A man in India has been arrested and charged after allegedly sexually abusing and intimidating a girl in Western Australia over Instagram and WhatsApp for years.
On Friday WA police announced the man had been charged by Indian authorities this week after allegedly abusing the girl, starting when she was 11 years old in 2020.
In 2023, detectives from child exploitation operations were notified of an incident involving the girl, who was the alleged victim of online grooming, sextortion and other online offences from a person she met online, WA police said in a statement.
“This abuse continued over several years and caused severe trauma to the girl,” police alleged.
Police were able to track the alleged offender to India and referred the matter to Indian authorities via Interpol.
“Indian Authorities charged the man in relation to criminal intimidation, transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit act, and sexual harassment upon a child with sexual intent.”
The announcement of the arrest comes just days after research from Plan International and CNN’s As Equals revealed one in 10 girls say they face online violence daily or almost daily, with almost 40% reporting they’ve been harassed at least once a month.
The research surveyed more than 600 young women and girls aged 13-24 across nine countries and found 11% of girls and young women reported having harmful online experiences daily or almost daily.
The research also found 75% of respondents had exposure to harmful online experiences “at some point”. Almost half of the respondents (44%) reported seeing or receiving unwanted sexual images or videos and one in four (25%) had faced discrimination or hate speech.
The Plan International Australia chief executive, Susanne Legena, said online violence was “prolific”.
“Online violence is a universal issue and Australia is not immune. The calls our e-Safety commissioner has made this week are very important steps in a global effort for transparency and regulation in light of the tech giants failing to enforce any self-regulatory codes on their own,” Legena said.
“The bitter truth we must accept is this: online violence is serious and prolific. It silences girls’ and children’s voices, and it causes real and lasting harm. So we must ask, what are we going to do about it?”
The Plan International report comes as Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, this week issued legal notices to large tech companies – holding them to account on what they are doing to combat AI-generated child abuse material, deep fakes, online grooming and sexual extortion.
The legal notices will require tech companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft in Australia to report to eSafety every six months about the measures they have in place to tackle online violence on their platforms.
