Hon Judith Collins

Minister of Justice

11 May 2013       

Speech

Address to International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ) Regional Conference Asia Pacific Region, Auckland
 
Good afternoon.
 
Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. It’s great to be here.
 
The International Association of Women Judges is an association of great ability, accomplishment and potential.
 
It’s a great privilege to be a part of your conference for the Asia Pacific Region.

Building on what today’s keynote speakers have covered in terms of pornography and child exploitation I will talk specifically about the sexual abuse of children online and New Zealand’s commitment to combatting this abhorrent crime through our membership to the Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Online.
 
It’s a sad fact that the majority of sexual abuse goes by unreported.
 
Last year alone, Child Youth and Family found 1355 children under the age of 17 were sexually abused in New Zealand.
 
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are more than 4 million websites featuring victims who are children – some even including children younger than 2 years old.
 
While accurate statistics for this problem are hard to come by, one thing is certain – the digital age has drastically increased ways offenders access, disseminate and sell this criminal material.
 
The advancements of the 21st century mean people are living longer, healthier, more secure and productive lives.  Individuals and communities also have more opportunities than ever before to engage, communicate and share information.
 
With these benefits comes responsibility – responsibility to use modern technology appropriately. Unfortunately these benefits are all too frequently misused and abused.
 
Offending is no longer confined to a small, local, face-to-face community. Offenders are operating across communities, across cities, and across borders.
 
The internet age has seen the gross proliferation of child pornography published online or streamed live for online viewers – some is, chillingly even ‘personalised’ or ‘made-to-order’ for serial consumers.
Best estimates by the United Nations are that thousands of new photographs and videos are uploaded on to the Internet every week, and hundreds of thousands of searches for images of sexual exploitation of children are carried out every day. 
 
Offenders can now possess and easily distribute collections of more than a million images of sexually exploited children.  The sending, retrieval and storage of an almost infinite quantity of data operate at speeds and costs unimaginable only a decade ago.
 
But, thanks to the commitment and efforts of skilled and caring professionals in the public and private sectors, measures to combat child pornography have been put in place – through legislative reform, by dismantling child pornography networks, blocking internet sites, seizing harmful material and awareness-raising campaigns.
 
However despite these many and varied initiatives, child pornography remains an ever increasing global phenomenon.
 
It has become a very profitable business with a worldwide market value estimated at up to $20 billion dollars. Evidence shows the content of the publications is getting worse and that the children are getting younger. 
 
In 2007, the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation identified a rise in the number of websites depicting the most extreme and brutal forms of abuse.  Observations made by the New Zealand Chief Censor, Deputy Chief Censor and New Zealand enforcement agencies support this trend.
 
The UN Special Rapporteur has reported that images of child sexual exploitation and the sharing of those images compound the consequences of child abuse and affect victims’ recovery.
 
Images are often replicated and further distributed across the internet, ensuring the images endure in the cyber-sphere for the lifetime of the victim and beyond.
 
Victims can feel re-victimised by the knowledge that an image of them remains available to be viewed and shared.
 
Many abusers manipulate and force their victim to pretend that they are enjoying the experience. 
 
Networks for the exchange of child pornography display photographs in which the children have been forced to smile in order to prove that they “are having fun” and to make being sexually attracted to children seem legitimate and normal.
 
Victims might fear that authorities will believe they welcomed the abuse.
 
One of the key challenges for law enforcement authorities is identifying and locating victims and offenders.
 
In order to coordinate efforts to identify children and manage large quantities of evidence, authorities around the world are preparing databases of known images of sexually exploited children.
 
For example the International Child Sexual Exploitation image database, managed by Interpol, allows certified users in member countries to access the database directly and in real time. This allows immediate responses to queries related to child sexual exploitation investigations.
 
Police in nearly 40 countries are currently connected to the database and cooperate in identifying victims and offenders.
 
At the beginning of 2013, the database included data on 3,000 identified victims from more than 40 countries, as well as data related to numerous unidentified victims, whose cases are yet to be investigated.
 
Despite the efforts made and successes achieved, the relatively small number of victims identified shows much remains to be done.
 
As there are effectively no borders when it comes to the Internet, international cooperation in combating this offending would benefit from broader, more effective and more efficient efforts, and from consistency of practices and procedures.
 
The very need for greater international cooperation brings me to the Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Online.
 
The New Zealand Government is a founding participant in the Global Alliance.  The Alliance was launched with a Declaration in Brussels last December, at which I represented New Zealand and addressed Alliance members.
 
The Declaration recognises that child abuse online is a growing problem worldwide and combatting such crime requires a global effort to prosecute offenders, protect victims and prevent new crimes.
 
These efforts also require specific commitments from national authorities and must support existing international initiatives.
 
In Brussels, 48 Ministers from around the world committed to boosting their country’s current efforts and intended actions to further the Alliance’s goals.
 
I’m pleased to say that New Zealand has reported on our efforts to the European Commission, which is organising the first reporting session.
 
Alliance policy target #1
 
The Alliance aims to enhance efforts to identify victims and ensure they receive necessary support and protection.
 
