Social Media and Child Abuse

TThe internet has opened up new means of sexually abusing children; it has increased the range, volume and accessibility of the abuse. Today is not uncommon for a single suspect to be arrested with tens of thousands of images on his computer. In 2003 one man in Lincolnshire was found with 450,000 child abuse images and a private individual in New York was found with 1,000,000.

  

Many paedophiles acknowledge that exposure to child abuse images fuel their sexual fantasies and play an important part in leading them to commit hands on sexual offences against children. 

The internet has provided an anonymous platform for paedophiles to access children in order for them to eventually meet them to abuse them. Because communications on the Internet are public and perceived as anonymous, children often feel they are safe. One of the largest dangers is that children don’t know who they are talking to, or they have been misled into believing they are talking to a child their age.

Online grooming is much easier and much quicker process than in real life, as they are already talking directly to the child in an isolated and private environment away from adult supervision, and the anonymity allows them to build the trust quicker.

Not only has the advent of the Internet provided sex offenders with easier means to access children, it has also created a platform in which they can seek out other offenders and build networks in which they are able to justify their thoughts, beliefs and fantasies.

As well as this, the internet is also facilitating the major increase in children and young people being exposed to a wide range of age-inappropriate or illegal sexual and other kinds of material. No one knows what the long term effects of this exposure are just yet, but parents, teachers and others with a responsibility for children have expressed great anxiety.

Carr, J. (2003) Child abuse, child pornography and the internet. NCH The children charity
Krone, T (2004) A typology of online child pornography offending. Australian Institute of Criminology
CEOP (2013) Threat Assessment of Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse