Children's charity NCH has today blamed the internet for a 1500 per cent increase in child-porn related offences.
Its figures reveal that 549 child-porn offenders were charged or cautioned in 2001, compared with only 35 in 1988.
And that's all the evidence the charity felt it needed to start whipping up a storm of anti-internet propaganda, which was doubtless music to the ears of the lazy hacks on the Daily Mail and other even-handed rags that are always willing to blame 'newfangled' technology for all society's ills.
There are also claims flying around that 3G mobile phones are likely to make matters even worse. There's no evidence to support that claim, but it makes for good copy.
Examining the figures further, however, it's worth pointing out that until 1988, the law on possessing child pornography was very different - hence the apparently arbitrary year chosen to compare to the present. Until this time, being in possession of child pornography was not illegal, and subsequent enforcement of new laws may not have been as rigorous as it is now. We are not comparing like with like.
Then consider the fact that these figures could actually be construed as good news. The fact that 549 child-porn offenders were charged or cautioned compared to 38 is a victory of sorts for law enforcement. The internet hasn't created paedophiles; these higher contemporary figures merely portray the number of offenders who previously may have been escaping detection. You can bet there were not only 38 offenders in 1988 and 549 in 2001 - these are merely percentages of a far more concerning figure.
To say the numbers of those caught have increased solely because of the internet also detracts from efforts by the UK police force to stamp out child pornography. More people are being caught because the police are working far harder and far more efficiently to catch them.
While the research from the NCH deals specifically with child-porn related offences, there is an implication that the rise of child porn on the internet has led to a rise in instances of what it calls "hands-on" abuse.
We can only hope NCH isn't claiming for one minute that the internet has actually created more paedophiles - but that would appear to be the suggestion.
While it is clear that the internet has provided a channel for procuring and sharing pornographic images, it is unlikely that it has had any impact on the actual numbers or proclivities of child-sex offenders.
The ignorance inherent in suggesting people have been encouraged to take up child abuse because of the ubiquity of the internet is alarming.
These offenders have always existed. The internet is merely a technological means to an end that like anything is open to abuse. The fact of the matter is that yes, the internet has become a stalking ground for sex offenders who will use chat rooms to 'groom' unsuspecting victims, but the internet is not to blame. It's merely a technology and, if anything, it's the users who are to blame.
Since the 1950s, generations of parents have been sitting children in front of the television set. As a 'third parent', it was there to act as babysitter, educator and entertainer. A child could be left in front of the TV and the parents could go about their business.
Too much of the same thinking now governs how people treat the internet within the home.
The fact of the matter is that lazy parenting is just as responsible for the exposure of children to sex offenders online. The internet doesn't have to be dangerous. Too many parents are unaware of who their children are talking to and what they are doing online. Too many will allow children to have an internet-enabled PC in their bedroom, when common sense says to put it in a communal room, and too few parents are installing monitoring and filtering software on the family PC or locking it with a password of which they are guardian.
Rather than standing back and blaming 'the internet', broadcasters, charities, MPs, parents, newspapers and schools would be of far more use collaborating on schemes to better educate the public about the dangers lurking online, rather than hiding behind headline-grabbing scaremongering.
Comments
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1. anonymous
To make the statement that the internet does not create paedophiles is as unjustified as saying that the 15 times rise is caused by the internet. What the internet does do is to make anonymous communication much easier, which enables those with out of the common beliefs and proclivities to find like-minded people somewhere in the world. Without that communication and confirmation that one is not alone in the world, it is psychologically more difficult to take the next step in fostering those beliefs or acting out those fantasies. Magazines also provide a medium for mutual re-inforcement of beliefs. The internet just makes it all much easier, and safer when embarking on the dangerous path of opening up subjects which are normally taboo.
2. anonymous
Well done for this piece. Not only has the NCC created unnecessary reactive fear regarding the internet and technology but they have stupidly created more hype regarding the danger of paedophiles. The reason the increase they cite from 1988 is so dramatic is a simple increase in computers. To suggest this is a similar link in abuse activity is completely stupid.
