Child in every class has been sent sex images

NSPCC demands action as school pupils’ claims raise fears that online grooming is worse than thought

ONE child in every primary school class has been sent a sexual image by an adult, an NSPCC study has found.

One in 25 children aged seven to 11 told researchers that an adult had sent them a naked or semi-naked picture or video on an app, site or game. One in 20 secondary pupils aged 11 to 16 said they had received such an image.

In the survey of nearly 40,000 children, one in 50 said they had sent a nude or semi-nude picture to an adult, raising fears online grooming is more extensive than previously thought.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Peter Wanless, the NSPCC chief executive, said the “appalling” targeting of young children demonstrates the need for new laws to rein in the social networks.

Mr Wanless warns that social networks and texting apps “recklessly expose children to content and behaviours completely inappropriate to their age”.

He writes: “Technology has developed at such a pace that government, legislation and society failed to keep up. One result is that social networks have become a gateway to child abuse.”

This newspaper is campaigning for a statutory duty of care on social media companies to safeguard children.

One primary schoolgirl told the NSPCC survey, the biggest of its kind ever conducted: “A complete stranger asked me to take my clothes off and send him a picture. When I deleted the game, I went on another site and the same person asked me to have sex with him. I told him to back off and then deleted that game. I have seen this person on many sites that I play and I decided to just block him.”

A secondary schoolboy reported: “My coach sent me a video of Father Christmas stripping naked.”

Exchanging sexual images also appears to have become normalised. One pupil aged 12 or 13 said: “A girl from my primary [was] sending half naked pictures because it’s what everyone does.”

The scale of grooming was exposed by the case of Derek Hutton, 49, who approached 9,000 children over two years after creating 407 accounts on the Moviestarplanet site using multiple false identities. Although his accounts were blocked by moderators for the site, which is aimed at school-age children, Hutton had enough time to groom his victims and persuade them to move to video-chat platforms. He is now serving a 10-year jail sentence.

In his Telegraph article, Mr Wanless writes that it is a “landmark moment” for government to crackdown on such online threats by creating an independent regulator with the power to investigate and fine social networks that fail to do enough to catch groomers.

The NSPCC wants social media firms to exploit the technology they use to target ads and personalise users’ feeds to identify paedophiles.

It is also calling for statutory annual “transparency” reports from the social media firms, detailing how many child safety reports they receive and what action is taken to resolve them.

Many children will be returning to school this week. If we think back to our own school days, many of us will have fond memories of playground games, jumpers for goalposts and hand-clap rhymes. And perhaps some less fond memories of times tables, handwriting exercises and getting caught passing notes.

Today’s children have all that to enjoy, but their world is bigger. They have online learning, funny photo filters, gaming apps and texting. There are huge positives to having the world at your fingertips, but these opportunities also come with risks.

NSPCC research out today shows that the equivalent of one child in every primary school classroom surveyed has been sent a naked or semi-naked image from an adult; and one in 50 had sent a nude or semi-nude image to an adult. That is appalling, and something no child should have to experience. In the last year alone, police in England and Wales recorded more than 3,000 offences of sending a sexual message to a child.

But this isn’t inevitable. Those images and messages are sent through social networks and texting apps, which recklessly expose children to content and behaviours completely inappropriate for their age. Technology has developed at such a pace that government, legislation and society have failed to keep up. And one result of that is that social networks have become a gateway to child abuse.

We are at a landmark moment. The Government has pledged to introduce legislation to keep social networks in check. These new laws are in the hands of the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Wright, and the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, who have the opportunity to end the Wild West Web.

The NSPCC is calling on the Government to create an independent regulator, with the power to investigate and to fine social networks which fall short. Sites must be required to take active steps to detect grooming, so that abuse can be disrupted before it escalates.

We know that some groomers are prolific. One offender, Derek Hutton, created 407 accounts to avoid detection. Hutton admitted engaging in sexual activity in front of children on at least 250 occasions, and attempting to engage in sexual activity with children on at last 500 occasions, as well as 11 further sex offences relating to seven victims.

If social networks facilitate abuse on such a scale from just one individual, it is harrowing to contemplate the true prevalence of this kind of behaviour that goes undetected or unreported. And we must not assume this is limited to strangers. Children have told us that adults they know have used social media to groom them.

Social networks must be forced to publish annual transparency reports about the scale of abuse on their platforms. We know from police that, where the method used in grooming offences is recorded, more than 70 per cent are happening on Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram. We need to know how many child safety reports are made each year, how those reports are acted upon, and how quickly they are resolved. In order to tackle the problem head on, the scale of the threat that we’re dealing with has to be clear to everyone.

And if those transparency reports reveal that social networks aren’t doing enough to act on child safety reports, their reputations should suffer the consequences, while sites performing well should be celebrated.

Of course parents need to take steps to ensure their children are safe online, and we must teach children safe behaviour in schools so that they can take steps to guard against harms and be savvy about what’s risky. But online platforms should be built to be safe in the first place, just like any other product used by children.

In the coming months, the Government will publish a White Paper setting out proposals for what social network regulation could look like. The NSPCC will be doing all we can to make sure these laws are fit for purpose, and we’re asking parents, grandparents, millennials, students – everyone – to sign our petition to tell Mr Wright and Mr Javid how important this issue is.

Social networks must be properly regulated for the sake of children today and for generations to come.