Police File 350 Charges against 44 Australian Men in Child Abuse Case
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – More than 40 Australian men have been charged with possessing child abuse material and sharing their material online via a cloud storage platform.
Australian federal police on Friday said they had filed 350 charges in total against 44 men in every Australian state and the ACT, with 16 children removed from harm’s way.
The cloud storage platform was allegedly used by thousands of sex offenders around the world, with some alleged Australian offenders also producing their own abuse material.
The Australian offenders are aged between 19 and 57.
Federal police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, in a statement on Friday thanked detectives for their hard work, saying victim identification was “a race against time”.
“Pixel by pixel, our investigators painstakingly look for clues and never give up, and the tools they use give Australian police access to world-leading expertise,” Kershaw said, The Guardian reported.
“Children are not commodities and the AFP (Australian federal police) and its partner agencies work around the clock to identify and prosecute offenders.”
The AFP said its Australian Center to Counter Child Exploitation has in the past 12 months intercepted more than 250,000 child abuse material files online, while 134 children – including 67 in Australia – were removed from harm in the 2019/20 financial year.
