Caught in the net
Ilan Ramon
As police and teachers play catch-up with internet abuse, a report suggests
that children are dangerously naive when making cyber friends
David Batty
Thursday July 18, 2002
The Guardian
The conviction of Roy Whiting for the murder of Sarah Payne last year yet
again saw the tabloids portray paedophiles as middle-aged loners. But
according to police experts the profile of sex offenders is changing, with
the "dirty mac brigade" being replaced by a younger, computer-literate
generation downloading child abuse images from the internet.
UK vice squads have arrested around 15 boys under 16 in internet trawling
operations in the past 18 months. The youngest, aged just 13, was placed on
the sex offenders' register last May after 326 images of child abuse were
found on his home computer.
Although these boys currently represent a fraction of the 500 teenagers
convicted of sexual offences in England and Wales every year, child welfare
and law enforcement agencies admit they are only just catching up with a
global trend in sexually inappropriate behaviour online.
New Zealand has led the way in investigating this problem. According to
Steve O'Brien, manager of the New Zealand department of internal affairs'
censorship unit, nearly 20% of its investigations into illegal material on
the internet involve young males aged 14-19 distributing and trading child
pornography. Research in the US and Canada has uncovered similar rates among
teenagers.
Domestic child protection agencies are divided on whether to treat these
boys as criminals or victims. Leading children's charities believe they
should not always be prosecuted because they are often looking at images of
girls their own age. But Detective Inspector Terry Jones, of Greater
Manchester police's abusive images unit, said placing teenagers on the sex
offenders register was "reasonable as young people are accessing material of
unimaginable depravity".
The Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety (Chis), a taskforce
set up last year following a series of internet trawls, argues that
prosecution is not in these boys' best interests because adult paedophiles
coax them into thinking child pornography is acceptable. Chis, whose members
include the NSPCC, Barnardo's and Childline, has called on the courts to
distinguish between adults and children arrested on child porno- graphy
offences.
John Carr, internet adviser to Chis, said it was strange that the law could
not recognise a difference between an adult making or possessing sexual
images of a 13-year-old girl, and a 13-year-old boy doing the same thing.
Ray Wyre, an expert on treating sex offenders and an adviser to police
forces around the world, said the boys' only offence was downloading the
material. He said: "If they were actually having sex with girls their own
age, probably nothing would be done."
But Detective Inspector Jones said research with adult paedophiles suggested
that collecting child abuse images was a step towards carrying out abuse. Of
the 1,207 people arrested for using the internet to sexually exploit
children by the US Postal Inspection Services since 1997, 36% were also
directly abusing children.
Rachel O'Connell, director of the cyberspace research unit (CRU) at the
University of Central Lancashire, said paedophiles established virtual
communities on the internet to support one another, organise abuse and
ensnare young people.
Ms O'Connell, who has spent five years investigating internet paedophiles,
said: "Young people can quickly become integrated into these communities,
sometimes lured with images of girls their own age but then exposed to even
more hardcore material. It's a form of 'grooming' and we urgently need to
develop preventative measures."
The Home Office acknowledges that sexual approaches to children online are
increasing, with at least a dozen men who made contact with their child
victims on the internet imprisoned in the past year for sexual abuse and
rape. A new bill to reform the law on sexual of fences and overhaul the Sex
Offenders Act (1997), expected to be unveiled this autumn, would make it a
criminal offence for adults to groom minors for sex online.
Tink Palmer, policy officer at Barnardo's, is calling for a national child
protection strategy to tackle online child abuse, since most social workers
and therapists involved in treating victims and young offenders lack basic
internet skills. She warned: "The police trawling operations that have
occurred have been serendipitous and many forces don't have access to the
technology to infiltrate computer records."
According to the Internet Crime Forum, about 5 million children have
internet access in the UK, of whom more than a fifth are under 14. But a new
study of 1,400 nine- to 16-year-olds by the CRU found that a third were
unaware of the dangers of face-to-face meetings with people they befriend
online.
The study, published today, found that one in 10 children who regularly use
chatrooms have met up with cyber friends, usually unsupervised by an adult.
It reveals that many young people use the internet to flirt and explore
their sexuality; two-fifths of those interviewed engage in sexual
conversations with people they only know online.
Ms O'Connell said the findings showed there was a need to address internet
pornography in IT and sex education classes. "Although the vast majority of
schools have internet access, most teachers have not been equipped with the
knowledge or skills to offer advice on how to deal with unwanted
sexualadvances in chatrooms and how to act responsibly online."
David Batty is social care correspondent on SocietyGuardian.co.uk
Darrell
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