we had journalists here in Australia covering Meredith Whittaker, and the journalist saying online child protection is a form of mass surveillance. That wasn't her words. They were just editorializing. So it gives you a sense, I think, of the cultural bias of journalism and the extent to which I think they can be captured by the rhetoric and the propaganda of the tech sector.

00:15:41:11 - 00:16:04:10
Unknown
Julie, I think has done a fantastic job. So the safety commissioner has done a fantastic job here in Australia. She certainly I think her efforts have the support of the public. It would be really fantastic to see, I think, a centralized agency in the United States with that online safety and online protection prerogative. And I think that's what the public is calling for.

00:16:04:12 - 00:16:29:21
Unknown
And it allows for that really targeted, policy development that we need. And the policy smarts that we need, because this is technologically challenging. It is legally challenging, particularly in the United States, with your free speech protections. And we do see online safety regulations getting shot down at the state level in the US, because they're just not meeting those free speech standards.

00:16:29:23 - 00:17:07:08
Unknown
But I think it's really important for us to recognize that csam child sex abuse material is not protected speech. That the trafficking in children is not protected speech, that's extortion, is not protected speech. And yet, you're absolutely right that you'll have political leaders and sometimes lobbyists and lobbyists who waive that free speech argument all the time. And it's just not valid when it comes to the types of exploitation, child exploitation that, that we're trying to combat online.

00:17:07:14 - 00:17:39:06
Unknown
There was one thing that you talked about, which was, you know, in the 1990s, when the tech industry was able to, persuade political leadership in the US that they needed to have no regulation to develop their industry. And, of course, in the 1990s, the tech industry was a baby industry. And so they, of course, lobbied for and got section 230 of the Communications Decency Act here in the United States, which is basically a get out of jail free card that is eternal.

00:17:39:08 - 00:18:05:23
Unknown
Like anything that they do almost, they can rely on section 230 so that they're not held liable. They're not held accountable in the US courts for, you know, problems that they themselves don't start on their platforms. But the fact is, is that that baby industry 30 years ago is now a full grown adult industry, one of the most powerful industries in the world.

00:18:06:04 - 00:18:40:21
Unknown
And you would think at this point, an industry that's 30, 35 years old can stand on its own two feet and defending itself against lawsuits from children who have been trafficked online after the platform's algorithms have driven predators to them. So it's really hard to watch this baby industry in the 90s grow into a full adult and still be able to act like they they don't need to be held or they shouldn't be held accountable.

00:18:40:23 - 00:19:05:02
Unknown
So I really appreciate, yeah, your commentary and whether I take the threats of, the technology sector seriously when they threaten to pull out of Australia as a jurisdiction in which they have threatened to do that, threatens to do the same thing in, in Europe, do I take that seriously? Not not particularly, because I also think very often the sorts of services they're threatening to withdraw from Australia.

00:19:05:04 - 00:19:38:18
Unknown
You know, do I think that Australia would fall apart tomorrow if we no longer had access to Facebook? No, I don't actually. And what we've learned in Australia is that politicians can accumulate political capital by being seen to be tough with the technology sector. The public likes it actually. And so it's interesting now in the United States with sort of the political we our intention you've undergone in the last 2 or 3 months, particularly with the alliance that we've seen between the new administration and the technology sector.

00:19:38:20 - 00:20:02:09
Unknown
And then I think some of that very robust rhetoric into Europe that says if Europe tries to regulate American technology companies, that there will be retaliation. You know, from my point of view, you know, we're sovereign nations. We get to determine the sorts of services that are delivered within our geographic bounds. And we do that all the time with transnational business.

00:20:02:11 - 00:20:27:02
Unknown
Again, this is an interesting space of internet, exceptionally so. But with all due respect to my American colleagues, American exceptionalism, which says that American companies can beam services and products into another country that actually don't accord with that country's laws, and with their cultural expectations. I it's interesting watching the tech sector pick that fight, because I think they'll lose.

00:20:27:04 - 00:20:47:14
Unknown
I think I think the world is fed up. And if the technology sector is not willing to work with governments and work with different countries to ameliorate these harms, I you know, it's a kind of brinkmanship that I think that they might be on the losing end of, you know, I hope so, I really do.

00:20:47:14 - 00:21:17:20
Unknown
I hope they come to their senses and start to create safer platforms for children. But if they're not going to do it on their own, then I'm grateful for countries that stand up to them and say, no, we have laws and, you know, will pass regulations, promulgate regulations to keep children safe in our country. But it reminds me of the fact that the U.S. has been basically exporting section 230 of the Communications Decency Act through its trade agreements with different countries around the world, to try and actually get ahead of this.

00:21:17:22 - 00:21:49:04
Unknown
And so if our country wants to be a trade partner to the US, you know, the, the newest trade agreements require them to adopt the get out of jail free card that, you know, the internet companies in the US enjoy and prevent their own citizens from holding U.S. internet companies, you know, tech companies liable for, you know, any negligence that they commit that might lead to a child being raped or trafficked, exploited.

00:21:49:06 - 00:22:16:11
Unknown
And I really worry that it's a form of digital colonialism that we're seeing by embedding section 230 of the Communications Decency Act into our trade agreements around the world. It's a great point. And, you know, when you talk about sort of 21st century child sexual abuse and 21st century child protection, it really obliges child protection advocates to, really come into the modern age.

00:22:16:11 - 00:22:38:12
Unknown
You know, child protection. You know, we're often focused on the statutory system. We're focused on social work and child welfare. It's really important we're focused on that front line. But what it means is that child protection, civil society doesn't always have kind of the nous to think about free trade agreements and the particular provision to free trade agreements and what that's going to mean for child safety.

00:22:38:14 - 00:22:58:13
Unknown
And I think there's been a bit of a lag in sort of child protection, civil society, because we're under-resourced. We are, struggling just around our time. We don't have enough people. And I think we need to come to the party. We need to be the ones that are scrutinizing these sort of free trade agreements. We need to be ringing the alarm bells.

00:22:58:18 - 00:23:22:24
Unknown
And that means, again, bringing the media into this discussion. We need journalistic scrutiny on these sorts of trade agreements. But unfortunately, you know, we've got business journalists and we've got economic journalists and financial journalists. This is an area of journalism where we don't have child abuse specialists, actually, who are on the beat every day, and they're sensitized to these, these issues.

00:23:23:01 - 00:23:44:16
Unknown
So this is a really important discussion. But I think for our audience listening to the podcast, sometimes it means maybe we got our training in social work or we got training in psychology, but we're going to need to skill up a bit to make sure that we are smarter than the industry lobbyists in Washington getting these provisions into free trade agreements.

00:23:44:18 - 00:24:10:03
Unknown
Well, and I think it ties back, I agree with you. And I think it ties back to the research that you just published. You know, in the child like report that just came out focusing on financial behaviors. So I think about, for example, kids in the Philippines are often targeted for live streaming child sex abuse, and that's often happening from men in some of the northern countries.

00:24:10:05 - 00:24:49:17
Unknown
And I think about a man in the United States who is paying $40 to have children being sexually abused through a live streaming, arrangement, and the children in the Philippines. And when he pays us $40, he pays an $80 international transfer fee. And that combination of a 40 paying $80 for a $40 payment from the U.S. to the Philippines appears to me to be a red flag for those financial institutions like you described in your report.

00:24:49:19 - 00:25:17:05
Unknown
And then I think about the liability of the platform that that might let live streaming might be happening on, and the fact that they should be be able to to identify when a predator is exploiting children. But if there is section 230 built into the trade agreement with the Philippines, it might prevent those children who are being exploited and abused from being able to hold the platform liable for facilitating that abuse.

00:25:17:05 - 00:25:45:06
Unknown
And it ties into, you know, that financial behavior that you've documented can be a red flag. And I really appreciate the way that you're bringing all those parties together in the analysis that you're doing of these international transactions, remote child sex abuse. And but, I mean, look, in Southeast Asia, because a lot of these families are actually dependent, on money that's been transferred elsewhere in the region.

00:25:45:06 - 00:26:10:04
Unknown
Often they'll have family members that will go live in Singapore, or they might go and live somewhere else in the UAE, for example. And then they're essentially sending money back from these countries, back into Southeast Asia to keep their families afloat. What we've seen then is a proliferation of different sorts of payment rails and payment systems that are often operating outside your normal financial regulatory regime.

