Young men urged not to ignore child abuse

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 12 Sep 2007 at 11:53

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is urging young men to report incidents of online paedophilia instead of turning a blind eye.

The IWF claims men aged 18-35 are twice as likely to stumble across child abuse images than any other age group, because they often click on it accidentally whilst searching for legal adult pornography.

The watchdog - which works with ISPs and the police to remove online illegal content - says young men often fail to report the images, either through embarrassment or fear of prosecution.

The IWF says people who make one-off reports to its website are unlikely to face charges. "It is an offence - but if you didn't know what it was, report it to us and then delete it, that's the right thing to do," says Sarah Robertson, communications coordinator at the IWF.

However, the threat of prosecution still isn't clear: a spokesperson for the police's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre told PC Pro that it "investigates each case on its merits" and that the decision to prosecute rests with the Crown Prosecution Service.

The IWF also claims it "doesn't want to encourage vigilantism" and that people shouldn't go scouring the internet looking for illegal images to report.

Worsening problem

The IWF is keen to smash the myth that most child pornography involves teenage girls nearing the age of consent. Nine out of ten illegal images involve children aged under 12, while half contain children under six.

It also claims the severity of the abuse is getting worse. The proportion of "level four and five images", which depict penetrative sexual activity involving children and acts of sadism or penetration of an animal, has risen from 7% in 2003 to 29% in 2006.

Less than 1% of child pornography images reported to the IWF are hosted in the UK, but it will work with British ISPs to remove the images as soon as possible. It also works with international partners and CEOP to remove images hosted abroad. The IWF insists no details of the people who report the images are forwarded to the police.

You can report illegal content to the IWF using the form on its website.