Child Wise

Child Sexual Abuse awareness raising campaign

Should the Federal Government fund more child sexual abuse prevention programs?

Sign a petition [the petition header will say ‘I recommend that the Australian Federal Government should fund more programs to prevent child sexual abuse such as the Child Wise Speak Up campaign that raises awareness nationally about the nature and extent of child sexual abuse and advises people how to respond to it] to recommend that the Federal Government fund a national campaign against child sexual abuse such as ‘Speak Up’ which would raise awareness about nature and extent of child sexual abuse and advise people how to respond to it.

Child sexual abuse can ruin young lives but there are flow-on costs for all of us. Today’s abused child may be tomorrow’s homeless youth, psychiatric patient, drug addict, criminal, or worst of all, child abuser. According to the Abused Child Trust (2006), the overall cost of 30,009 cases of child sexual abuse to the Australian tax payers could be estimated at $2.58 billion and increasing every year.

Sign our petition but also write to the Prime Minister or Jenny Macklin, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs . Ask them to support child protection programs and ask why more isn’t being done.

The Speak Up pilot campaign launched in February 2008 has been funded by IOOF and the Bank of Scotland Australia. Child Wise is seeking further funding to continue this important education campaign throughout Australia.

EMAIL US: Insert the below text in the body of the email and send to us. Include your name and your postcode. Send your email now

"Petition 1: I recommend that the Australian Federal Government should fund more programs to prevent child sexual abuse such as the Child Wise Speak Up campaign that raises awareness nationally about the nature and extent of child sexual abuse and advises people how to respond to it.

ISP Filtering of child pornography

Should Internet Service Providers (ISPs) filter out child pornography on the Internet?

Here’s what we think….

Child Wise believes that ISPs are the key to helping stop the trade in child pornography. Child pornography is illegal, and those found to be producing it, disseminating, downloading, or trading it in Australia can be prosecuted. Most Internet sites hosting child pornography however are not based in Australia and unless reported to our authorities, many sites can still be accessed by Australians.

Child pornography is one of the fastest growing online businesses generating approximately $US3 billion each year. It is estimated that 100,000 commercial websites offer child pornography and more than 20,000 images of child pornography are posted on the internet every week.

In late 2006 Child Wise commissioned AC Nielsen to conduct a survey of 1497 Australian internet users over the age of 18. The key outcomes of the survey were that: 83 per cent believe that ISPs should block all child pornography, 76 per cent would change to an ISP that blocked child pornography and 64 per cent were not confident that home-based internet filters are effective. We have also received calls from child sex offenders who support mandatory ISP filtering stating that this blocking mechanism would have reduced their desire to abuse children.

So what could possibly be the arguments against ISP filtering from elements of the ISP industry and extreme civil rights groups. Well they have stated that it may “slow down the internet”, “is expensive to use” and the clean feed system which is being used in the United Kingdom has faults, despite blocking access to hundreds of thousands of child pornography images. Do they care more about profits than the protection of children?

Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom have ISP-based filters in place blocking child pornography to the majority of Internet users in those countries. Reports show that these filters are very effective, with the UK system operated by British Telecom blocking over 35,000 attempts per day. During 2006, the Norwegian system blocked 1.7 million attempts to access child pornography. The Swedish system blocked 15,000 attempts during its first few weeks of operation which resulted in a 40 per cent drop in reports of child pornographic sites to Sweden's internet hotline.

While no ISP filtering system is perfect at least these countries have introduced measures to counter the demand for child pornography.

Recently the Federal government has announced the introduction of mandatory ISP filtering to block child pornography. Child Wise supports a ISP filtering system that will block out only child pornography and illegal sites. It may not be a perfect system by blocking 100% of material but at least it will block access to thousands of child pornographic sites, reduce the demand and protect many hundreds of thousands of children from being exploited in this insidious global child sex trade.

So we encourage you to sign our petition but also write a letter to Senator Stephen Conroy , the Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy or your local member to ask that ISPs filter out child pornography.

EMAIL US: Insert the below text in the body of the email and send to us. Include your name and your postcode. Send your petition now .

Petition #2: ‘I recommend that Australian Internet Service Providers should filter out child pornography and illegal sites from the internet.