New Zealand has three law enforcement agencies working collaboratively to investigate offences involving the sexual abuse of children and young persons – the New Zealand Police, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and the New Zealand Customs Service (Customs).
 
These agencies have signed specific protocol dedicated to enhanced efforts around victim identification.
 
In New Zealand, identifying and rescuing victims is a priority, not only for children abused here but also for children abused overseas.
 
Our officials have established working relationships with organisations such as the Interpol Working Group and the United States Department of Homeland Security to proactively investigate cases.
 
Our key agencies regularly contribute images to the Interpol database and liaise with other government and non-government organisations dedicated to the protection of children.
 
Currently a national database is being implemented which all three agencies can access.  This will improve communication and exchange of information and make it easier to investigate offending.
 
Police are working closely with Justice and support agencies (including Social Development, Education, and Health) to develop policies and processes to better protect children.
 
Two of our key initiatives are to introduce Child Harm Prevention Orders to protect children from high-risk abusive adults and a mandatory regime for the screening of adults who are working with children.
 
Police are also working with other justice sector partners to develop a Sex Offender Register and Management System for adults who pose a risk of sexual offending against children.  Legislation is expected to be introduced later this year.
 
Alliance policy target #2
 
The second policy target of the Global Alliance is to enhance efforts to investigate cases of child sexual abuse online and to identify and prosecute offenders.
 
To this end, New Zealand Police, Customs and DIA proactively investigate offences involving grooming and child sexual exploitation, as well as the production and trading of abuse images.  The three agencies freely share information and intelligence and undertake joint investigations.
 
Customs has formed a Child Exploitation Operations Team, which consists of two officers who predominantly work on child sexual abuse cases and Internal Affairs has covert investigators who are active in social networks. These investigations have resulted in a number of national and international successes. 
 
The Police Online Child Exploitation New Zealand team (OCEANZ) is a specialist group that investigates and prosecute perpetrators of child exploitation images. This team works with overseas Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who host the child exploitation material, to track and trace users and distributors.
 
Police are active members of the Virtual Global Taskforce, as are Internal Affairs and other international law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.  Police and Internal Affairs are also members of the Innocent Images International Taskforce.
 
Finally, I will soon introduce a Bill to Parliament to increase the penalties for objectionable publications offences – which include child sexual abuse online – and create a new offence of indecent communication with a child. 
 
We are increasing the maximum penalty for possession of an objectionable publication from 5 years’ imprisonment to 10 years’ imprisonment and increasing the maximum penalty for distributing or making an objectionable publication from 10 years’ to 14 years’.
 
The Bill will also remove the requirement to obtain the leave of the Attorney-General for prosecution of certain offences in the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993 to make this process quicker and less complicated.
 
Alliance policy target #3
 
The third policy target of the Global Alliance is to enhance efforts to increase public awareness of the risks posed by children’s activities online.
 
All three enforcement agencies in New Zealand actively support and promote the work of a non-governmental agency called Netsafe.  Netsafe provides advice and assistance to parents on the protection of children while they are online. 
 
To educate the public that the sexual abuse of children online is a reality – and happening here in New Zealand, not just other countries – Customs issues regular media releases about investigations undertaken and the sentence imposed by the Courts. 
 
Internal Affairs is an active member of Interpol’s networks. They have also built relationships with online service providers such as Facebook, and work with NGOs such as ECPAT Child ALERT, which works to end child prostitution, pornography and trafficking for sexual purposes.
 
The Police OCEANZ group has an agreement with the School Principals Network to improve victim identification, and presents to the School Principals Network on risks and issues with children online.
 
Alliance policy target #4
 
The fourth and final policy target of the Alliance is to reduce, as much as possible, the availability of child pornography online and the re-victimisation of children whose sexual abuse is published.
 
Internal Affairs operates a voluntary website filtering system for New Zealand.  The Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, works to block websites that host child sexual abuse images, and is made available voluntarily to New Zealand Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The system is strongly supported by ISPs and telecommunications companies.
 
Netsafe also provides an online mechanism to enable members of the public to report instances of inappropriate online activity involving child sexual abuse.
 
In partnership with the Department of Corrections, Internal Affairs is trialing a scheme to monitor the Internet access of persons subject to supervision orders.
 
The Police OCEANZ group contributes to prosecutions of offenders through the use of victim impact statements.  Police go back to the country of origin of victims to obtain statements to strengthen the prosecution, empower victims and prevent re-victimisation.
 
I will conclude by saying the offices you hold provide a real opportunity to give effect to the goals of the Alliance; an opportunity to protect our children and hold the perpetrators, peddlers, consumers and financial profit seekers to account.
 
I invite you all to seize that opportunity.
 
While the problem at hand is appalling, immense and growing, initiatives like the Global Alliance give us an opportunity renew our resolve and enhance our efforts to protect all children.
 
We must take every possible action to seek out every instance of this abhorrent crime, bring our children back to safety, and bring the full force of the law to bear on all who use, profit from, or promote this cruel destruction of innocence.
 
Let us not understate the importance of the task at hand. 
 
Let us welcome that responsibility – our children are counting on us.
 
Thank you.
 
ENDS

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