Well done for pointing out how damaging such reactive behaviour can be.
3. Paul
Surely having an open forum for such things, like the internet, causes people to make mistakes.
That aside, statistics can be argued either way and neither way solves the problem. At least there are now more offenders where they should be, behind bars. May there be many, many more.
4. Jon English
The newspaper and televison reports lacked any depth, detail or true analysis.
Although saying that, all credit to the NCH for 'whipping up' the storm. ISP's do need to do more and if it's proving the idiots at the Daily Mail wrong that gets it done then so be it.
I also find it ironic that the first comment writer chose to remain anonymous in writing their comment. This is in my view (and I think theirs?) the feature of the Internet that has allowed the proliferation of illegal activities across it.
Maybe ISP's or chat rooms should be looking at how to only provide accounts to those with proof of ID?
5. anonymous
As a parent of two teenage girls, I agree entirely that it is my responsibility to ensure that they are 'safe' on the internet. Both my girls, aged 15 and 13 are well-used to the internet, using it in a constructive way for their studying. As a family, we talk about the dangers of chatrooms, in the same way we would discuss why a film/television programme may or may not be suitable for them to view. Presumably the parents who blame 'the internet' are also those who blame the teachers if their children have learning or behavioural problems. They are our children - it is up to us to guide them to become adults.
6. anonymous
Internet is to blame for the rise in all porn, communications, spam, ecommerce, education, etc.
You've got to take the bad with the good, but police the bad just as we do in the rest of society.
7. anonymous
This is a very disappointing leader, at least as ignorant and lazy in its thinking as that of the charity and so-called hacks you attack. How can you possibly assert with such confidence (any confidence) that the internet does not contribute to child abuse? There is no onus on NCH to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, as if the internet were in the dock. Rather it is perfectly reasonable for it to to express its view based on partial even anecdotal evidence. And why are you so defensive? If the internet is to be "treated like a grown up" it must behave like one, acknowledge that it may be the source of problems and deal with them. Having set itself up as something of a spokesperson for the internet, Silicon.com needs to react intelligently to this kind of issue. Not to do so by denying out of hand the possibility of any contribution to real-life problems is to invite more external regulation.
8. Harry
The internet provides a market and eases entry for the exchange of information. This provides opportunities to paedophilia as it does to any other category. The internet is a tool and as such is amoral; it is the uses to which it is put that are beneficial or harmful. It's as pointless in being anti-internet or pro-internet as it is to ponder whether the motorway network should exist. As ever, a new tool provides new opportunities for good or ill that may not be adequately controlled by the conventions and laws developed before the tool existed. This means we should be alert for misuse and be willing to protect the innocent. Hammers should not be banned because they can be used for violence. The internet has brought enormous benefits. We should not be indifferent to those harmed by people able to use the opportunities the internet offers for evil ends. Such exploitation should be fought against with the same vigour as is being used by the war on terrorism. When paedopiles consider the risks of producing and diseminating material greater than the rewards it will cease and fewer children will be involved.
9. anonymous
The sad fact is that the internet is a tool to facilitate all manner of dubious and illegal activities under cover of almost complete privacy, and to think otherwise is burying your head in the sand. The stance taken by ISP's that it is effectively nothing to do with them is just not good enough either.I fear these figures are just the tip of the iceberg, although it will be interesting to see if the recent high profile cases of tracing these people via their credit card has any effect - I suspect that it certainly will have deterred the first time casual curious type, which is very much what is needed.
10. Will
While I can see your point of view and I agree that the Internet is no more evil than a knife or a gun, I feel that this does not negate the point-of-view of the charity.
Pornography is so called because it is believed that it can "deprave" people who come in contact with it.
I think it is quite feasible that broader/easier access to child pornography has led some people to a position where they may be considering actions that they otherwise would not have carried out.
Lets be clear: child pornography is the problem and the internet as a carrier of child pornography is also a problem. Both need to be addressed.
11. Brian Burkill
What an excellent post made by Anonymous of Reading..
