Rapes by boys aged 12 ‘fuelled by web’

SOCIAL media is fuelling a spike in rape and other serious sexual crimes by children as young as 12.

Suspects are being arrested and prosecuted for horrific attacks on other children and even adults.

Officers said vulnerable girls were blackmailed into sex over explicit photographs, some of them taken without consent.

Predatory boys threaten to publish the images on social media or send them to parents unless the girls have sex with them. In other cases, girls are being provided as ‘rewards’ to boys who work as drug runners for crime gangs operating so-called county line networks, in which urban gangs begin dealing in smaller towns.

Detective Inspector Laura Hillier, a sex crimes investigator at Scotland Yard, said children were only charged in extreme cases, adding: ‘Social media is obviously a massive part. You can take pictures, videos, that are then used to force a young person to perform different sexual acts.’

She said county-lines crime also fuelled sex offences, adding: ‘It’s criminal exploitation of young people. It’s a reward. What happens can be multiple perpetrators against one child. You’re talking 13, 14, 15-year-olds. A large part of our job is county lines.’

Details of the crimewave came as figures revealed that 196 juveniles were charged with rape in London between January 2015 and December 2017, including 13 aged ten to 12, 25 aged 13, and 33 who were 14.