Children groomed into filming their own sexual abuse
Charity warns that a quarter of indecent images of underage boys and girls are now self-generated
CHILDREN as young as seven are being coaxed into streaming sexually explicit footage of themselves in exchange for “likes” and “friends” on social media, a campaign group has said.
Paedophiles are grooming the youngsters in such a way that their vic- tims are often unaware that what they are doing is sexually explicit. The alarming development has been identified by the Internet Watch Foundation, which says the number of self-generated images and videos of child sexual abuse images has quadrupled in a year.
In a four-month period from November 2016 to February 2017 the charity received reports of 1,227 indecent pictures and clips online that were found to have been taken by the victims themselves. Their ages ranged from seven to 13.
Over the equivalent period up to February this year, the figure rose to 6,011. The charity said one in four images were self-generated, meaning children were filming themselves, usually after being coerced, blackmailed or duped.
In some cases the pictures sent were to children of a similar age. However, once posted online the footage can be taken and shared over the internet.
In January, 1,717 images or clips were found to have been taken by children, representing a quarter of such material that the group investigated. That compares with 349 found in January last year – just six per cent of obscene images of children distributed online. In some footage investigators could hear parents talking in a nearby room. One clip contains a mother calling out “dinner’s ready” to her child.
In another example, a boy of 14, who recorded himself with his girlfriend of the same age, found the footage had begun to appear on adult pornography sites. By the time he contacted the foundation for help, the clip had gone viral on 40 different websites. Despite efforts to erase it, it continues to be shared.
Fred Langford, of the IWF, urged parents to warn children about the dangers of mobile phones, tablets and webcams, and how paedophiles can groom and manipulate them online. He also urged companies that develop live streaming apps to work with the IWF to understand how software can be misused.
Mr Langford said: “Some of these videos were streamed because the children were effectively receiving a form of kudos through ‘likes’, which helps them move up in social rankings on some social media apps.
“When these children are being directed and appear to receive more likes when taking their clothes off, they do not realise they are being sexually exploited and don’t consider the long- term devastating impact happened.”
He added: “It’s harrowing. These victims are being groomed, coerced, manipulated, and sometimes blackmailed through live streaming apps, and this has contributed to the rise in reports we are receiving where the child has actually taken the images or videos themselves.”
The increase in such images is also partly a result of improved techniques in tracing such material. The charity is one of a handful of groups, apart from police, that can search for and remove child sex abuse images.