A New Zealand story
On Monday 25 November 2024, a documentary entitled ‘Unmasking the Monsters’ aired on TVNZ. Herald reporter Jared Savage spent time with the NZ Customs Services team which investigates child sex abuse material in New Zealand.
He was advised that the public are blissfully ignorant about child sex abuse material (CSAM), perhaps because the depraved content is too hard to read about, and the problem has exploded in recent years. He discovered:
- In 2016, there were more than eight million referrals globally and 1333 were sent to New Zealand agencies to be investigated. Last year, those figures had skyrocketed to 36 million and 19,865, respectively. That’s 19,865 cases of CSAM that were investigated in NZ alone!
- Those numbers are the tip of the iceberg, given the common use of encrypted messages and the anonymity of the dark web
- ‘Unmasking the Monsters’: New doco with Herald journalist Jared Savage delves into dark world of child sex abuse material.
Simon Peterson, in charge of the Child Exploitation and Operations Team at NZ Customs indicated:
- CSAM is a lot more prevalent than what most people think
- It’s not just a problem for the rest of the world – it’s an issue that has come to New Zealand and it’s not going to go away.
- People don’t want to talk about it; it’s pretty uncomfortable to talk about. But if we keep it in the shadows, then we’re not doing enough to protect the kids coming up behind us.
- Nowadays, we’re having to deal with some really dark stuff online... children being raped, infants, some really horrible stuff involving animals and violence.
- That abuse is being captured specifically so it can be shared.
