Alarming rise in number of sexual abuse content online of children aged between 7 and 10: Report

There has been a massive increase in incidents of self-generated sexual abuse content by kids aged between seven and 10, says a global reportwhich also found that the children are apparently being manipulated into recording abuse of themselves.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has said that around 20,000 web pages of child sexual abuse imagery were found in the first half of this year.

The rise is alarming asthis year, the cases were nearly 8,000 more than in the same period last year. If we compare it to 2020, it was over four times more than in thefirst half of that year.

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IWF is a registered charity based in England, which states that its remit is to minimise the availability of “online sexual abuse content, specifically child sexual abuse images and videos hosted anywhere in the world and non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK.”

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As quoted by UK-based media outlets, IWF said that sexual abuse content showing kids made it a social and digital emergency.

Susie Hargreaves, who is the IWF chief executive, said that "more needs to be done" in order to tackle the burning issue.

The online safety group asked the governments, tech companies and the police to work together more closely. Hargreaves said, “There is no place for child sexual abuse on the internet and we cannot simply accept, year on year, that sexual imagery of children is allowed to be exchanged without constraint online.”

She added, “Child sexual abuse which is facilitated and captured by technology using an internet connection does not require the abuser to be physically present, and most often takes place when the child is in their bedroom – a supposedly ‘safe space’ in the family home. Therefore, it should be entirely preventable.”

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“We need to attack this criminality from several directions, including providing parents and carers with support to have positive discussions around technology use and sexual abuse, within the home. Children are not to blame. They are often being coerced, tricked or pressured by sexual abusers on the internet,” she added.

“Only when the education of parents, carers and children comes together with efforts by tech companies, the government, police and third sector, can we hope to stem the tide of this criminal imagery,” she said.

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