MORE THAN HALF OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE CRIMES IN UK COMMITTED BY UNDER-18S, SAYS NEW DATA

Wed 10 January 2024:

More than half of the reports of child sexual abuse in England and Wales in 2022 were made against people aged under 18, according to police figures.

According to police, the increase in child-on-child abuse is due to children’s easy access to smartphones and violent pornography.

According to data collected from 42 police forces in England and Wales, about 106,984 child sexual abuse offences were reported in 2022, representing a 7.6% rise over the previous year and more than five times the 20,000 incidents documented in 2013.

According to the groundbreaking research, 52 percent of these incidents involved a minor, aged 10 to 17, as a suspect or perpetrator, up from one-third in 2013.

As per the researchers, a four-year-old child, who had uploaded a sibling’s indecent image to the internet through a smartphone, was the youngest child to have been reported by the police.

Accessibility of violent pornography is the crux of the issue: Critchley

Till now, the police registered reports of 14,800 rapes and sexual assaults against children, between the age of 10 to 17, where the police had classed the suspect as a child and the overwhelming majority were boys.

Speaking to The Guardian, NPCC lead for child protection Ian Critchley said: “This is predominantly a gender-based crime of boys committing offences against girls.”

“I think that is being exacerbated by the accessibility of violent pornography and the ease with which violent pornography is accessible to boys and, therefore, a perception that is [normal] behaviour, and that person can carry out that behaviour that they are seeing online in the most violent way against other peers as well,” he added.

“Clearly the accessibility to smartphones has just rocketed, not just in relation to 11- to 16-year-olds, but in relation to under-10s as well. That accessibility has really exacerbated that and I think this is a debate that does need to be had in our society,” Critchley said.

It was also reported a third of attacks take place within the family which is the most common setting for abuse, and eight out of 10 victims had known their attacker in the past. The police said that it is estimated that only a few, like one in six offences, were reported to them.

Greater need for education

Wendy Hart, deputy director for child sexual abuse at the National Crime Agency, said: “With over half of reported crimes involving child on child abuse, there has never been a greater need for education is in this space.

“We know from our collective analysis that the severity of offending has increased, as have the complexities faced by law enforcement in tackling it.

“We are now seeing hyper-realistic images and videos of abuse being created using artificial intelligence, for example, while the rollout of end-to-end encryption by technology platforms makes it a lot more difficult for us to protect children.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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