Australian children lured into sinister online cults: 'I had no choice, I had to self-harm'

A growing number of Australian children are being lured into sinister online cults, with police and experts warning of a surge in 'modern-day terrorism' that has been linked to reports of suicide, animal torture, and school shootings overseas.

A 14-year-old girl from Western Australia, who has been given the pseudonym Emma, has shared her harrowing experience of being targeted by one such group, known as 764. She was initially contacted on the online gaming platform Roblox, where she had been playing games and chatting with others.

"I met this guy … he said that I was really good at the game," Emma explains.

The teenager says she was asked to move to Discord, another platform that allows file sharing and interactions through messages or video chat. Seemingly innocuous questions like her age and what school she went to turned to requests for "selfies" and then more explicit content.

"Then he started asking me for, like, pics that were not good … [telling] me 'if you don't do this, I will leak you,'" she said.

At this point, the perpetrator had gathered enough information to identify Emma and her parents. He even found their contact numbers. Then things escalated further.

Emma was told to self-harm by a member of the online group. She was also told to carry out and film sinister acts like using her blood to write a username on a wall.

"I had no choice. I got told that I had to self-harm for him," Emma says.

"I had to use my body to make him happy."

Emma's father was shocked by what had occurred to his daughter. "When I opened it … it was like a collage of pictures and it was ... blood, cuts, pornographic stuff. I felt sick and scared at the same time," he says.

Australian Federal Police Cybercrime Commander Graeme Marshall has been investigating child exploitation for years, both nationally and internationally. He says these networks are unlike anything he has ever seen.

"It's all about status within the group," Commander Marshall says.

"And that compels the perpetrators to continue to try and coerce their victims into doing ever greater self-harm or other activities."

US cybercrime expert Keven Hendricks says the ideologies that underpin groups like 764 are not new.

"[The] mixing of demonology and Satanism with neo-Nazi tropes, anti-Semitic tropes ... it's like you throw everything into a stew and you let it sit. It just starts to bubble, and really, that's how this all built up," Mr Hendricks says.

Western Australian police cybercrime chief Peter Foley says there are different tactics used to intimidate victims into complying and not reporting the group. One is doxxing, which means publishing someone's personal information online, to allow others to contact or locate them or their family.

"She was brainwashed, intimidated, threatened into a dark place she couldn't get out of," says Detective Superintendent Foley.

"It is a scary place, a dark place and we've got children that have been isolated … they will not engage with their parents, their teachers or friends and they will not come to police."

Roblox said these "horrific crimes" were "an industry-wide challenge" and it took them extremely seriously. "We have dedicated teams and systems working proactively to identify and remove content and users associated with these criminal networks, and we collaborate with law enforcement to help bring them to justice," the statement reads.