Internet Crimes against Children

Author : Abdullah Alshehri I June 05, 2021 I Security Duty Manager at KAUST?

The rapid development of technology and the growth of social networks makes it easy for internet users to get in touch with people at any time or place. Although the internet provides people with many advantages, it became a perfect facilitator for committing a wide range of serious crimes. Among these crimes are the internet crimes against children. There are several types of online sexual offenses committed against children, among which are grooming, sexting, extortion, prostitution, sexual abuse, exploitation, and production /dissemination of pornography materials. Children and adolescents are vigorously embracing technological advances and became the most frequently users of emerging social networking applications (Madden et al., 2013 as cited in Acar, 2016). This significantly contributed to the increase of such crimes and provided offenders with an unlimited source of potential victims. The rapid increase in such crimes and other internet-related crimes have mandated the need to establish computer forensic units within law enforcement agencies. While more law enforcement agencies have developed their capabilities to conduct online investigations, many others still lack the resources to do so. Law enforcement plays significant role in identifying, investigating, and apprehending offenders, thus, improving their capabilities and resources is important. However, law enforcement alone cannot combat these crimes. A whole community approach towards preventing and combating internet crimes against children is the most effective strategy that must be implemented.?

There are some factors that contributed to the increase of online child sexual abuse including anonymity, availability, and accessibility. Online sexual abusers are usually encouraged to commit their crimes due to the fact that they are anonymous. By using fake accounts and names, criminals can safely engage in illegal acts to establish friendships, and then move on to more serious sexual abuse acts. Another factor is the availability of victims. The wide range of networks' applications and platforms such as game sites, social media, and chat rooms have given potential offenders with unlimited access to children, and the opportunity to communicate with unsupervised targets (Kloess et al., 2019). The existence of these factors facilitates committing the online crimes against children in accordance with the routine activity approach to crime analysis, which emphasizes that the convergence of a motivated offender, a suitable victim, and the absence of capable guardians will likely lead to committing a crime (Cohen & Felson, 1979 as cited in Kloess et al., 2019).?

Offenders use many different strategies, approaches, and modus operandi to achieve their sexual objectives. When conducting online grooming, offenders follow specific steps to sexually abuse their chosen victims. O’Connell, (2003) established a general framework containing different stages that offenders usually go through during the grooming process (Jewkes & Yar, 2011). Once an offender identifies a suitable target for sexual exploitation, he aims to initiate friendship & relationship. At these stages, the offender attempt to gain the victim’s trust and encourage him/her to discuss personal life. The offender usually starts talking about love, romance, and images exchanging, and systematically moves to the next stage of the process, which is the risk assessment. At this stage, the offender seeks to ensure that what he does or says to the victim will not be detected by the victim’s parent or family member. Offender will check with the victim about the location of his/her computer and whether someone is around him/her. Before moving to the explicit sexual stage, the offender develops the emotional aspect of the relationship by expressing love, praising the victim for being beautiful, calling him/her (e.g., angel), and continuously shows the victim how special he/she is. Once the offender feels that the victim trusts him, he starts making sexual conversations and sexting with the victim. To normalize and desensitize the sexual requests, offenders may share child pornographic images, sexual contact videos between adult and young people with the victim (Owens et al., 2016). Then, the offender convinces the victim to engage in online sexual activities, or requests from the victim to take nude photos for herself and send it to him (Jewkes & Yar, 2011).

The abuser usually tends to be more aggressive when the victim denies more sexual requests from him, and exercises threatening behavior with the victim to maintain his/her compliance, especially if the offender possesses sexual images and materials of the child. The offender may threaten the child of misusing such images and exposing them to her parents, family, or even the public (Acar, 2016). In this case, the offender sexually blackmails the victim, which is considered another serious online sexual crime. Internet Child Sexual Extortion involves the use of threat and fear against a child by intimidating he will share sexual materials of the child with someone (parents/public) if he/she refuses to comply with the offender sexual demands. What makes extortion a successful method for the sexual abuser is the possession of sexual images of the child as they give the offender the power to control the victim, and without obtaining such sexual materials, no sexual extortion can be done. Some sexual abusers on the Internet seek to further develop their relationships and request to physically meet with the victim for sexual purposes (offline sexual abuse). Many studies reveal that a sexual offender who initiates an online sexual abuse will often attempt to continue it offline (Wells & Mitchell, 2008, as cited in Katz et al., 2018). A study by Wolak, Finkelhor & Mitchell, (2004) revealed that in 74% of online cases, children met offenders physically, and in 93% of those meetings, sexual abuse to those children had occurred (Katz et al., 2018).?

