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Krissy Barrett formally took over from Reece Kershaw as Australian Federal Police Commissioner earlier this month. The first woman to lead the AFP, she used her first major speech on Wednesday to highlight “a new and disturbing front in traditional gender-based violence”. “There are decentralised online crime networks and loosely affiliated individuals in Australia and offshore who are glorifying crime online such as sadistic online exploitation, cyber attacks and violence,” Ms Barrett told the National Press Club. “These crimes are now spilling into the real world, and they have real world consequences. “While these networks do not have a centralised hierarchy or a single ideology, they are prolific and are attracted to violent extremism, nihilism, sadism, Nazism and Satanism. “They are crimefluencers, and are motivated by anarchy and hurting others, with most of their victims, pre-teen or teenage girls.” She refused to name the networks so as not to “validate the notoriety that they crave”, but said the perpetrators are overwhelmingly “young boys and young men from Western English-speaking backgrounds”. “And overwhelmingly, young girls are the victims, and they are being intimidated, exploited and controlled,” Commissioner Barrett said. “Typically, these young girls have low self-esteem, may have mental health disorders, may have a history of self harm, eating disorders or other attributes that may lead them to seek connection online. “This can make them more vulnerable to being targeted directly by these networks.” She said perpetrators were not motivated by money or “sexual gratification”, but “purely for their amusement, for fun or to be popular online without fully understanding the consequences”. “These groups have a similar culture to multiplayer online gaming culture, and they hunt, stalk and draw in victims from a range of online platforms to be accepted into these networks,” Commissioner Barrett said. “The perpetrators often must have to pass a test or undertake a task such as providing videos of the self harm of others or other gory content – this is where mainly vulnerable girls are being victimised. “The young men groom victims online and then force them to perform serious acts of violence on themselves, their siblings, others, even their pets. “In this new twisted type of gamification, perpetrators reach a status or new level in their group when they provide more content showing more extreme acts of depravity and sadism. “And in some cases, perpetrators trade their victims with each other, just like an online game. Once traded, a new perpetrator can control their new victim.” More to come.