They are our children, we are responsible for them and their upbringing.
Too many LAZY parents are too quick to blame technology for the porn, teachers for their bad education, peers for bad manners, drivers for when they step in front of a vehicle. Basically, anyone but themselves.
When parents stop wrapping their kids in cotton wool, accept the fact they they are not always angels, accept responsibility for them, make them walk to school, then perhaps it will be safer (especially for pensioners) for everyone, and the children will be wiser and better for it.
Teachers, police, net nannies etc do not have the time to teach every child every danger.. It is up to the parents. They bring them into this world, they are responsible.
12. Mike Hart
Our guns got taken away after Dunblane! This demonstrates that clear logic identifying that offenders should take responsibility for their actions, rather than blaming the tool/s that they use, is no protection against ill-informed law makers.
This hue-and-cry could be the first step towards banning encryption. Unlikely?? - France managed to do it!
13. Brian Burkill
"acknowledge that it may be the source of problems and deal with them."
I thought, from my reading, that they did acknowledge that the internet is an additional source, but not the sole source..
14. anonymous
Will in Cornwall said "Lets be clear: child pornography is the problem and the internet as a carrier of child pornography is also a problem. Both need to be addressed "
Yup agreed.. In much the same way as the sale of "under the counter" magazines, sales of drugs by the barons, organised crime, selling of alcohol to under 18s, controllers of terrorists.. Stop the source and the offence goes away..
15. anonymous
Back before the internet in the late 1970's I recall stopping at a newsstand that once occupied the Gaumont Square underpass one early morning on my way in to work. On open sale alongside publications such as Men Only etc. were magazines with naked children on the cover. I was surprised to see such images on open sale but it tells me that the fuss over child pornography and blaming the internet is highly exaggerated. The sicko's have always been out there but have never been brought to book. I recall one guy from my apprenticeship days who went round the works selling such magazines, copies of which were widely found in the maintenance shanties. This sort of thing is nothing new, just the media has changed.
16. anonymous
People will always blame things they don't understand - witches from the medieval etc, etc. The Internet is no different - thanks for this piece! I agree it may be a good thing that the numbers are up - it probably demonstrates improvements in detection and prosecution rates.
17. anonymous
The leader is as wrong as the statements it criticises.
If the technology creates a larger and uncontrolled market, more people will 'shop' and more children will be victimised to create the 'goods'.
True, those using these dubiuous services bear moral responsibility, but would you absolve the tobacco (or drugs) industry of moral responsibility because people purchase what they are offered?
I would also have thought it self evident that 3g will be used for pornography, legal and illegal.
18. anonymous
Same technology argument could be made for the invention of photography. Yes it does contribute but no it can't be the thing that creates perverts - it just help facilitate.
I read a good mechanism to help stop some of this stuff - it must already be illegal for credit card companies and other financial instruments (paypal etc) to profit from child porn - take them to court.
19. John
Fully agree with the chap in Reading about taking responsibility for our own kids. Bringing them up in a manner that helps them to have a sensible balanced approach to the real world is a key step in helping to protect them from the sickos. Not an easy task by any means, but there's certainly no excuse for abdicating the responsibility, and this is probably one of the most practical approaches mentioned here.
As for the internet, it is nothing more than a tool that was designed for resilience. Most comments made about controlling the internet simply aren't practical, and even those that are could soon be circumvented.
There is one possible area of 'attack' and that is the simple fact that most of the sex industry is commercially based. The use of credit card tracking on paedophile sites as reported recently is one possibility, though I can see risks of running into grey areas where subscribers are targeted when they have accessed a site claiming to have only adult models and it is then found that some were underage.
Blaming the internet oversimplifies the whole thing.
20. John
Good comment from the Anonymouus engineer in Reading. Placing more onus on the credit card companies to verify who they process payments for is a good idea. At the very least it gives the opportunity to establish clear traceability of those responsible for the sites.
21. Wayne Moore
Your comments are spot on. You don't blame the rise in the number of motor vehicles for road deaths, it's dangerous drivers. Likewise you don't blame BT for dirty phone calls, it's the perverts.
I saw the Daily Mail article and was instantly disgusted with, as you put it the lazy hack who wrote it. This is sensationalism in the media at its worst.
22. anonymous
It is really hard to believe that some people are so intellectually bankrupt that they blame the Internet for child pornography.
Its even worse than blaming the invention of a motor car for road accidents.
23. anonymous
Mike Hart has a point. Gun crime has increased since Dunblane not gone down. Criminals wouldn't join a gun club, so why blame the clubs for the crimes?
Similarly, sex offenders (and would-be's) won't follow society's rules, so why have those 'rules'?
Banning the Internet won't stop these perverts - they'll just build a private one - like the BBS's of the 80's - and carry on.
I have an easy answer. Get the ISP's to publish a full list of every web-site visited by every user. Often. That way, Joe Public can see what the dirty-old-man-in-the-raincoat down the street is browsing.
24. anonymous
Having had a friend caught up in Operation Orr it is obvious to me that the reason for the increase in the arrest rate for child porn offences is mostly due to the police and their so-called experts not understanding what the internet is and how it works and arresting huge numbers of people who are more guilty of ignorance than any real crime. Since all this happened to him we have even met a man who has been tried and convicted and yet no illegal material has been found in his possession - the police reasoned that he had used his credit card on a web site which had a web link to an illegal site and therefore he must have visited this page and downloaded the banner which contained an illegal image. Even though his computer developed a fault, was scrapped and disposed of at a local tip (and presumably crushed or sent to a land fill site) and his replacement computer was perfectly clean they still managed to find him guilty of making an illegal image. A logical progression of this means that those millions of email users who receive spam messages containing images of women and animals (our company has had hundreds of these over the past months and seen many more on our customer's computers) are also guily of a crime. With this many guilty people in the UK how come the figures aren't much higher!
25. anonymous
I would also have thought it self evident that 3g will be used for pornography, legal and illegal.
Every media format has been used for pornography - cave drawing, paintings, photographs, film, video etc. So yes, it's bound to happen.
(Ed note. Of course it is, but technology isn't 'to blame', which was certainly the point of the leader. As you yourself point out, if it wasn't for TV, magazines, film, video... then people would still be drawing porn on the walls of caves. Kids don't have to be bought 3G phones... perhaps parents should think about that before blaming the technology per se.)
26. anonymous
What an excellent article, what a shame that the broadcast and printed media are still the place where the majority of the population take there news and views from otherwise we would not have to react to them re-printing “oven ready” copy from organisations like NCH without checking into the whys and wherefores.
It is also amazing that they did not take into account the massive number of Paedophile cases that have been bought recently that have actually been for crimes committed in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, all before the World Wide Web existed, but I suppose that we must not let facts get in the way of another good dig at technology. I am afraid that the real reason that I agree with you that the real reason the arrest rates were so poor for this crime in the 80’s has a lot more to do with the fact that we did not (want to) believe it was going on so there was no pressure from the public to stop this crime. Now thanks in no small part from the empowerment the WWW gives us to see what is happening all over the world the majority of us can no longer pretend it does not happen and are unwilling to let this crime be brushed under the carpet. Hence the new laws and the attention this crime now gets from the police and other law enforcement bodies.
However back to the knocking the printed media and it’s distaste for any new technology-
I am surprised that they have not yet managed to establish a causal link between using a phone while driving and Paedophilia.
27. anonymous
What an excellent article, what a shame that the broadcast and printed media are still the place where the majority of the population take there news and views from otherwise we would not have to react to them re-printing “oven ready” copy from organisations like NCH without checking into the whys and wherefores.