Internet Child Pornography is another serious crimes against children. It constitutes a major and growing problem and serious crime that the societies have been struggling with for decades. Before the advent of the internet, pornographers used to produce images locally. Access to images was difficult, and they were expensive with poor quality (Wortley & Smallbone, 2006). The emergence of the internet since 1980s, and the current technology advancements dramatically contributed to the prevalence of the child pornography (Wortley & Smallbone, 2006). A study conducted by Wolak et al., (2014) found that on an average day, 122,687 known child pornography materials were shared on a peer -to- peer network (as cited in Graham & Smith, 2020). The Internet provides effective tools for those who produce and distribute child pornography, because it enables them to reach more consumers and gain financial income. It also provides child pornography consumers with easy access, download, and in most cases free pornography products. Merdian et al., (2013) identified two types of online child pornography offenders, namely fantasy-driven and contact-driven (as cited in Graham & Smith, 2020). They argued that child pornography offenders (CPOs) have different motivations. Some CPOs have sexual interest in children, another type of CPOs seek financial gain by selling child pornography, third type of CPOs have general deviant sexual interest, and the rest are those who are not interested in children, but simply collect CP (e.g., due to boredom & curiosity) or to challenge the legal system. They emphasized that CPOs who are contact-driven are those who have made an in-person child sexual abuse in the past (as cited in Graham & Smith, 2020).

Studies about Internet Child Sexual Abuse found that teenagers are at higher risk than young children, because of their curiosity about sex, affection and attention needs, and the physical maturation that they have at their age. Also, adolescents who suffer from depression (e.g., due to the parent's divorce), lack guidance and supervision, feel socially isolated and misunderstood, or have mental illness are more prone to be victims of internet sexual abused than others (Mitchell et al., 2007, as cited in Katz et al., 2018). Furthermore, Katz et al., (2018) found that girls are more susceptible of being sexually abused on the internet than boys. Children do not disclose online sexual abuse when they encounter it. Several studies have revealed that most children will never report sexual abuse incidents they experienced, and will only uncover them later in adulthood (Tener & Murphy, 2015, as cited in Katz et al., 2018). There are several reasons that force children to not report sexual abuse including blame, guilt, and shame. Children feel that if they report sexual crimes, their parents, family or even police will blame them for allowing offenders to manipulate them. They try to avoid feeling guilty of not reporting abuse from the beginning. A study found that loyalty, dependency, and fear are another reasons that explain why child victims do not disclose sexual abuse (Katz et al., 2018).

Law enforcement plays an important role in protecting children from Internet crimes against children. Many law enforcement agencies developed their capabilities to detect and apprehend Internet children sexual offenders and other types of internet-related crimes. The significant increase in internet crimes have mandated many agencies to establish a dedicated computer forensic unit to investigate internet-related crimes and prosecute offenders (Casey, 2011). In 2006, law enforcement agencies arrested 7,010 persons in the United States for Internet Crimes against Children, which resulted in guilty pleas or convictions in 95% of these cases (Wolak et al., 2009 as cited in Durkin & DeLong, 2012). Arrestees of possession Child pornography increased almost fourfold between 2000 and 2009, and there were 3,719 arrests due to child pornography possession only in 2009 (Walsh et al., 2016). Law enforcement agencies do not only confront the problem by reacting in response to complaints, but also adopted proactive strategies such as undercover investigative operations (Durkin & DeLong, 2012). When conducting undercover investigations, law enforcement officers posing as minors online to identify and arrest those engage in online child sexual abuse as well as child pornography traders and consumers. Various studies revealed that many investigators acknowledge that they lack the necessary skills, training, or equipment to deal with internet- related crimes (Harkin et al., 2018; Holt et al., 2015 as cited in Holt et al., 2020), and thus, law enforcement agencies need to develop their resources to be able to effectively combat these internet- related crimes and achieve successful prosecutions of offenders.?

