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Paramedics called to northern beaches home on Sunday evening before 16-year-old dies in hospital on Tuesday night after sexual strangulation act
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Australia news — Penry Buckley and Alyx Gorman
New South Wales police are investigating the death of a 16-year-old girl after a suspected sexual strangulation act.
Police said emergency services were called to a home in Elanora Heights in Sydney’s northern beaches on Sunday evening in response to a welfare concern report.
NSW Ambulance paramedics found the teenage girl unresponsive. She was treated at the scene before being airlifted to hospital in a critical condition.
She died in hospital on Tuesday night, police said.
“Officers attached to northern beaches police area command commenced an investigation into the incident,” a police spokesperson said in a statement.
A source informed about the case said the teenager was believed to have become unconscious as a result of asphyxiation during sexual intercourse, often referred to as “choking” . No arrests have been made.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The federal social services minister, Tanya Plibersek, said on Thursday she was “extremely worried” about the rise of sexual strangulation among young people.
“I can’t say anything obviously about this tragic situation in NSW, but in general terms, figures like that just concern me so deeply,” Plibersek told ABC radio.
“There is no safe way of choking someone. I’m pleading with parents and schools today to use every opportunity to have really direct conversations with young people. Kids are getting their sex education from pornography before they’ve had their first kiss.”
Related: ‘There is no safe way to do it’: the rapid rise and horrifying risks of choking during sex
Plibersek said the government’s social media ban for under-16s and the introduction of age verification for pornography would “help a bit with this” but, she noted, children were “spectacularly good at getting around these rules”.
The independent federal MP for Warringah, Zali Steggall, said the “devastating news” underscored the need for a national education campaign “to tackle misogyny and teach respectful relationships”.
Steggall told ABC radio on Thursday a rise in sexual strangulation was being “led by pornography [and] manosphere content on social media”.
She criticised what she described as a “go-slow, weak response that is so incredibly frustrating while people are exposed”, and called for the implementation of a duty of care from social media platforms.
“Could we just be real for a minute? 80% of kids are surveyed as having gotten around that age ban. So that is not protecting many people at all,” Steggall said.
Programs like Chanel Contos’s Teach Us Consent were important to “give people more control over resetting the algorithms of their content”, the independent Sydney MP said.
Every state and territory in Australia has strangulation-specific assault laws, according to the University of Melbourne law school professor Heather Douglas.
She said research into domestic and family violence indicated strangulation was a strong predictor of “very serious harm in the future” as well as being in itself “such a dangerous activity”.
Douglas’s research has found strangulation is a common practice among young people. In a 2024 survey of 4,702 Australians aged between 18 and 35, Douglas and her co-authors found 57% reported being sexually strangled, and 51% reported strangling a partner.
Young women were more likely to report having been strangled (61%), while young men were more likely to report strangling a partner (59%).
While the sexual practice was often consensual, Douglas said: “You can’t consent to death or really serious harm under Australian law … there’s that line that is very clearly drawn in strangulation law – and assault law more generally.”
The police investigation into the 16-year-old’s death was continuing.
• In Australia, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 and support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 and Lifeline on 13 11 14
Police said emergency services were called to a home in Elanora Heights in Sydney’s northern beaches on Sunday evening in response to a welfare concern report.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Penry Buckley and Alyx Gorman. Published 27 Aug 2026, 01:31 am.
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