Position Statements

Bravehearts advocates for:

• Enhance risk assessment tools
• Tailor treatment programs
• Prioritise early prevention and education
• Integrate multidisciplinary approaches
• Advance research on offender heterogeneity
• Policy and legislative initiatives

Read the full briefing paper: Understanding Child Sex Offenders

Bravehearts advocates for:

• Expanded access to evidence‑based treatment
• Trauma‑informed, developmentally appropriate interventions
• Reducing stigma where it undermines safety
• Supporting balanced reintegration pathways
• Strengthening monitoring and accountability with therapeutic support
• Policy development grounded in scientific evidence
• Survivor‑centred practices

Read the full briefing paper: Management & Treatment of Child Sex Offenders

Bravehearts advocates for:

• Enhanced research and data collection.
• Improved detection and reporting.
• Implementation of gender-aware justice practices.
• Development and evaluation of gender-responsive treatment.
• Adapted risk assessment and management.
• Promotion of professional and cultural awareness.
• Supporting early intervention and prevention.
• Supporting Victim and Survivors.

Read the full briefing paper: Female-Perpetrated Child Sexual Abuse

Bravehearts advocates for:

• Accurate anatomical terms to be used consistently: Children should be taught correct names for all private body parts (e.g., vulva, vagina, penis, testicles, buttocks, breasts).
• Encouraging open, judgment-free dialogue: Foster an environment where questions about bodies are welcomed and answered honestly.
• Teaching body autonomy and boundaries: Combine anatomical knowledge with lessons on personal space, consent, and body autonomy.
• Normalising safety and reporting: Make discussions about feelings, safety, and boundaries routine so that children see these conversations as normal.

Read the full briefing paper: Identifying Body Parts and Personal Safety Education

Bravehearts advocates for:

• Age-appropriate consent education: Introducing concepts of personal boundaries and bodily autonomy.
• Normalising open communication: Where children feel comfortable discussing feelings, boundaries, and concerns.
• Training and supporting adults: Providing professional development for adults on discussing and safety in age-appropriate ways.
• Integrating policies and curricula: Including consent, personal safety, and healthy relationships.
• Strengthening protective factors: Teaching children assertiveness and self-advocacy skills.
• Dispelling misconceptions about consent: Educating children and adults.

Read the full briefing paper: Consent and Protecting Against Sexual Abuse

Bravehearts advocates for:

• Mandatory minimum sentences aim to protect the public, ensure proportional punishment, and signal societal condemnation of serious sexual offenses.
• Research shows incarceration provides short-term incapacitation but longer mandatory sentences do not reliably reduce sexual reoffending after release.
• Mandatory minimum sentences can produce disproportionate outcomes, reduce judicial discretion, increase prison populations, and create collateral social and fiscal costs.
• Evidence supports a risk-based, individualised approach.
• A balanced policy maximises public safety while promoting proportional justice and rehabilitation, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum framework.

Read the full briefing paper: Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

Bravehearts encourages:

Ongoing scrutiny and research to ensure these changes support child safety without unintended consequences.

Review of whether entering social media at 16 fosters healthier usage patterns, critical thinking, and digital citizenship.

Platforms to embrace Safety by Design principles, using these changes not merely to restrict access, but to reimagine systems that actively protect and empower children online.

Efforts to hold companies responsible for users’ safety, placing a duty of care onto digital platforms for the wellbeing of their users.

Focus on digital literacy and good digital citizenship education to help develop skills that are needed to ensure positive and safe online practices.

Read the full briefing paper:Social Media Age Restriction and Young People

In relation to the growing AI concerns, Bravehearts advocates:

• Greater awareness and education.
• For Commonwealth, and state and territory laws to include clear definitions of AI-generated CSAM and to ensure legislation is continually reviewed.
• For Commonwealth, and state and territory laws to ensure that production of intimate images, including digitally created images, and sharing or threatening to share intimate images are included as crimes.
• That Commonwealth, and state and territory governments recognise ‘nudify apps’ as designed to sexually harass, abuse and extort victims, and to ensure these apps are banned.
• Technology companies must be held responsible for ensuring safety.
• To develop a robust research agenda to ensure an informed response to risks of developing AI.
• Clear reporting options and available support for those impacted by online abuse.

