Former Neighbours star Madeleine West has revealed how she alerted police to a “paedophile” who had been speaking to hundreds of primary school girls via social media.
The 43-year-old actress and author said alarm bells rang when she saw that a young woman she knew and a dozen of her friends were being followed on TikTok and other platforms by the same account that had not uploaded any content, prompting her to take a closer look.
“It followed 4,025 accounts… So I checked the first 200 and found out that they were all children under nine years old,” he said. news corporation.
West said she then checked the comments on the posts those girls had been posting and found some posted from the suspicious account, which left her in shock.
“The comments were like, ‘You have a very sexy body. Can I see you without clothes?’ And, most pertinently, ‘Please put your face in the video. Can I see a post of your face?'” she said.
West said she first went to speak to the parents of the group of girls who lived in her local area and they said they had no idea their daughters were using these platforms, so they closed their accounts.
West said he then took screenshots of the information he had found and sent them, with the permission of the girls’ parents, to the Australian Center to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) and the eSafety commissioner’s office.
“The federal police contacted me a few hours later because he was a declared pedophile,” he said.
Former Neighbors actress Madeleine West has revealed how her online research led her to discover a pedophile
West said the AFP told him it was investigating his complaint.
The Melbourne actress and author of Underbelly has become an advocate for child safety after revealing she was abused by a neighbour as a child.
She confronted her own abuser four decades later, when he knocked on her door in July 2022 carrying a secret audio recording device given to her by detectives.
Peter Vincent White, now in his seventies, was given a 15-year sentence for his cruel abuse of seven young victims aged between four and 14.
The recording was crucial to prosecuting White.
In the audio, West can be heard exchanging pleasantries with White and his wife, who is profoundly deaf, before confronting him about the abuse.
She was shocked when White said he could not remember committing any of the crimes, then apologized with four damning words: “I am so, so sorry.”
West went public with her story in January 2023 and has since become an advisor and speaker for cybersecurity organization Safe on Social and abuse survivor group Warriors Advocacy.
West has become an advocate for child safety online after revealing her own abuse as a child.
A campaign to block children’s access to social media to limit online harms such as predatory behaviour and cyberbullying has been gaining momentum in Australian politics.
The current age limit for platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok is 13, but there has been a lot of criticism that these age limits are unverified and can be circumvented.
Some state governments are calling for the age for social media use to be raised to 16.
Premier Anthony Albanese has welcomed these efforts and the federal opposition has pledged to introduce laws that would ban under-16s from using social media.
Many online sites currently rely on age screening, where users report their age themselves. This can easily fail.
Children under 13 years old can provide false birth dates to create social media accounts. And teens can simply press “yes” when asked to verify if they are over 18.
To prevent children from accessing inappropriate and harmful online content, the federal government is already funding a trial of “age-safety” technologies.
Self-declaration is one type of age assurance, but other methods are also available, including more rigorous age verification processes.
These include the provision of “physical identification” documents and emerging biometric technology.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Australian Federal Police for comment on Ms West’s revelations.