True crime - Unmasking a monster

Editorial: Danielle Ford

Photography: Jesse Wray-McCann

The hard work and dedication of the Joint Anti Child Exploitation Team (JACET) has led to a serial paedophile being handed the largest sentence ever handed down in Australia for child sex offences.

JACET is a team comprised of Victoria Police and Australian Federal Police officers, who work to investigate cases of child exploitation.

The team also works proactively in the online space to reduce child exploitation offences by identifying potential perpetrators before they strike.

In late January, Australian national Boris Kunsevitsky, 53, was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 28 years for sexually abusing 44 children over a period of 16 years, as well as possessing thousands of images and videos of child exploitation material.

It’s the longest sentence in Australian legal history for this type of offending without being dictated by mandatory sentencing requirements.

It was a case that started on the other side of the world in 2010 when images of an unknown male child who appeared to be the victim of sexual abuse were located by German Police and uploaded to the International Child Sexual Exploitation database.

These images were found to have been taken in Australia and were forwarded to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) Victim Identification Team (VIT).

It was found that the possible victim resided in Victoria and subsequently the case was taken over by JACET, with Detective Senior Constable Shaun Livori taking lead as the informant on the case.

The team was able to identify the male victim and obtain a statement which identified Kunsevitsky as the offender.

A case was established and an arrest warrant was issued for Kunsevitsky, who was living and working in Singapore at the time.

About a year after the warrant was issued, Kunsevitsky was intercepted by Australian Border Force (ABF) officers in Sydney while travelling back to Australia and a hard drive he was carrying was seized as evidence.

With this, authorities were able to repatriate Kunsevitsky to Melbourne, where he was arrested and presented to the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to face 18 child abuse related charges.

Kunsevitsky was released on bail and JACET investigators got to work on further building their case.

The team obtained the hard drive but wasn’t able to access all the material it held due to high-level encryption.

Victoria Police’s E-Crime Squad, which provides a specialist capability in the analysis of digital evidence, was enlisted to help break through the encryption.

E-Crime Squad digital forensic analyst Andrew Marriott spent weeks working on accessing a hidden section of the hard drive.

“The level of encryption on the device was fairly advanced,” Mr Marriott said.

“It ended up being a process of listing every strategy we use to break through software encryption and going through them one-byone to find the one that would work on this particular device.”

After more than 170 hours of active work on the device, Mr Marriott finally gained access the hidden section, uncovering a staggering 2,800 images and 490 movie files of personally produced child abuse material.

Det Sen Const Livori then spent more than 900 grueling hours reviewing evidence extracted from the hard drive.

“The offender’s face wasn’t clearly identified in the a large amount of the footage, so it was a process of reviewing every frame to identify objects and items in the room being filmed and matching them to items we had located in a shipping container Kunsevitsky had imported to Australia,” Det Sen Const Livori said.

The images and footage revealed Kunsevitsky sexually offending against male children across several South East Asian countries over a 16-year period between 2002 and 2017.

Det Sen Const Livori, assisted by Detective Senior Constable Monica Hogan, spent several weeks compiling a summary of evidence, which totaled almost 100 pages.

In July 2018, the evidence brief was served, all offences were tallied and a total of 59 charges relating to 44 victims were laid against Kunsevitsky. He pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced in the Supreme Court in January.

JACET team leader Detective Sergeant Neville Major said the level of commitment and work put in by all involved in the investigation was to be commended.

“If it weren’t for their tenacity and dedication to gathering the best case, the length of the sentence against him wouldn’t have been quite as significant,” Sgt Major said.

“It’s not an easy job having to investigate such horrendous crimes, but it’s an important job.

“All the detectives here are extremely experienced and resilient, as you need to be in this field of policing.”

Det Sen Const Livori said the work JACET does exposes members to horrific things, but what keeps him going is results like this, where the work put in leads to justice for the victims.

“Nothing will ever take away the pain and trauma these children experience, but we put everything we have into all investigations so we can get people like this locked away and stop them from committing further offences,” Det Sen Const Livori said.