Cyberspace: The new playground for children
Curious and unsuspecting kids visit the Internet each day seeking friendship and information but sometimes encounter sexual deviance and menacing predators instead.
By James Nayagam
Cyberspace has now become “the new playground” for children. It has been reported that a two-year-old may spend up to six hours a day on an iPad unsupervised. Recently Interpol revealed Malaysia ranked third highest among Southeast Asian nations for ownership and distribution of child pornography.
Curious and unsuspecting adolescents visit the Internet each day seeking friendship and information but sometimes encounter sexual deviance and menacing predators instead. One study showed that one in seven youngsters receives unwanted sexual solicitations and that 4% receive aggressive solicitations involving a stranger who wants to meet them in person. A child’s natural curiosity leads them to Internet places where they do not belong, and with sad results.
A boy or a girl may repeatedly be victimised by offenders who meet them online after first seeing their image on a web cam. They suffer sexual abuses at the hands of men who first contact them online. In many cases, teens who are lured by sexual predators will never come forward due to fear or a misplaced sense of guilt.
Child prostitution is also facilitated via the Internet. Pimps use message boards and social networking sites to find customers seeking to engage in paid sex acts with minors.
In the past, child molesters were characterised as often lurking near schools. We, in Malaysia are aware that child molesters frequent school because that is where children can be found in great numbers. However the Internet has become the new schoolyard. Cyberspace provides a ready hunting-ground for those who seek children. Internet social networking sites are places in cyberspace where subscribers may post personal information about themselves and share the information with others. Children and adults use social networking sites to communicate and to make friends.
A study in 2006 estimates that 55% of young people have established online profiles in one or more of the dozens of social networking sites around.
Most social networking sites are free and permit users to register without providing information about the users’ true identities or whereabouts. The sites are well-suited for molesters who can pose as harmless mentors while disguising their true intent. There has been many incidents of registered sex offenders, who have created online profiles portraying themselves as inoffensive individuals seeking romance without reference to their malevolent pasts.
Children and teens are unable or unwilling to express their needs for Internet safety. Some children who become victims of child pornography offences are too young to inform the police as they are often too intimidated by the offender to ever tell anyone.
Some victims of child pornographers are too young to admit so in words or even via a phone.
The evidence of a child’s victimisation is invisible to the public, resulting in the crimes often going unreported. Because crimes against children are not publicly apparent, it gives the crimes lower priority than other offences.
Internet service providers (ISP) are the unwitting facilitators of online crimes against children. ISPs provide offenders with connections to the web that allow crimes to occur. Without a cyberspace connection provided by an ISP, Internet crimes would be impossible. Some conscientious ISPs are taking helpful steps to provide users with information about crime prevention but more assistance to law enforcement is needed.
Recommendations
What can be done to improve law enforcement efforts towards apprehending Internet sexual predators and traffickers of unlawful images?
- Internet service providers (ISP) should issue a policy statement that they are against child pornography and paedophilia.
- Parents should form a voluntary “cyber patrol and reporting group.”
- Better statistics-gathering methods through effective surveys and research must be devised.
- More proactive investigators should go undercover as was done in the case of convicted paedophile Richard Huckle.
- Basic law enforcement training academies must recognise Internet threats by providing a block of instructions regarding online crimes against children.
James Nayagam is Chairman of the Suriana Welfare Society.
Stay current - Follow FMT on WhatsApp, Google news and Telegram
With a firm belief in freedom of expression and without prejudice, FMT tries its best to share reliable content from third parties. Such articles are strictly the writer’s personal opinion. FMT does not necessarily endorse the views or opinions given by any third party content provider.