Internet fuels huge rise in child images

A massive increase in child pornography in the past 10 years is
likely to be linked to the growing demand for images on the
internet, according to a report by the NCH released this
week.

It shows that, in 1988, 35 people were cautioned or charged with
child pornography offences, a figure that rose to 549 by 2001. In
2002, 6,500 names of people who had accessed internet pornography
were handed to police as part of Operation Ore.

Despite a lack of data proving the correlation between the rise in
child pornography and the internet, the report argues that it has
facilitated a huge increase in the volume of child abuse images
being viewed. It adds that images on the internet often act as a
“crucial trigger” for some men to sexually abuse children.

The charity’s expert on online child pornography, John Carr, said
the scale of the problem had “changed beyond recognition in the
last decade”. He said offences committed through chatrooms had also
been “rising steeply”, and called for urgent action. “The internet
is about to go mobile and that could make a lot of things more
difficult to prevent or detect,” he added.

Meanwhile, six major mobile phone firms, including Vodafone, Virgin
and Orange, have bowed to pressure from children’s charities to
bring in regulations later this year requiring them to ensure a
person is over 18 years old before selling them a mobile phone with
unlimited access to the internet.

– Child Pornography, Child Abuse
and the Internet
from website www.nch.org.uk/internetsafety