Incidents of sex offenders manipulating children into filming assaults against themselves at home or abusing friends and siblings have reached a sad new high. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) received around 20,000 reports affecting children between the ages of seven and ten in the first six months of this year alone. That is two thirds more than in the previous year. Experts are now calling for more information among parents and young people.

“Disturbing global trend”

“Child sexual abuse that is carried out and recorded using an internet connection does not require the perpetrator to be physically present. Most of the time, these attacks take place in one's own children's room, which should actually be a safe space in every family," explains IWF boss Susie Hargreaves. But unfortunately the reality looks completely different. “We are seeing a very disturbing global trend here that has been apparent since the first Corona lockdown in 2020,” emphasizes the expert.

But such crimes are actually “entirely avoidable,” as Hargreaves makes clear. All that is needed is dedicated educational work among parents, children and carers to deal with abuse within their own four walls. “Only if the educational measures take place in harmony with the corresponding efforts of technology companies, the government and the authorities can we manage to stop this wave of criminal images,” the IMF head is convinced.

Many factors are crucial

According to the IMF, which operates its own hotline in Great Britain where sexual abuse against minors can be reported, by far the largest increase in such sexual offenses in the first half of the year was recorded among six to ten year olds. However, the largest amount of images and film material in this area was produced primarily in the age group between eleven and 13 years.

According to Tamsin McNally, head of the IMF hotline, a number of factors are responsible for the worrying increase in such cases: “It could be, among other things, that children in lockdown are having to spend more time at home while having unhindered access to the internet. But it could also be because the techniques we use to detect such attacks have become more refined.”

Source: press release . 20,000 reports of coerced 'self-generated' sexual abuse imagery seen in first half of 2022 show 7- to 10-year-olds


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