Internet child porn reports rise 50% each year
The hotline received almost 700 reports in the 18 months up to June 2001. At least another 700 reports have come in during the last 12 months, according to Cormac Callanan, site’s director.
There are no known Irish cases of children being abused as a result of initial contact being made through an internet chat room but, Mr Callanan warned, it could happen at any time.
“In the UK and US there have been several cases where a child has been approached online, and actual meetings set up which resulted in the child being abused. We are not aware of any cases here, but it is entirely possible,” he said.
That fear is compounded by the results of a European study released this summer. According to the EU Commission’s comparative study, half of all children were not supervised while online. Furthermore, one quarter of children aged between eight and 17 were found to have accidently encountered pornography while on the internet.
But, most alarmingly, a very high number of children, 86%, reported being asked for a face-to-face meeting with someone they had met in a chat room.
Mr Callanan warned parents to be aware of what their children viewed on the internet. “Certainly with children under 11 or 12 we would be encouraging supervision of the use of the internet, but we would also encourage parents to do things like check the history file on a regular basis to see what their children are viewing,” he said.
However, from a law enforcement perspective, differing legal definitions of the age of a child are posing problems. The Netherlands defines a child as aged under 14, the Spanish age limit is 13 while an Irish child is not considered an adult until the age of 17.
“The biggest challenge at the moment is that different countries have different definitions of what is actually illegal,” said Mr Callanan, who also said that the failure of the US to sign up to the UN convention on children meant many reported sites originated in America.
The most difficult cases to trace, however, were now coming largely from Russia.
“There is still a lot coming from the US but a lot of that material is also coming from Russia, where the child laws are old and need to be updated.”
Mr Callanan said that although there were still countries with no child or internet laws, most cases can still be traced.
