Children as young as 13 are being targeted online by men twice their age and most of the victims are girls, according to the national agency that runs a cybertip line.
While media focus on cyberbullying, few groups besides the Coquitlam-based Children of the Street Society have pointed to the problem of online lurers seeking to sexually exploit youth. But a recently published study by the federally-sponsored Canadian Centre for Child Protection is revealing what many have feared - that predators are stalking younger and younger children and are using threats, persistence and sexually explicit images to normalize sexual behaviour.
The study of 264 cybertips, chat room communications and texts between September, 2007 and June, 2011 found that in 93.4% of the cases, suspects made specific requests for images or there was a discussion of previously uploaded images, and 30% of the time the young person themselves had sent the image to the suspect.
"From our preliminary findings, what we are seeing is adult offenders using a variety of ways to manipulate children to increase their compliance in order to sexually exploit them online," stated Lianna McDonald, executive director of CCCP on the agency's website. "The research shows that suspects use persistence, threats, and try to normalize sexual behaviour by sharing sexually explicit images and information as well as behaving in sexually inappropriate ways."
Some of the findings the agency reported are:
85.9% of identified victims were girls
The mean age of the victims was 13 years
The mean age of the suspects was 25
In 50% of the cases, reports were made by a family member and in a third of cases, the victim made the report.
In 24% of the cases, the young person was threatened by the suspect and in the largest number of cases the threat involved distributing existing images of the victim
In 38.6% of the cases, instant messaging was used by suspects to lure victims
In 35.5% of the cases, suspects either sent victims sexual images of themselves, or requested the young person to go on a webcam whereupon the young person would see a sexualized image of the suspect
The preliminary findings were released Oct. 19, the same day vigils were held world wide in support of bullying victim Amanda Todd who is reported to have posted an inappropriate image of herself when she was in Grade 7 and was later victimized by a cyber stalker who wanted her to do a show for him. She committed suicide Oct. 10.
The CCCP, which is sponsored by federal and provincial agencies and telecommunications agencies such as Telus, Shaw, Google and Bell plans to release its full report in December, along with education and prevention recommendations.
Resources for educators, children and parents are also available on this site.
