Stolen childhoods

The trade in sex abuse

With the click of a button, child sex abuse images can be sent around the world. The sharing often continues long after the abuse ends – and survivors live with the knowledge that their most traumatic moments are being traded in an industry worth billions of dollars.

Money transfer companies stopped their customers being able to pay whistleblower WikiLeaks in 2010 after pressure from the US Congress.

So why can’t the same be done to those who abuse children and sell the pictures to paedophiles online?

Martin Henry Lawes was a prominent businessman and local board member on Auckland’s North Shore. From the comfort of his home in Totaravale, he went online and paid parents in the Philippines to live-stream the sexual abuse of their children.

Transcripts of the chat messages included in court documents showed Lawes directed what he wanted done. He claimed he was overworked, and he talked on chat forums to Asian women overseas as a way to escape.

That soon spiralled, and he began paying to watch children being abused. Some were as young as 3.

He later told authorities he was helping the victims by giving them money – he paid $100,000 to abusers over nine years – as they were living in poverty.

The abuse continued until some of the people Lawes had been paying were arrested in an international operation. He was unmasked as one of the people responsible for encouraging the abuse.

Initially he used global remittance company Western Union but, when his account was suspended due to the ‘‘suspicious nature’’ of his transactions, he turned to Paypal.

In 2010, Paypal took part in a blockade against WikiLeaks, to stop customers donating to the whistleblower organisation.

Clinical psychologist Kathryn McPhillips, director of Auckland sexual abuse foundation Help, says authorities and big business need to follow the money.

‘‘I went: ‘OMG, you can do that for [WikiLeaks] but you will not do it about child sex abuse images. Why is that?’’

She says cutting the flow of money will go some way to hurting the industry. ‘‘Let’s stop the money trail, and then we will have a chance of stopping this.’’

She believes the three main money transfer companies, Paypal, Visa and Mastercard, could help shut down the child sex abuse image industry, or at least put the pressure on.

‘‘We know it’s not too hard – you’ve done it for WikiLeaks, why don’t children count?’’

She concedes there might be an argument that offenders could simply move to another form of payment.

But she says that forces them to take a further step. It is another opportunity for them to stop and think about what they’re doing.

She says being able to use a piece of plastic they carry around in their wallets normalises paying money for a child to be sexually abused.

‘‘It makes it mundane. If the way you procure it is mundane then no alarm will go off ... it’s the way you buy your groceries ... They need to know that it’s not OK.’’

And McPhillips points out it has been done before. In December 2020, Mastercard and Visa announced they would block their customers from using credit cards on Pornhub after accusations emerged in a New York Times investigation that the website contained videos of child abuse.

Lorna Murray, board chairwoman of ECPAT NZ/ Child Alert, would also like to see all financial, data storage and social media providers consider how their organisations might be used by those behind the child sex abuse industry.

Child Alert is a small organisation whose focus is on the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Murray says it would support any opportunities to disrupt the financial transactions associated with the industry, and appropriately investigate and prosecute suspected perpetrators in New Zealand and overseas.

Banks and international money remitters, such as Western Union and Paypal, must report suspicious transactions to the NZ Police’s financial crime unit under anti-money laundering and terrorism legislation. The unit is headed by Detective Inspector Christiaan Barnard.

He says shutting down the industry is not as easy as stopping money getting to WikiLeaks.

‘‘I certainly amsympathetic to the suggestion, and it’s a good one.’’

Barnard says those who deal in child sexual abuse will regularly use cryptocurrency, and have ways of disguising payments. His unit is trying to build up its capability in cryptocurrency.

‘‘That’s not to say [police] can’t identify payments because they do ... a lot of the reporting we receive is not so much for accessing material online, it’s actually in the livestreaming.’’

He says there are many false positives, which can include anything from people in New Zealand sending money to loved ones overseas.

Barnard is hesitant to outline what flags a suspect payment, because doing so could help people trying to access illegal material online.

But he says information about who is making suspicious payments is sent through to those who monitor the child sex offender register, and officers investigating abuse material.

The financial crime unit’s aim is not to stop money changing hands. ‘‘Our goal is to use the money flows as a means to assist in identifying suspects.’’

He says many people dealing in child sexual abuse material are not motivated by money.

Another Auckland man who was willing to pay up to US$15,000 or use bitcoin to buy a girl under the age of 7 on the dark web was Aaron Hutton.

Hutton collected and shared images of children being sexually abused online. He used the dark web, where he went by the username ‘‘kiwipedo’’.

While offering payment to an undercover secret agent, he