It is also amazing that they did not take into account the massive number of Paedophile cases that have been bought recently that have actually been for crimes committed in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, all before the World Wide Web existed, but I suppose that we must not let facts get in the way of another good dig at technology. I am afraid that the real reason that I agree with you that the real reason the arrest rates were so poor for this crime in the 80’s has a lot more to do with the fact that we did not (want to) believe it was going on so there was no pressure from the public to stop this crime. Now thanks in no small part from the empowerment the WWW gives us to see what is happening all over the world the majority of us can no longer pretend it does not happen and are unwilling to let this crime be brushed under the carpet. Hence the new laws and the attention this crime now gets from the police and other law enforcement bodies.
However back to the knocking the printed media and it’s distaste for any new technology-
I am surprised that they have not yet managed to establish a causal link between using a phone while driving and Paedophilia.
28. anonymous
Allow me to disagree with the slant of your article.
The NCH claims may appear to be overboard for attention grabbing purposes. However, we cannot simply ignore the incremental relationship between internet take up and paedophilia. When there was no internet, I could stay out of harms way by not looking at the top shelf in a newsagents for example. The internet bullys you into behaviour you'd rather avoid.
It is true to say that these desires were latent in the individual. The individual had done their bit by staying clear of stimulating material. The internet enablers must own up to thier responsibility of corrupting users through the ease of access to material.
29. mark
After reading the comments and the piece from the NCH I can only say one thing Get real people any one who has ever visited the likes of Kazza and other peer to peer sites would understand that just searching for the wrong file will bring up not only a wealth of porn but alas also Kiddy porn. I recently searched for music from Pink to be bombarded with the likes of "Daddy gives 7yr old Pink" I dont think it takes an expert to work out what that would be about. To police this and other aspects of the net would in my view be an impossible task therefore as responsible parents we have to police our offspring. Chairty and policing starts at home!
30. Scott
I found your article and many of the comments raised interesting points about how it is easier to point fingers, than address the problems, with both sides of this argument often equally guilty of doing. But we need more of this type of discussion. One comment from the IT guy in Northampton did amuse me however. "Get the ISP's to publish a full list of every web-site visited by every user. Often. That way, Joe Public can see what the dirty-old-man-in-the-raincoat down the street is browsing". Was it just me, or did the fact that this comment came from someone who posted anonymously, seem more than a little ironic.
31. anonymous
Have they got this completely wrong?
Is it possible that the prosecution statistics actually show a battle being won?
It is doubtful that the Internet has made mankind any more evil than before. What may have happened its that the Internet gave child abusers a false sense of security and lured them out of their holes to a place where they could be spotted and caught.
Als the wide spread circulation of the material made us more aware of the problem and woke us up to the need to deal with it.
Now at last instead of being anonymous perverts lurking in the shadows the people who encourage the abuse of children for their own lustful stimulation can be traced and scared silly even if they cannot be prosecuted because of lack of evidence. The publicity given to the discovery of credit card details in the USA may have given many child abuse customers the chance to destroy the evidence, another great "victory" for our over eager newspapers.
Again the fact that 6,000 names given to our police and "only" 120 prosecutions is not necessarily a failure. A 2% chance of being prosecuted is enough to put a lot of people off and is far better than the figures for burglary or speeding motorists.
32. Jane
I am commenting from an Australian perspective..whilst the fallout from operation Ore and Landslide has been devastating..particularly for the families of the accused..and I would add to that the highly problematic scenario whereby people are outed before being convicted...imagine the shame (I would have to top myself I think) the fact remains that these people have actually paid to access sites that potentially show children being abused.
It is my understanding that more than credit card details were required to convict..(perhaps that previous poster's friend is not being totally honest) These poor darlings have been abused once when they were photographed..but go on to be abused again and again every time the picture is viewed.
Apart from that devastation, images are traded. The recent Barnardos report "Just One Click" suggests that people who view child pornography can be a serious risk to children. It does not take a psychology degree to realise that repetitive of images desensitises the individual to any shock factor..plus the realisation that you are not alone.
Whilst there is a small argument that such reports are sensational, remember that these are organisations that deal with the children that are harmed, and whilst I firmly agree that monitoring children's activites is the role of parent and carer...have the computer in an open family space and talk regularly about internet use...any dialogue that alerts parents to the issue when there is so much at risk has to be good.