00:26:10:06 - 00:26:36:24
Unknown
These are exactly the sorts of loopholes that then we start to see illicit trading in child sexual abuse material proliferating. You know, we need to understand regulation is important. And that's what we've learned. I think with the technology sector, we're really learning the reasons why our media sector, our TV, our movies, our radio, our print is regulated. We're learning why we have financial regulation.

00:26:37:01 - 00:27:12:04
Unknown
And we're learning that at speed, it needs to be in place for a range of reasons, including when we don't have regulation. Well, unfortunately, we have a significant minority of people in the community with a sexual interest in children. They will find the gaps in the system. They will slide through them in extraordinary numbers. And I think what was massively underestimated in the 90s was the scale of interest, of sexual interest in children's bodies and just the size of the black market that had not been catered for until then.

00:27:12:06 - 00:27:40:18
Unknown
Once the internet came along, this was an opportunity unprecedented in human history for the sexual abuse of children. You know, it's so interesting because I often talk about the fact that we have had, you know, the sexual abuse of children, at least since Roman times when an offender could be killed for sexually abusing every child, and that was a capital crime thousands of years ago.

00:27:40:18 - 00:28:10:03
Unknown
And yet it has followed us into the the handful of us into the 20th century, at which point we passed all sorts of laws to make clear that child sex abuse was unlawful, that child pornography, which we now call csam, was illegal. We made it illegal. And when you look at the number of reports of C Sam, at the end of the 20th century, we only had like 4500 reports in the United States.

00:28:10:05 - 00:28:59:24
Unknown
And yet you look at it today, there were 36 million reports filed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is where you send these reports, the cyber tip line. And and it just it's like an 8000 fold increase. And it's just so heartbreaking because like you say, you know, the internet has not just revealed the level of its, you know, interest in sexual exploitation of children that many humans have, but it actually is, is causing children to abuse one another, which is what first brought me, to your research that I remember when I started looking at the effects of childhood explosion, exposure to pornography and sexual content on the internet and

00:28:59:24 - 00:29:27:23
Unknown
its connection with the rise of, child on child sex abuse. I was amazed by what you were explaining. Could be found in that adult content. Is that an area that you're still writing about? You know, what are what are you seeing with regard to childhood exposure to adult content and an increase in child on child abuse, somewhat similar to the United States.

00:29:27:23 - 00:29:52:16
Unknown
Over time, Australia has recorded, I think, a real decrease in rates of adult offending against children contact offending. And we've seen a similar, seen similar declines in the US. So although this is still a very serious issue, you know, it has declined in the last 40 years. Now to be clear, that's contact offending because, at the same time actually online offending is massively increased.

00:29:52:16 - 00:30:17:06
Unknown
So I don't think we can argue that there's actually been a reduction in child sexual abuse overall. From, from, from adults, here in Australia led by, this wasn't research I was a part of, but really important study for us led by, Ben Matthews. So the Australian child maltreatment Study, so very rigorous gold standard victimization study, called the Australian Child Maltreatment Study.

00:30:17:08 - 00:30:41:09
Unknown
One of the things that it found is that rates of child on child offending in Australia is actually doubled in the last 20 years. Now, a number of things have changed for kids in the last 20 years. And obviously we wouldn't want to point to a single factor, but I, you know, pornography is, you know, that is the one thing that has changed in the last 20 years.

00:30:41:09 - 00:31:01:16
Unknown
You know, I was a teenager in the 90s. Pornography was incredibly difficult to access as a teenager in the 90s, you couldn't get a hold of it, frankly. You know, it was it was behind the screen at a news agency like it was a special section. You know, you had to show it. It was really hard to get a hold of.

00:31:01:18 - 00:31:28:05
Unknown
Now that changed with the commercialization of the internet. And I think the, the, the data is really clear on this for my colleagues that work in, the harmful sexual behavior space. That one of the key drivers for sexually harmful behavior by children is exposure to pornography. What we also know is that child sexual behavior in general, has become, more, diverse.

00:31:28:05 - 00:31:55:14
Unknown
Kids actually have a wider sexual vocabulary than they used to, because they're seeing a lot of acts online that then engaging in those acts with one another consensually or non consensually, but even in the sort of consensual space or the more kind of gray area for adolescents, there's a lot of behavior that particularly teenage girls don't like, don't enjoy, don't ask for things like choking expectations around anal sex.

