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COVID Has Fuelled a Disturbing Surge in Child Sex Abuse Material
Around the World
Experts suggest that stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions and increased internet time has led to an increase in both demand and supply
By Gavin Butler, Vice
15.9.20
Warning: this article describes issues around sexual assault. For advice and support please contact the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) on 800.856.HOPE or at www.rainn.org
In Canada, report CSAM to Cybertip.ca
Online child sexual exploitation has skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic, with millions of people around the world working remotely and many victims trapped in isolation with their abusers.
The report’s authors cited an increase in the amount of child exploitation materials being shared via peer-to-peer networks, particularly on the darknet, as well as an increase in self-generated materials—nude selfies, for example—being distributed on the clear net. Restrictions on movement and more time spent at home has fed an increase in demand, they note, while economic hardships and opportunities for abuse has fed an increase in supply.
And all of this has coincided with significant delays in the reporting and policing of abuse as a result of downsizing measures and staff cutbacks.
"What the report shows is that we are seeing just the tip of a growing iceberg in terms of online child exploitation material,” said Jürgen Stock, INTERPOL Secretary General, in a media release. “It is important to remember that each photo and video of child sexual abuse is evidence of a real crime involving real children.
“Each time an image is viewed those children are re-victimized and their very real suffering is prolonged even further.”
The FBI foreshadowed in March that “due to school closings as a result of COVID-19, children will potentially have an increased online presence and/or be in a position that puts them at an inadvertent risk”.
Days earlier, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)—a charity that identifies child sexual abuse content online—warned that “children may be at greater risk of grooming during coronavirus”.
And in the first days of April, the UK’s National Crime Agency predicted a rise in online child sexual abuse offences as lockdowns came into effect around the world—noting that offenders were already discussing opportunities over online chat forums on ways to abuse children during the crisis.
Around the same time, the Childline India helpline received more than 92,105 SOS calls relating to children over the course of 11 days. A spokesperson for the Philippines’ International Justice Mission warned that local traffickers were livestreaming an inordinate amount of on-demand, child sexual abuse and exploitation materials to offenders online, primarily in Western countries. And the India Child Protection Fund highlighted a 95 percent increase in child porn consumption and a 200 percent spike in searches for videos showing children bleeding, choking, tortured or in pain since the start of the country’s lockdown.
200 percent spike in searches for videos
showing children bleeding, choking, tortured, or in pain
India Child Protection Fund
In Australia, reports of online child sexual exploitation made by members of the public increased by 122 per cent as the nation went into coronavirus lockdowns through April, May and June. Coordinator of Australian Federal Police forensics in New South Wales, Nathan Green, told the ABC that “the restrictions COVID has brought in have resulted in families being locked up at home, and if in that family there happens to be an abuser it's fairly apparent what's going to happen.”
Green further pointed out that “statistically, everybody [in Australia] would know somebody” who is an abuser.
“There is a lot of child abuse going on in the community today,” he said, “and a lot of it is facilitated through technology."
“COVID-19 themed forums have grown to more than 1,000 members who are sharing hundreds of videos and images and discussing their tendencies toward the abuse of children in the COVID-19 environment,” they added.
The difficulty of combatting that abuse online has been further compounded by COVID. IWF previously reported that between 16 March and 15 April, the first month when workplaces in many countries around the world really started to feel the impacts of the pandemic, 1,498 web pages featuring child sexual abuse were taken down—an 89 percent reduction from the previous month.
It was around this time that Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s third-party US content moderators would be working from home, and that the company would increase its use of artificial intelligence to moderate content during coronavirus.
“What we are seeing here is the first hard evidence of how the global crisis is affecting the fight against child sexual abuse material,” chief executive of the IWF, Susie Hargreaves, told The Guardian. “Even though our analysts are working as normal to find this evil content, it is staying available for longer, even after they have reported it. This means there is more opportunity for sexual predators to view and share it.”
In its report last week, INTERPOL sought to address these challenges via a series of recommendations—among them, the insistence that countries ensure hotlines remain open and staffed, and consider additional ways for offences to be flagged such as free texting services and integrated reporting channels on social media.
In the UK (3rd story on link), there were 73,518 such offences (rape, online grooming and sexual assault against children) recorded in 2019-20 – up 57% in the five years since 2014-15. That is equivalent to nearly 200 offences a day last year.
Where sex and age were recorded, girls were four times as likely to be victims. There were more than 8,000 offences committed against 14-year-olds, making it the most common age group to report offences.
There were 12,374 sex crimes recorded against children under 10, while 449 offences were recorded against babies yet to reach their first birthday.
449 offences were recorded against babies yet to reach their first birthday
Remember, these are 'reported' child sexual crimes. These are likely to be a small percentage of the actual sexual crimes against children.
Most countries in the world are reporting dramatic increases in online child sexual abuse since the pandemic began to close down schools. Some countries are doing something about it; some countries are not even acknowledging the problem exists.
Canada is one of those countries that hasn't acknowledged the problem, and has done nothing to address the problem. Such numbers as those for the UK, India, Australia and dozens of other countries are not available in Canada, because no-one is counting. No-one is speaking out for the children whose lives are being destroyed.
If the mainstream media in Canada is aware of the problem, they are not speaking it out. Of course, MSM in Canada would never do anything to embarrass our far-left Prime Minister. They would rather sacrifice untold numbers of children to keep Trudeau in power.
According to my calculations, before 2020, roughly 1 million girls in Canada under the age of 18, have been sexually abused to the point of trauma. After 2020, that number will easily exceed 1 million.
The consequences are devastating to the child and the adult survivor. I believe that many of the suicides of children, especially First Nations children in remote villages, can be associated with child sexual abuse that has become generational since the times of Residential Schools.
At the very least, we should be making children aware of the dramatic increase in the probability of encountering paedophiles online who appear to be what they are not. We also need to make them aware of the dangers of nude or semi-nude selfies that they may send to a friend who promises not to share with anyone. Most of the photos will be shared and many sold to child-porn websites so they can be enjoyed by perverts around the world.
Canada is decades behind most western countries in the treatment of child sexual abuse survivors and society is suffering greatly because of it.
It is limited access to these kinds of services, they noted—including child care and educational personnel, who often play a key role in detecting and reporting cases of child sexual exploitation—that is likely contributing to the disturbing uptick in abuse.
One caution when using RAINN or D2L websites is that they do not include peer-on-peer child sexual abuse statistics. They have admitted to me that their statistics would go way up if they did. They should! But otherwise, they have lots of great information.
If you found anything in this article triggering, please contact the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) on 800.856.HOPE or at www.rainn.org
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