More than 70 Australian schools were targets for a perverse pornography ring of teen boys and young men secretly swapping and exchanging graphic sexual images of female students and other non-consenting girls, according to a report by News.com.au.
The report stated that more than 2,000 images were posted or traded by Australian members since the group began operating.
A Sick, Degrading Game
Here’s how it works: young men use the site to nominate the specific high school or region they are phishing for nude photos from, along with the full names of girls they are “hunting.” Hundreds of individual names have appeared on “wanted” lists, including the names of sisters and entire high school friendship circles.
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Once a girl’s name appears on a list, other members of the group then “contribute” by posting identifying information about the intended victim, such as her full name, face, school, home address, and phone number, along with directives like, “Go get her boys!” Any “wins” (the term used for the nude photos) of the nominated target are then uploaded or offered in exchange for a trade. Some targets are so sought after that “bounties” have been offered for any user who can post a “win.”
In one case, one user offered to trade up to 300 nude images of other victims, in exchange for a single nude photo of the one girl he was currently tracking. Another user said he had been trying to unearth nude images of a particular victim for more than five years. One of Sydney’s most elite schools is among the 70 targeted.
Here are just a few of the thousands of comments from the site (with names changed):
“Anyone have any Birmingham wins?”
“Anyone have any St. Claire 12th grader wins?”
“I’ve got heaps of Miami High girls. Kik me if you wanna trade!”
“I ripped these from a computer I was asked to fix a few years ago.”
“Who has nudes of this b****? I hear she throws them around!”
“I’ll upload all the nudes I have if people start looking for Hunter Valley, Newcastle or Port Macquarie girls, or any hot s****”.
“I’m posting pretty much all the hottest little teens I have. All high quality images from Maitland, Newcastle, Cessnock, Rutherford etc.”
“I have a fair few of ***** ****** including a few *** shots of her.”
“What do you want for the **** * wins, bro?”
“I’ll pay good money to see the rig under **** *******, anyone have any of her?”
“Let’s make this huge!”
Thousands Of Images Uploaded
Thousands of explicit, nude images of teen girls and young women were uploaded or traded on the swap-meet site. Some high school girls are pictured performing sexual acts while wearing their school uniform. Other images on the site include graphic close-ups of victims’ genitalia and bodies, and photos of young women engaged in sexual acts.
The site has been reported numerous times to police for child pornography, but as far as we know, they were unable to act because the site is hosted overseas.
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Since its creation, multiple victims have also posted on the site, pleading with the young men to remove their images. Their requests are mostly ignored, laughed at, or in some cases, men retaliate by calling on their “bros” to unearth and upload even more images of the victim.
One young woman who begged for images of her friend to be removed, then had her own name added to the wanted hit-list as punishment. Another young woman who stated that some of the victims might be “suicidal” was told that it was her fault for behaving like a “slut,” and that her images now belonged to the internet.
Most victims, however, appear to have no idea they are even on the site. Users of the site have deliberately tried to conceal their activities from victims by writing the names of targets in a simple code which prevents the girls from searching their own names. Ellie, for example, might be written as 3ll13, or Amanda as @m@nd@.
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School names are also written in code to prevent high schools from detecting that their students are being targeted. Yet a review of the site has found that at least 70 Australian school names have been mentioned by users requesting “wins” of current or recently graduated students.
The site also encourages users to post their “wins” based on location, so that men and boys can study nude images of girls and women who they might know in real life.
Girls Treated Like Objects
The discovery of the website follows a number of recent related scandals involving students at junior highs in Melbourne. Sharna Bremner from End Rape on Campus says she felt “physically sick when [she] learned of the website and its contents”.
“These boys and men are behaving like a pack of hyenas hunting their prey, and then sharing the spoils with the rest of the group,” she said. “They’re reducing girls to objects and trophies to be traded like nothing more than swap-cards in the playground.”
Ms. Bremner says that charges should be laid against those responsible and that the mentality of these men closely mirrors that of a rapist.
“There are already plenty of consensual adult nude images online that are easily accessible. But these boys and men are not interested in that, because it’s not the nudity alone that they are after,” she said. “What they are getting off on is the very fact that these images are not consensual and that the victims have no idea they are being exploited.”
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Ms. Bremner also notes that the users are not searching or categorizing the images based on particular physical preferences or fetishes, “They are hunting women and girls who live in their area and sorting them according to geography. It’s the idea of proximity and accessibility that is considered arousing. The thrill is not just that they might see the girl who sits next to them in math class, it’s also that they can put in an order for the girl from math class. What these boys are really getting off on is the sense of power they feel over these girls, and the idea that they can own and obtain them like objects.”
Ms. Bremner says that she can “absolutely see this [website] leading to acquaintance rape.”
“If you’re a young guy who has been told by your peers that getting images without consent is a good thing, that it gets you pats on the back, then just imagine the accolades you’ll get for physically taking advantage of a girl. This group doesn’t just normalize the idea that consent is irrelevant and doesn’t matter, it actively encourages boys to ignore and violate consent.”
Police are encouraging any victims to come forward and report it.
Why This Matters
Sexting culture confirms to boys that a girl is a sexual object for their pleasure. It opens the marketplace at an early age for boys to buy, sell, or trade instead of learning about respect and boundaries of consent. Sound familiar? This is what porn culture is all about, too. Only in the world of porn is lack of consent considered sexy.
Porn is influencing our generation and the next that people are sex objects that can be exploited and degraded. In fact, when it comes to this group, though we can’t prove it for certain, we’re convinced that porn culture has influenced these males that consent doesn’t matter, and “hunting” for sexual images of someone they know is a game to play.
Let this porn ring be a lesson for all of us: porn doesn’t sell a harmless fantasy. Porn sells lies. And the results have countless negative effects on our society and generations to come. The latest evidence is the humiliation and violation of thousands of school-aged girls. These girls aren’t just collections of body parts, and they’re not objects.
This is why we fight. We want to live in a world where people see each other as people, instead of a collection of body parts to rate and trade. How different would our world be, then?
