On September 2 1998 newspaper headlines highlighted a cooperative police action in 14 countries (including in Western Australia) which resulted in raids on the homes of about 200 suspected paedophiles. Images depicting sexual abuse and actual rape of young children formed a stockpile of hundreds of thousands of items. The study reported in this paper was conducted, with the support of the Paedophile Investigation Team within the Western Australia Police Service. The study found that paedophiles were using World Wide Web pages to proclaim their lifestyles, to disseminate information and to facilitate communication. It also found evidence of international paedophile organisation where Internet anonymity techniques are used to conceal identities.
This Trends and Issues paper offers suggestions to counter this activity. However, there is a need for reliable information and competent investigation because a sophisticated level of technological competency was demonstrated by many paedophiles. Indeed, paedophiles are expected to create closed Internet communities that will be difficult to penetrate, and the use of the Internet for criminal paedophile activity will pose a continuing challenge to Australian law enforcement.