The AiLECS Lab is thrilled to announce that world-renowned investigator Jon Rouse APM has joined us as a Professor of Practice. Jon will spearhead our efforts to advance technology that fights against the sexual exploitation of children.
Detective Jon Rouse has 38 years’ service with the Queensland Police Service in Australia. During his career he has served in a diverse range of operational uniform positions and he commenced his career as a Detective in 1987, serving at several regional Criminal Investigations Branches.
In 1996 Jon was promoted to Detective Sergeant and began investigating crimes against children at the Child Abuse and Sexual Crime Group. In 2001 he commenced at Task Force Argos where he implemented Australia’s first protracted covert operation to proactively target child sex offenders utilising the internet to network, groom and sexually exploit children.
In 2005, after leading the Australian response to Operation Auxin (USA Operation Falcon) Jon presented at the Australasian Police Commissioner’s conference hosted in Brisbane and gained national support for the development of the ANVIL project (Australian National Victim Image Library) to assist police officers in the process of identifying the child victims depicted in video and still images seized from child sex offenders. This is now known as AVID (Australian Victim Identification Database and is hosted at the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation – ACCCE)
At the same conference the Commissioners supported Jon’s recommendation for the implementation of what has now become Operation Griffin (formerly the ANZPAA Child Protection Committee), to ensure a nationally consistent approach to the investigation of crimes against children.
Jon has instigated and led multiple national and international major operations targeting child exploitation criminal networks and has delivered training to law enforcement officers on online child exploitation investigations across all States and Territories in Australia and internationally. (New Zealand, France, Finland, Lithuania, Panama, Columbia, the Ukraine, the Philippines, Korea, Norway, the United States of America, Canada, Belgium, Costa Rica, India, Egypt, Chile, Sweden, Brazil, Taiwan, Thailand, Qatar, Vietnam, China, Spain, Kenya, South Africa, Malaysia and Singapore)
Jon has also represented Australian law enforcement as a speaker at United Nations conferences in Austria and Kenya and in 2011 he accepted the International Cyber Crime Gold award on behalf of Task Force Argos in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.
In May 2018, Jon accepted the ‘Champion for Children Award’ in New York from the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children for his dedication to fighting and investigating crimes against children and he was awarded the Queensland Australian of the Year for 2019.
In July 2019, after assisting with initial planning and conceptual designs, Jon was seconded to the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation to lead the Covert Online operations team, Victim Identification Unit and Training team.
Jon is currently the Chair of the INTERPOL Covert Internet Investigators Group and the Co-Chair of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT) Global Covert Internet Investigations group. He is also a Director with The Society for the Policing of Cyberspace (POLCYB).
Jon is the recipient of four Queensland Police Commissioners Certificates for his operational leadership and two Queensland Police Excellence awards for Child Protection Prevention. Since commencing his secondment to the Australian Federal Police, he has been awarded three AFP Commissioners Citations for his leadership in developing and designing the ACCCE and for developing the AFP Covert Online Engagement Unit. He has also received the AFP Commissioners Certificate for conceiving and leading the Australian component of Europol’s Trace an Object.
Jon is the recipient of the Queensland Police Medal, the National Service Medal, the Exemplary Conduct medal, the National Police Medal and the Australian Police Medal and has been appointed as an ambassador for the following Australian Child Protection organisations;
Act for Kids
Bravehearts
The Carly Ryan Foundation
Daniel Morecombe Foundation