Scores of serving members of the Australian Defence Force are allegedly part of a Facebook group where some users have shared material promoting domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse of children.
The Victims of Abuse in the Australian Defence Force Association has undertaken an analysis of eight per cent of the 30,000 likes of the Facebook site SNAFU - Situation Normal All F****d Up - and identified 100 serving Australian defence personnel so far.
Some of the material shared on the site carries misogynistic messages or cartoons and memes promoting child sex abuse.
"There's a picture of a poor girl naked, hanging from a rope and a rafter and the meme reads - if you rape them right you don't have to kill them, they will kill themselves," association secretary Jennifer Jacomb told AAP.
"It shows the ongoing culture of abuse is alive and well in the Australian Defence Force."
Another meme reads: "The best part of a hooker dying on you?... the second hour is free."
Ms Jacomb alerted Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan to the site in July.
The group represented a national security risk and was being monitored by foreign nationals in China and Russia, she said.
A Defence spokesman said the department did not endorse the SNAFU Facebook site.
"The use of the Commonwealth logo on the SNAFU site is also not sanctioned by Defence," the spokesman said.
"Defence has approached Facebook and requested the page be shut down for violating Facebook's community standards."
The defence force's investigative service has been looking into the site to determine whether any serving members or Defence public servants have engaged in unlawful or inappropriate use of social media.
"Anyone found to have acted contrary to Defence policy will be held to account with disciplinary or administrative action being taken against them," the spokesman said.
"Anyone found to be engaging in criminal behaviour on the site will be referred to the relevant authorities for further investigation."
The SNAFU website went from public to private on Monday afternoon.
A post on the SNAFU Facebook page the offensive posts were part of a “meme war promotion”.
Source: Facebook
“These posts were not appropriately monitored by snafu administrators and should, without question, have been deleted. The posts are clearly offensive and disturbing,” the post read.
“Upon reflection, this was poor practice by the administrators and we sincerely apologise for this material being present on our site.”
The group say they plan to make up for the oversight.
“In the coming days we will be approaching an organisation working to fight violence against women in order to ensure we are working in an appropriate way in this regard.
“We are sincerely sorry that we did not have in place appropriate guidelines regarding posts to the site and will be doing everything possible to make up for the publication of the material.”
Our Watch chief executive Mary Barry condemned the Facebook group.
"Rape, sexual assault and child abuse are never laughing matters," she told AAP.
"Comments that trivialise and normalise violence against women, like those on the SNAFU Facebook page, are abhorrent."
