This week a mum reached out to me. She had read headlines claiming taxpayer money was being used to "affirm paedophiles' feelings", and she was deeply disturbed. She asked me whether it was true, and if it was, how she could speak up.

I completely understand her reaction. As parents, our instinct is to protect children at all costs, and anything that sounds like it is going soft on people who might harm them feels like a betrayal.

But I want parents like her to understand what this story is really about. After years as a detective investigating child sexual abuse, I believe that if we are serious about protecting children, we have to be willing to stop abuse before it ever happens. Sometimes that means talking to the people we would rather not talk to at all.

What this story is actually about

The service in question is Stop It Now! Australia, run by Jesuit Social Services. It is a confidential helpline, live chat and website for people who are worried about their own sexual thoughts or behaviour towards children. It also supports people who are worried about someone else.

It began as a pilot in 2022 and launched in April 2026 as Australia's first federally funded, national child sexual abuse offending prevention service. It exists because the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended that Australia establish preventive, help-seeking services. The model has operated overseas for decades, and child protection organisations like Bravehearts support it.

The recent outrage centres on wording in self-help modules, most of them UK resources that the Australian website links to. Critics have quoted lines encouraging people not to "beat yourself up" and to practise self-compassion, and a module comparing attempts to change attraction to children with historical attempts to change sexual orientation.

So yes, the service is government funded. But its purpose is not to affirm or excuse anyone. Its purpose is to stop abuse before a child is ever harmed.

Thoughts are not crimes. Actions are.

Having a sexual interest in children is not a crime. Acting on it is, and it is never, ever acceptable. That distinction can feel uncomfortable, but it matters, because the space between a thought and an action is where we have a chance to intervene.

And this is not a tiny group of people. In 2023, UNSW and Jesuit Social Services released the first nationally representative study of its kind in Australia. It found:

• Around one in six Australian men (15.1 per cent) report sexual feelings towards children.
• Almost a third of those men (29.6 per cent) want help for those feelings.
• That is roughly 4.5 per cent of Australian men actively wanting support.

Think about that last figure. Thousands of men across Australia know their thoughts are wrong and want help to make sure they never act on them. The question is whether we give them somewhere to go before a child gets hurt.

The grooming no one talks about

When we talk about grooming, we usually mean the way an offender grooms a child, and the adults around that child. But in my experience, there is another kind of grooming that happens first. Offenders groom themselves.

Very rarely does someone wake up one day and decide to abuse a child. It happens slowly. Over time, they chip away at their own sense that what they are thinking is wrong. They tell themselves it is harmless. That it is only a fantasy. That no one is really getting hurt. That the child wanted it.

Child sexual abuse material and online communities of like-minded people accelerate that process enormously. In those spaces, no one says stop. Everyone says it is normal. Secrecy, shame and isolation become the perfect conditions for those beliefs to harden into action.

I wrote more about this in The Grooming No One Talks About.

The slippery slope we are not talking about

There is another part of this story that worries me deeply. We are seeing more and more young people, many of them teenagers and young men, caught up in child sexual abuse material and child exploitation material offences.

Often it starts with pornography. Children are being exposed to porn at younger and younger ages, and for some, what begins as curiosity becomes compulsive. Over time, what they view can become more extreme, and the line between adult content and material involving children starts to blur. For some, that slide ends somewhere they never imagined going.

And they rarely get there alone. Online, there are adults who actively want this behaviour normalised. They find young people, draw them into their communities, encourage them, reward them and reassure them that what they are doing is fine. Some young people are coerced. Others are slowly convinced, one step at a time, exactly as I described above.

I want to be careful here. This does not excuse anyone's choices, and viewing child sexual abuse material is never harmless. Every image is a real child being abused. But I do not believe most of these young people would have ended up there without help, coercion and positive reinforcement from those who want to see the abuse of children accepted.

Many of these young people are frightened. They know something is wrong, they are ashamed, and they have no idea who they can tell. If we want to catch them before they are pulled further into the darkest corners of the internet, they need somewhere to turn that will not simply slam the door in their face.

Acknowledging is not approving

This is where prevention services come in. Their job is to interrupt that self-grooming process before it ends with a child being harmed.

To do that, they first have to get people to reach out. If the only message someone ever hears is "you are a monster", they will never pick up the phone. They will stay silent and alone, and in many cases, they will find their way to the online spaces that tell them everything is fine.

So when a service acknowledges that someone is struggling with these thoughts, it is not saying the thoughts are OK. It is saying: you have come to the right place, and we can help you make sure you never act on them. It is about getting people through the door instead of running from the label.

Once they are talking to a trained practitioner, that practitioner can be completely clear that acting on these thoughts is never acceptable. They can help the person recognise their triggers, stay away from abuse material and put real safeguards in place around children.

I would far rather that person be talking to a professional than sitting alone online with people telling them it is fine. Every child we protect before abuse happens is a child who never becomes a victim.

Where the criticism is fair

Supporting prevention does not mean defending every word on every linked page. Some of the wording in those self-help modules is clumsy, and I can see how easily it could be read as minimising the harm.

The comparison between attraction to children and sexual orientation is the clearest example. Consensual relationships between adults and the sexual abuse of children are fundamentally different, and any language that blurs that line deserves to be reviewed. It is completely fair to ask for that.

But there is a big difference between asking for better wording and calling for a prevention service to be shut down. One makes the service stronger. The other takes away one of the few places someone can turn before they hurt a child.

What parents can do

If you share the concerns of the mum who reached out to me, your voice matters. The most effective thing you can do is be specific.

• Write to your local federal member, or to the Attorney-General.
• Contact Jesuit Social Services directly.
• Say that you support preventing abuse before it happens, and ask that the linked modules be reviewed so the language never minimises the harm of child sexual abuse.

That message is much harder to dismiss, and much more likely to lead to real change, than outrage alone.

And if you are ever worried about someone in your own life, whether it is their behaviour around children or something they have said, Stop It Now! Australia supports family and friends too. You can call them on 1800 01 1800.

If you want to understand more about how offenders slowly talk themselves into abusing a child, and why interrupting that process early matters so much, read my blog The Grooming No One Talks About.

Protecting children means doing the hard, uncomfortable things. It means talking about abuse with our kids, recognising grooming in the adults around them, and yes, sometimes it means helping people stop before they start. To me, that is what putting children first truly looks like.

Kristi x