Download the full Briefing Paper: AI and Child Sexual Exploitation

• While some jurisdictions have embedded child safe organisation requirements in legislation, there are some that still need to enact supporting legislation or amendments to current legislation.
• Funding needs to be provided for resources and support for staff training on the relevant child safe standards in their jurisdiction.
• Contextual prevention is an approach to safeguarding that focuses on understanding and addressing the environmental and situational factors that contribute to harm, rather than solely focusing on individuals who might cause harm.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Child Safe Organisations and Safeguarding

Our recommendations include:

• The duplication nationally of the Western Australian Community Protection legalisation, which provides for the restricted public disclosure of limited information.
• Strengthening of existing inter-jurisdictional and ‘multi-agency’ relationships for the monitoring of sex offenders post-release.
• Increased public awareness of safety and protective skills.
• Improved access to rehabilitation programs, both within and outside of custodial settings.
• A focus on providing support to address factors associated with risk of reoffending.
• Identifying and providing prevention and early intervention programs with sex offenders.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Community Notification Laws

Child sexual offenders often present as trusted and good members of the community; while for other offender-types, evidence of good character and conduct may be a redeeming feature, this very aspect of a sex offender’s public image is about gaining the trust of children, parents and carers and the community generally. It allows sex offenders to perpetrate their crimes.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Good Character References

• Bravehearts supports developmentally appropriate sex education for schools.
• Bravehearts recommends that as part of a holistic approach to cyber-safety, prevention messages and online support.
• Age verification measures to inhibit child access to pornography.
• Australian authorities should enforce Australian laws against the distribution of child sexual abuse material by adult pornography sites.
• More research into the prevalence of Australian children making and selling sexual content.
• There is a need for coordinated action between law enforcement, the financial sector, the technology sector and regulatory bodies.

Download the full Briefing Paper: The Impact of Pornography on Children and Young People

There are key areas that need further focus:

• Research on sexual abuse grooming has grown significantly over the past few decades; however, several important gaps and limitations remain.
• Increasing awareness and education on grooming is essential because grooming is often subtle, manipulative, and misunderstood, making it difficult to recognise and prevent.
• There are legislative and legal process challenges in addressing grooming offences.
• There is a growing opportunity to consider the integration of AI tools to detect grooming behaviours online.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Understanding Grooming

• While Bravehearts advocates for a centralised national Working with Children Check (WWCC) system, we understand the complexity of this given jurisdictional legislative differences, and we support, at the bare minimum, a centralised database of WWCC decisions accessible to all States and Territories.
• All child and youth-focused organisations (including those that employ young people) have a responsibility to ensure a child safe environment (see Bravehearts Briefing Paper Child Safeguarding).
• Bravehearts strongly recommends the adoption of mandatory child abuse prevention training for all WWCC applicants.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Working With Children Checks

Education and awareness: Children, young people and parents and caregivers should be equipped with the information and skills they need to lessen vulnerability against online harms.

Safety by design: The concept of Safety by Design emphasises the importance of user safety and rights as fundamental in the design and development process of online products and services.

Digital duty of care: Companies should be held responsible for users’ safety, placing a duty of care on to digital platforms.

Disruption through AI: AI-driven algorithms have the ability to identify and analyse potentially harmful online content, such as CSAM, grooming activities, and cyberbullying.

Children’s Digital Privacy Code: Bravehearts supports the development of a Code.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Working With Children Checks

Bravehearts advocates for:

Sustainable Core Funding Models: Funding systems should prioritise service continuity through multi-year funding cycles, allowing organisations to invest in stable staffing, supervision, and infrastructure rather than focusing on short-term program delivery. Funding agreements should include baseline operational support to cover essential non-clinical functions such as administration, safeguarding compliance, and community engagement.

