The IWF says 2022 was “a record-breaking year” with its analysts finding more online child sexual abuse material than ever before
A growing number of children are being groomed online – with images and videos of youngsters carrying out sexual acts on camera having risen by more than 1000 percent since the pandemic lockdowns.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) says its investigation highlights how predators took advantage of kids being home and online more.
The organisation, which tracks down videos and imagery of child sexual abuse online and works to have it removed, logged 64,000 web pages showing such material involving seven- to 10-year-olds compared to 5,000 before the Covid outbreak.
It describes 2022 as “a record-breaking year” with its analysts finding more online child sexual abuse material than ever before.
In one video seen by IWF, a nine-year-old girl was being cajoled into “super dirty” dares over a webcam in her bedroom, surrounded by cuddly toys. It ended when a family member, oblivious to the abuse taking place, asked her to run a bath for a sibling.
In another case, two 10-year-old boys were seen speaking to a camera and being told by adults to perform sexual acts on each other in return for some kind of a reward.
Almost two thirds of the material analysts identified as child sexual abuse was of a child who had performed a sexual act in front of a camera. These videos are then shared and spread widely on the open web.
The Online Safety Bill is currently going through Parliament and a recent amendment will see tech executives face up to two years in jail if the social media platforms they run repeatedly fail to protect children from harm.
End-to-end encryption – a way of ensuring only you and the person you’re communicating with can read or listen to what is sent, and no third party, not even the likes of WhatsApp can – is a controversial issue with the Bill.
The Government says this technology significantly reduces the ability for platforms to detect child sexual abuse, but campaigners argue scrapping end-to-end encryption creates backdoors that could be exploited by criminals.
Susie Hargreaves OBE, chief executive of the IWF, said: “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We have all adjusted our lives to be more online than ever before, and that is not going to change.
“During the pandemic, the internet was a lifeline. But we are only now unpacking the full effects. What is clear to us is that younger children are being pulled into abusive situations by rapacious predators, often while they are in their own bedrooms.
“Their parents are often unaware there is this online backdoor into their homes which is leaving their children vulnerable. I fear this could be the tip of the iceberg.”
