Detective Inspector Scott Beard and Gloria Masters launched a campaign to aid young abuse victims.
The campaign introduces a special hand signal for victims to discreetly seek help
One of New Zealand’s best-known detectives is joining a fight against an “epidemic” of child sex abuse in New Zealand.
Detective Inspector Scott Beard’s partner, sexual abuse advocate Gloria Masters, who founded the charity Handing the Shame Back in 2022, is launching a campaign to raiseawareness about a hand signal for victims of abuse to deploy.
Over his 45-year-career and involvement in high-profile police cases, including the murder of Grace Millane, Beard has become keenly aware of the depth of the problem of child sex abuse in New Zealand.
In 1989, he first began working on cases involving children and now, he has seen the problem grow so that every police district in New Zealand has a child protection team.
“The children get threatened, they’re very scared and ashamed, and are particularly scared they won’t be believed so they tend to say nothing,” Beard said.
Beard and Masters want New Zealanders to become aware of the hand signal to help child victims. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Masters, who herself was a victim, said for the first 16 years of her life she experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her father and other people hired by him.
“My father, with my grandmother’s help, would traffic me to paedophiles and groups of paedophiles around Auckland in exchange for money.”
She said the current digital environment had enabled “much more sexualised content” of children to be available to predators.
“AI has the ability to remove the clothing off a child, get that image, and then someone can trade it,” Masters said.
“I don’t know how many times I’m saying to parents and grandparents please stop posting photos of your children online.”
Beard said part of the increase in sexual abuse cases was because there was more reporting by victims, but it was also reflective of an increasingly online world.
Detective Inspector Scott Beard led the police investigation to the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane. Photo / Doug Sherring
A staggering statistic which Beard cannot forget is that up to 85% of online offenders become contact offenders (with children), which means the police are devoting a lot more time to clamping down on online predators.
He said the case of Malcolm Ross Davidson, who pleaded guilty to nearly 200 charges involving child sex abuse, showed how important it was for members of the public to speak up if they witnessed concerning behaviour.
A police investigation began in Davidson’s case after a father in a shopping mall caught him taking an up-skirt photo of his daughter and reported the incident.
Beard said the father had protected countless other children from that one small action.
Masters said over 90% of child sex abuse offending was carried out by a person who was known to the child.
Adults needed to be wary of looking out for common behavioural signs in children that could mean they were being sexually abused.
“Regression in a child is a sign, if they are clinging to mum and not wanting to leave the house so much anymore,” Masters said.
Masters said a seven-year-old child in Auckland had been saved from further abuse by using the hand signal to alert their teacher and then principal.
“Using a sign like that is much easier for children than finding the words,” Masters said.
“A lot of them have been threatened never to speak about their abuse.”
Beard said the fact the hand signal was “simple and easy to use” made it effective, and he felt that if it had been invented earlier it could have saved more children.
Masters said people needed to believe children the first time that they shared their stories of abuse, instead of voicing doubt or too many questions.
“I call this the silent epidemic because most people turn away because it’s uncomfortable, but the problem with that is the only group that helps is the perpetrators,” she said.