00:31:55:16 - 00:32:20:11
Unknown
This sort of conduct that's clearly driven by exposure to pornography, I will say, and off the back of, advocacy that I've done, in collaboration with, Jess Hill, who's very well known journalist here in Australia. And more broadly, there's been a coalition of people pushing for this for a long time. The government actually agreed to the age verification of adult content last year.

00:32:20:11 - 00:32:48:15
Unknown
They had initially rejected this. They agreed to this, about 12 months ago. We currently have a nationally funded trial of age verification technology. But there's now sort of a blueprint and a runway whereby adult pornography will need to be behind, a gatekeeping mechanism around age in the near future. For me, I think this is going to be an incredible child sexual abuse prevention step.

00:32:48:15 - 00:33:07:06
Unknown
I don't think it's a step we should have taken. I don't know why we thought that exposing children to pornography was a good idea, but apparently we did. Or at least somebody made that decision on behalf of the community. I think it will also protect adult women, frankly, from sexual violence. It's not about saying no pornography.

00:33:07:06 - 00:33:29:20
Unknown
It's not about censoring pornography. It's about regulation. And regulation is about looking at products and commodities like pornography and making sure that they're not doing harm to the community. Thank you. Michael. So so what are you working on now? What do we what do we have to look forward to for Michael Salter in the next 1 to 2 years?

00:33:29:22 - 00:33:51:05
Unknown
We've been doing work for a couple of years now, around the women who find that their partner to men who look at CSM. And so we started doing this work about five years ago, became really interested. You know, women were talking about the signs and the sort of symptoms of his offending before she realized he was an offender.

00:33:51:07 - 00:34:16:13
Unknown
But also the system response to that woman's been really poor. This is a group who's also actually quite likely to report domestic violence in the relationship. A lot of sexual coercion in the relationship, a lot of coercive control. And we found that once the male offender was charged with, sex offense, she was often not getting much support around her own needs, the violence committed against her, the impact on her children.

00:34:16:15 - 00:34:39:08
Unknown
So we've been lucky enough to obtain some funding. We've been doing a study for a couple of years now, looking at the intersection of domestic violence and child sexual abuse. What's happening in homes where the offender commits both domestic violence and sexual abuse? We've been speaking to both, adult survivors, of men who sexually abuse them but committed domestic violence.

00:34:39:09 - 00:35:05:01
Unknown
We've been doing interviews with women who find themselves in that situation, a lot of work with professionals across the country who work at that intersection of DV and CSA, and also looking at family law cases with co-occurring allegations. So we're just finalizing this, at the moment, and really trying to understand how child sexual abuse and violence against women co-occur.

00:35:05:03 - 00:35:33:09
Unknown
This was work that was really well recognized in the 70s, when the women's movement was really ringing the alarm bells around both incest and violence against women and the women's movement really saw these as interlocking forms of gender based violence. Over the course of the development of our response to these two problems, certainly in the Australian context, there's been kind of a siloing the child sexual abuse response happens in one area.

00:35:33:14 - 00:36:03:16
Unknown
The domestic violence response happens in the other. What's been really great for us is, you know, as we've been doing the work, just the appetite in both of these response systems because they're saying this co-occurrence all the time, and they really want that discussion about joint working and delivering good outcomes for women and kids. And then thinking systemically, well, how do we support that goodwill from from frontline providers who what who are doing their best?

00:36:03:18 - 00:36:32:03
Unknown
How do we make sure that we've got a joint response system? I think that's going to take investment from government. We just have not had public funding in Australia invested into child advocacy centers. We only have one child advocacy center in Australia and it is wholly philanthropically funded. It receives no public or taxpayer investment whatsoever. But to my mind, that's one of the huge gaps in our response system.

00:36:32:03 - 00:36:51:02
Unknown
So, you know, for us, the research is really important and will be, that will be coming out over the next couple of months, but also that advocacy piece that says, what next? And what I really enjoy in my work is that coalition, in that collaboration with the frontline providers who are doing the real work on the ground.

00:36:51:04 - 00:37:09:04
Unknown
How can we, as academics work with them to drive change so that they can do the job that they want to do? But thank you, Michael. I'm so looking forward to reading that, that research when it's published. And I want to thank you for being with us today. And of course, thank you for everything that you

00:37:09:04 - 00:37:25:19
Unknown
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