When investigating cybercrimes, law enforcement can use three types of investigation approaches, which are the process of digital forensic analysis, Data trails analysis (also called digital footprints or digital breadcrumbs of a suspect), and undercover or “sting” operations (Graham & Smith, 2020). Digital forensics involves the identification, preservation, verification, and analysis of digital evidence located on computer storage media and presenting this evidence in a court of law (Crainet al., 2017 as cited in Graham & Smith, 2020). Data trails analysis involves locating suspect digital footprints by retracing his/her path in the digital environment such as web searches and logs on etc. (Graham & Smith, 2020). The undercover operation involves witnessing suspect while he/she is committing a crime, and collecting evidence of in-progress child sexual crimes. Once an offender is identified and clear evidence is existed, the investigation team seeks a search warrant to lawfully seize and search the offender's hardware or social media accounts to prosecute him (Graham & Smith, 2020). There are some tactics that law enforcement can use to identify offenders through undercover operations such as when they receive a complaint from a victim's family member, undercover investigator may take over the account of the victim and pose as the child to attempt gain the offender's personally identifiable information. Another tactic law enforcement uses is assigning a police officer to pose as a child on a chat room or discussion forum to proactively identify the child sexual abusers and collect evidence (Durkin & DeLong, 2012).?

There are some other important resources that Law enforcement can use to augment their capabilities to protect children from online sexual crimes including child pornography. These resources include the expert witness testimony, centralized image databases, and Internet Crimes against Children Task Forces (Walsh et al., 2016). Law enforcement and prosecutors can use expert witnesses in determining and confirming the age of children appear in the sexual materials found with the suspect. The Centralized Images' databases can help law enforcement identify the victims of child pornography. These databases include the US. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's National Child Victim Identification System (NCVIS), or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Child Victim Identification program (CVIP) (Walsh et al., 2016). The Internet Crimes against Children Task Force Program (ICAC Program) is one of the most important resources for law enforcement agencies in protecting children and preventing the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. The ICAC not only support law enforcement agencies, but it also provides victim support and community awareness. It was initiated in response to the increase of children access to the internet, prevalence of child sexual materials (images), and the heightened activities of online child sexual abusers. (OJJDP, n.d.). The ICAC program consists of 61 coordinated task forces representing over 4,500 federal, state, and local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies at national level. The great effort made by the ICAC task force programs in 2020, resulted in investigating 109,000 cases, conducted 85,600 forensic exams, and arresting more than 9,200 individuals (OJJDP, n.d.).

Despite all the efforts of law enforcement agencies in combating Internet crimes against children, there are still some unique challenges that make these investigations difficult. According to the National Juvenile Online Victimization (N-JOV) third study that was conducted in 2009, 62% of prosecutors who participated in the research reported difficulties in prosecuting criminals in the following areas: (1) Timeliness of forensic examinations (33%); (2) lack of resources (equipment or well-trained personnel) (24%); (3) search warrant issues (23%); (4) chain of custody issues (8 %); (5) P2P investigations (5 %), and (6) Credentials of forensic examination or lab (5%) (Walsh et al., 2016). Therefore, law enforcement alone cannot make a significant impact to mitigate internet crimes against children. Acar argued that the most useful and cost-effective preventive measure is focusing efforts to raise children awareness about safe Internet and device use (2016). However, a study conducted by Topping and Barron, (2009) revealed that children education programs have little impact on children’s behavior (Quayle & Koukopoulos, 2018). Jones et al., (2014) concluded that prevention education programs can succeed if offered with adequate dosages, active and skill-based lessons, and focus on research evidence of risk factors. Sasson and Mesch (2014) pointed out that restrictive parental supervision by controlling the children's use of the Internet, time spent, and (age/gender factors) has a significant impact on cyber- aggression. However, Helsper et al., (2013) warned that restrictive parental supervision, strict protection, and the lack of support and guidance for proper internet use might lead to higher levels of harm when the child encounters the risk (Quayle & Koukopoulos, 2018).

Conclusion?

????Internet crimes against children will continue rising due to the increase use of internet by children, and the easy access to children that the online sexual offenders enjoy. Although it is impossible to completely prevent these crimes, it is feasible to mitigate and control them. There is no single prevention technique that can effectively solve these crimes. A cross-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder (a whole community) approach to protect children from online sexual abuse, and mitigate the risk associated with the internet use by children is the most effective strategy to implement. A collaboration between law enforcement, child protection organizations, schools, families, government and non-government organizations must be reinforced to prevent and control the child online abuse and exploitation.?

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Photo credit

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