Epidemic of sexually explicit child images hits our schools
New Garda unit sets up database of uniforms to tackle child abusers
SCHOOLS are sending images of their students’ uniforms to gardaí to help a new online child exploitation team in the battle against abuse of children.
Sexually explicit photos or videos of young people posted on social media and messaging platforms are increasingly being used to target children for bullying and blackmail, as well as by paedophiles.
Pictures of uniforms and other school-related items can play a crucial role in tracking down victims of online sexual coercion and extortion on popular internet sites such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
The perpetrator could be someone a child knows, and with whom they innocently posed for or shared a photo or video, it could be a family member abusing a child, or it could be an online paedophile.
The newly-established Victim Identification Unit, part of the Garda Online Child Exploitation Unit, has sought the assistance of primary and post-primary principals in building a database of images that might help to narrow their searches.
The requests were made in the past few weeks and there has been a “massive response”, according to Det Sgt Mary McCormack, who heads the Victim Identification Unit.
SCHOOLS are sending images of their students’ uniforms to gardaí to help their online child exploitation team in the battle against the growing problem of “sextortion”.
Pictures of uniforms and other school-related items can play a crucial role in tracking down victims of online sexual coercion and extortion on popular internet sites such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
Sexually explicit photos or videos of young people posted on social media and messaging platforms are increasingly being used to target children for bullying and blackmail.
The perpetrator could be someone a child knows, and with whom they innocently posed for or shared a photo or video; it could be a family member abusing a child, or it could be an online paedophile.
There are no figures publicly available on the extent of this digital-age crime in Ireland, but at any one time gardaí are actively dealing with a number of cases.
The newly established Victim Identification Unit, part of the Garda Online Child Exploitation Unit, has sought the assistance of primary and post-primary principals in building a database of images that might help to narrow its searches.
The requests were made in the past few weeks and there has been a “massive response”, according to Det Sgt Mary McCormack, who heads the Victim Identification Unit.
Officers are also talking to sporting bodies, such as the GAA and the Irish Sports Council, and plan to contact other organisations in which children are involved, such as Scouting Ireland.
Det Sgt McCormack said children can be drawn into a spiral very quickly, such as with someone contacting them on Instagram and saying something like “you are very beautiful, can I have a picture?”
Conversations escalate with requests to the child to send a sexually explicit image. If they do so, they may be blackmailed and told it will be posted on their Facebook page if they don’t send an image of themselves naked.
Det Sgt McCormack said a lot of people believed that an online predator would spend weeks grooming a child, but that was not necessarily the case: “You can see it in four or five questions – they ask for age, sex, location and then a request for a picture.”
A young person who engages in a conversation with a stranger online may believe they are talking to someone their own age, but it could turn out to be a much older predator.
The Victim Identification Unit treats images as crime scenes and forensically examines them looking for visual clues that will assist in locating the victim.
The specialist unit was set up three months ago and, as well as working to identify victims, it offers them support, through the involvement of the child and family agency, Tusla. Where necessary, a victim is removed from an abusive situation.
Det Sgt McCormack said they examined images that had been seized from suspects in child exploitation investigations or images that had been shared online that had come to their attention.
The images could come from national sources or from international agencies, such as Interpol, seeking help in cracking an investigation.
“Another country might see a clue in an image that could lead to Ireland, such as a bottle of Ballygowan,” said Det Sgt McCormack. She said they had “seen it all” in images, including sports jerseys, school uniforms, newspapers, the Spire and pictures of Dublin.
Det Sgt McCormack said they wanted to create awareness generally and to highlight the issue with schools, which may not know what is going on in their pupils’ homes or on the internet.
“We may have no more information than what is on an image and we want to identify children as quickly as possible.
“Victims are at the heart of our service; they are our number one priority” she said.
The approach to schools was made through the representative bodies, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals and the Irish Primary Principals’ Network.