AFP chief Krissy Barrett says predators exploiting girls on social media, gaming platforms, sets up Taskforce Pompilid

“These are criminals and they are motivated by anarchy and they harm others; most of their victims are pre-pubescent or teenage girls,” Barrett said, according to transcripts provided by her office.

The warning that criminals are finding victims on social media comes after tech giants Snapchat, TikTok and Meta told parliament they would comply with the government’s ban on under-16s despite concerns about the effectiveness of the world-first measure.

“We will comply with the law even though we believe it is unequally applied and risks undermining public confidence in the law,” Jennifer Stout, Snap Inc’s senior vice president of global policy, told a Senate inquiry examining the laws.

“We know this will be difficult for young people who use Snapchat to communicate with their closest friends and family.”

The social media ban will come into effect on December 10, and children under the age of 16 will also be banned from social media applications and accounts on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, X and YouTube. It’s unclear whether Discord and Roblox will fall under the ban.

Barrett became the first woman to lead the federal police when she took on the top job earlier this month, replacing Reece Kershaw.

Describing the emerging criminal networks as “a new and disturbing frontier in traditional gender-based violence”, Barrett will state: “The motivation of individuals in these networks is neither for financial nor sexual gratification – it is purely for their entertainment, for entertainment purposes – nor to become popular on the internet without a full understanding of the consequences.

“These groups have a culture similar to that of multiplayer, online gaming, and they prey, stalk and recruit victims from a variety of online platforms.”

Young men, usually between the ages of 17 and 20, groom their victims online and then force them to commit serious acts of violence against themselves, their siblings or their pets.

“In this new, perverted form of gamification, perpetrators achieve a status or new level in their group as they provide more content depicting more extreme acts of depravity and sadism,” Barrett will say.

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“And in some cases, perpetrators trade their victims with each other, just like in an online game.”

She will say that young girls who have low self-esteem, mental health problems, a history of self-harm or an eating disorder are particularly vulnerable to becoming victims.

Barrett’s warning echoes that from Britain’s National Crime Agency earlier this year that young people are “being drawn into sadistic and violent online gangs where they collaborate widely to cause serious harm or encourage others to do serious harm.”

The AFP established Taskforce Pompilid, named after a spider-hunting wasp, to detect, disrupt and dismantle these emerging online criminal networks.

“A sub-group within the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group was also established to target these groups,” he said, referring to the powerful intelligence-sharing network consisting of Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada.

Barrett will state that Australia faces intense strategic competition as nation states collude with criminals to undermine social cohesion.

“For example, a person we suspect of being responsible for a series of tobacco-related arson incidents in Australia is a person of interest in the investigation into the alleged politically motivated arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue,” he will say.

“This person is a national security threat to this country.

“Of all the criminals accused of threatening Australia, he is my number one priority and I have deployed my most experienced crime busters to target him.”

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This imprint revealed in August that Australian authorities suspected Kazem Hamad of conspiring with foreign spies to firebomb a Melbourne synagogue in a development that led to the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from Canberra.

Hamad and his right-hand man, suspected drug trafficker Ahmed Al Hamza, run their criminal operations out of Iraq and Iran.

Federal and state counter-terrorism investigators in Victoria first linked the firebombing in December to Hamad, who is suspected of being behind a campaign of murder and arson linked to the fight to control Australia’s lucrative illicit tobacco market. synagogue at fireside.

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s Senate inquiry hearing into Australia’s social media ban took a tense turn when NSW Nationals Senator Ross Cadell asked TikTok about the company’s culture “when it comes to bullying and intimidation” and said his office had been contacted during an earlier Senate inquiry this month to ask it to tone down its line of questioning.

Cadell questioned whether TikTok was “just a bullying giant” frustrated by its failure to achieve its goal, and said the person he believed intimidated his team did not receive an apology until the platform was forced to join today’s investigation. Woods-Joyce denied the allegation.

TikTok representative Ella Woods-Joyce responded: “I’m not aware of the details you mentioned. I would say the team must work professionally and appropriately at all times, and I believe that’s what we’re doing.”

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