Jesuit-Run Child Protection Site Drops Links to UK Modules Amid Claims of Normalising Paedophilia
The taxpayer-funded Stop It Now! Australia website no longer points readers to the British self-help modules that drew fire this week for telling people with sexual fantasies about children, "Don't beat yourself up." The page carries no notice explaining the change, and the Jesuit organisation that runs the site has questions to answer.
The Original Controversy
Stop It Now! Australia is a free, anonymous helpline, website and set of self-help resources for adults worried about their own or someone else's sexual thoughts or behaviour towards children. It is run by Jesuit Social Services, funded by the federal government, and launched as a national service in April 2026 after a pilot that began in 2022.
The site previously sent readers to self-help modules written by the British version of Stop It Now!. One module told people whose sexual interest is exclusively in children not to be hard on themselves, and said that giving up the fantasies altogether does not feel realistic for many. Another raised the idea that trying to change such an attraction is akin to historical attempts to change homosexual attraction.
Liberal Senator Matt O'Sullivan called for the material and the links to be removed, and Family First's Lyle Shelton said the same. A spokesman for Attorney-General Michelle Rowland defended the service as the product of a royal commission recommendation. Now the links have disappeared from the site.
The Links Are Gone, But the Questions Aren't
The "Your sexual thoughts" page on the Stop It Now! Australia website no longer links to the UK & Ireland self-help modules. An earlier version of the same page, captured in September 2026, introduced those modules, invited readers to access them and said its own guidance was built on them.
The page's metadata shows it was last edited on Wednesday 28 October. That was the same day Family First national director Lyle Shelton publicly demanded that the content be removed, and it came after Liberal Senator Matt O'Sullivan raised the material at Senate estimates. The page offers no explanation for the removals.
A removed link is not an answer. The British modules remain online, and the government's defence, offered through a spokesman for Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, was that the service answers a Royal Commission recommendation. Who approved sending Australians to this material in the first place?
Also read: Catholic College Wodonga Defies the Bishops to Promote Gender Ideology
A Royal Commission Recommendation Is Not a Blank Cheque
Defenders point out that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found Australia had no large-scale early-intervention service for people worried about their sexual thoughts about children. The government says Stop It Now! Australia was developed in response to the Commission's Recommendation 6.2. Jesuit Social Services launched the national service in April 2026, receiving $9.6 million in government funding, building on a pilot it has run since 2022.
But a recommendation to create a service is not an endorsement of every sentence it publishes or links to. Commentator and former MP George Christensen made the point this week: ministers remain responsible for scrutinising what public money supports, and Australians are entitled to know who reviewed the modules, what standards were applied and what evidence supports the wording. He called for an independent safeguarding review, with its findings published.
The service's own architects have set the test. University of Melbourne researchers, writing with the service's manager at the time, have said victim-survivors support the service on conditions, including "loud public health messaging" that child sexual abuse is illegal and wrong. A page that sent readers to advise on self-acceptance, and on how unrealistic it can be to give up such fantasies, is hard to square with that standard, whatever else the modules said.
A Catholic Organisation Under a Pride Flag
The Stop It Now! Australia site, which is an initiative of the Catholic Jesuit Social Services, displays the LGBT flag beside a statement that it will "celebrate diversity" and provide an inclusive environment for people of every "orientation, or identity." The same flag and wording appear on the Jesuit Social Services website.
A Catholic agency can welcome every person who comes to its door without flying the flag of a movement that rejects Catholic teaching. The Jesuit Social Services organisation still has to answer for why they, as a Catholic organisation, are publicly displaying a flag that represents an ideology that conflicts with Catholic teaching.
Last updated: 29 October 2026 06:31