Police forces across the world are warning that criminals and paedophiles are using the coronavirus lockdown to target children. Data gathered by the BBC reveals demand for abuse imagery has shot up. Reports of obscene online material more than doubled globally to more than four million between March and April. The US-based Center for Missing and Exploited Children said some of that rise related to one especially horrific and widely-circulated video.
In the UK, where 300,000 people are considered a threat to children, there were nearly nine million attempts in the last month to access child sexual abuse websites which had been previously blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation. The anti-child abuse charity which reports sites to internet service providers, says that since the lockdown began there has been an 89% drop in site deletions by the tech companies. It believes this may be because many of these firms have fewer people staffing their hotlines during the pandemic. Spanish National Police say reports of online child sex videos leapt by just over 20% since just before the lockdown there began on 13 March. Their counterparts in Denmark revealed the number of attempts to access child abuse websites has trebled.
With most schools closed, children are spending more time online. Experts say that puts them at greater risk of grooming for sexual abuse. Demand for abuse imagery has also shot up in Australia, where police say the downloading leapt by 86% in the three weeks after the 21 March lockdown. Commander Paula Hudson of the Australian Federal Police, said many offenders see the pandemic as an ideal opportunity to target children.
Many child abuse videos commissioned to order by paedophiles are made in the Philippines, where children are trafficked by abuse rings. The children who are held captive by the gangs are subjected to appalling violence on camera. These attacks are live-streamed to paying customers in western nations, including the UK. Officials in the Philippines say reports of online abuse material have soared – from approximately 59,000 in February to more than 101,000 in March, the month that the country’s coronavirus lockdown began. The International Justice Mission (IJM), a global organisation that works in the Philippines, says half of the children rescued from abuse gangs are 12 years old or younger – and it has come across two victims who were babies less than three-months-old.
The hope is that as the lockdown eases in countries across the world and schools reopen, the risks to children will drop. But for those who have fallen victim to abusers the road to recovery can be long and painful.
Source: BBC
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