Westpac backs Australian child protection campaign

A still from The Children in the Pictures documentary

Westpac is supporting a three-year impact campaign in association with ‘The Children in the Pictures’ documentary. The documentary takes viewers inside the undercover operations of Task Force Argos, a renowned Australian-based police investigative team, as they identify and rescue children from online sexual abuse.

 

The impact campaign aims to:
 

• Increase public awareness
• Empower parents and caregivers to protect children from online harm
• Remove barriers to identify perpetrators and rescue children
• Help Australian media report on this crime appropriately.
   

“In 2020, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received more than 21,000 reports of online child sexual abuse in Australia¹,” says Kavitha Suthanthiraraj, Head of Safer Children, Safer Communities at Westpac.

 

“Through this documentary and promoting the work of Task Force Argos, the impact campaign is intended to raise awareness of the issue and prompt important conversations in our homes, in our communities, among businesses and in the media and thereby generate a broader national conversation on protecting children from online harm.”

 

According to director and producer Simon Nasht, “Despite its grim subject, The Children in the Pictures is ultimately an uplifting and powerful story.”

“Every day, these extraordinary police officers observe the very worst in human nature, and in doing so, represent the very best of humanity. They are working to protect our most vulnerable citizens: our children.”

Westpac’s support of this impact campaign through the Safer Children, Safer Communities program is one of the initiatives intended to help raise awareness on the issue of online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC) in Australia. 

 

The Children in the Pictures airs on SBS on Sunday, 24 October at 8:30pm and on SBS Viceland on Wednesday, 27 October at 10:15pm. 
 

Related information:

^{[1] International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (2021)}