Dr Georgina O'Donnell1
1Private Practice, Hobart, Australia
Biography:
Dr Georgina O’Donnell is a forensic and clinical psychologist working in solo private practice, based in Tasmania. She regularly provides independent forensic assessments of criminal defendants for Court proceedings.
Prior to the pandemic, Australian men with an interest in having sex with children would regularly travel to Asia where they could engage in child sex tourism. When the global pandemic hit in 2020, the child sex tourism industry changed. Travel bans and lockdowns increased the behaviour of men going online to receive sexual gratification for their sexual interest in children. The demand increased online availability of children for live-streaming sexual content, and families in poverty in Asia became more vulnerable to involvement in child exploitation activities. Female relatives of children increasingly engaged in marketing children and facilitating abuse for financial gain. When lockdowns eased, the online networks and exploitation relationships that had been established during the pandemic lead to contact offending when child sex tourism resumed. This presentation discusses case studies, with a focus on the cognitive distortions that facilitate child sex tourism by Australian men. The prosecution of such cases will also be discussed, including reference to the increased online marketing of children by female relatives in Australia.