Workforce Development: Investment in workforce capability is essential given chronic shortages of trauma-specialised clinicians. Funding should support specialised training pathways in complex trauma, developmental trauma, child protection practice, and culturally safe therapeutic care, including continuing professional development. Services should be resourced to provide regular clinical and trauma-informed supervision, including external review mechanisms for complex cases. Workforce wellbeing initiatives are critical to reducing turnover and burnout, and should include manageable caseload expectations, reflective practice time, and access to psychological support.

Integrated Service Systems: Service responses should be better integrated across education, health, justice, and child protection sectors. Funding should support cross-sector partnerships that enable coordinated care pathways, including school-based counselling access, collaboration with primary and specialist healthcare providers, and linkage with justice and child protection services. Case support or client advocacy roles should be funded to reduce service fragmentation, improve referral continuity, and minimise client drop-out.

Equity, Accessibility, and Cultural Safety: Services should be designed to reach populations with the highest unmet need. This includes funding culturally informed and community-led trauma care models, expanding telehealth and remote service delivery, and ensuring disability-inclusive therapy access and language interpretation support. Priority investment should target high-risk groups, including children in out-of-home care, rural and remote communities, migrant and refugee survivors, and LGBTQ+ young people experiencing sexual abuse trauma.

Innovation and Technology: Investment in secure digital infrastructure should support teletherapy, youth-friendly therapeutic platforms, and tools that reduce administrative burden on clinicians. Technology should be used to enhance service accessibility and efficiency rather than replace clinical judgement.

Data Collection, Evaluation, and Research; Funding arrangements should explicitly include dedicated resources for service evaluation, data collection, and research activities, recognising that high-quality monitoring and evidence generation require specialist time, infrastructure, and expertise. Funding models should support the development and maintenance of standardised, trauma-informed outcome measurement systems that track recovery-oriented indicators such as symptom improvement, safety, social and functional wellbeing, and client experience. Longitudinal evaluation capacity is particularly important for understanding survivor recovery pathways and the long-term effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Performance monitoring infrastructure, such as data dashboards, secure data storage, and reporting systems should be considered legitimate program costs within funding agreements. Where feasible and ethically appropriate, funding should also support linkage of de-identified administrative datasets across sectors to enable comprehensive service evaluation and population-level outcome analysis.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Funding for Services: Investing in Healing

Bravehearts advocates for systems to:

Strengthen Victim Impact Consideration: Ensure courts consistently integrate detailed victim impact statements, including physical, emotional, and psychological harm, into sentencing decisions.

Enhance Transparency and Communication: Provide victims with clear information about the sentencing process, potential outcomes, and reasoning behind judicial decisions.

Ensure Proportionality and Consistency: Develop clearer guidelines to promote consistency in sentences for similar offences, addressing perceived disparities that may undermine public confidence.

Prioritise Public Protection: Ensure sentences reflect the need to protect the community from high-risk offenders, particularly in cases of repeat or severe offending.

Support Survivor Participation: Facilitate opportunities for survivors to engage meaningfully in the justice process, including access to counselling and advocacy support during proceedings.

Consider Tailored Sentencing Options: Encourage the use of programs that combine accountability with rehabilitation, where appropriate, while prioritising victim safety and confidence in outcomes.

Review Plea and Mitigation Practices: Ensure that reductions for guilty pleas or mitigating circumstances do not inadvertently minimise the gravity of the offence or the victim’s experience.

Develop Specialist Judicial Training: Equip judges and sentencing authorities with education on the dynamics and long-term impact of child sexual abuse, trauma-informed approaches, and survivor needs.

Incorporate Community and Expert Input: Engage psychologists, social workers, and child protection experts to inform sentencing about offender risk and victim vulnerability.

Strengthen Post-Sentencing Support: Provide ongoing support for victims after sentencing, including updates on offender status and access to restorative justice or therapeutic programs if desired.

Download the full Briefing Paper: Understanding the Sentencing Process