Disease knows no border. No matter how contagious it is or isn't, a disease can cross borders and multiply whenever the conditions meet.
The same goes to child exploitation.
Just when countries around the world experience lockdowns during the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic, child exploitation crime multiplied on the web.
When family members were required to be indoors and preferably at home, child exploitation thrives behind those closed doors, and much sparked online.
“Like bees in a hive, gathering around the honey” is how Australia’s e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant described the increased activity of online predators.
According to Inman Grant, her office indicated a 37% increase in reports of child sexual abuse material in Australia for April 2020.
The Garda Online Child Exploitation Unit from Ireland is seeing a 29% increase in traffic on dark web websites that are known to exclusively dedicate themselves to online child exploitation and the distribution of child abuse material, according to its spokesman.
There has also been a 26% increase in notifications of child abuse related material on social media platforms being reported to Garda by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the U.S., during March 1st to May 31st of 2020.
What happened here was offenders and predators were hoping to capitalize on lonely children, those minors who were cut off from friends, and those underage children who spend a lot more of their time unsupervised on the internet.
As the coronavirus pandemic made all those conditions meet, child exploitation on the web thrives.
Garda encourages parents to talk to their children about the types of platforms and the websites they are accessing, and to seek for guidance in assessing the risks involved.
An awareness-raising campaign targeted at children and parents is very important, explained Tanya Ward, chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance. Parents need to know not only about all the supports and filters available to help protect their youngsters, but also how to talk to their children about the risks.
While indicators of increased risk and vulnerability are being closely monitored, any evidence of increased illegal activity in this area is unlikely to be available soon, that according to the Irish Department of Justice and Equality.
Ireland is one of 10 countries collaborating in research to find out if there has been an increase in cyberbullying and other types of online abuse since the start of the coronavirus lockdown.
The study, titled Kids’ Digital Lives in Corona Times, is at this time being coordinated by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
According to ECPAT, the Thailand-based international global network of civil society organizations that works to end the sexual exploitation of children, restrictions imposed by governments worldwide to curb the virus are heavily impacting children.
The coronavirus forced many people to stay at home. Not everyone can work from home, resulting to millions of people to lose their job.
"We know that in times of crisis, already marginalised groups tend to carry most of the burden of the consequences. When people are financially struggling, children tend to become more isolated and less linked to supportive networks, and the sale of children for sexual exploitation increases. Children living in isolated, remote areas and in refugee settings are at the highest risk, and as offenders hunt for easy victims, marginalised children are more likely to be targeted," ECPAT said.
Asia-Pacific is expected to be the most heavily impacted, with up to 49 million jobs at risk in the region at this time.
This dramatically increases the economic vulnerability of families.
Because family members are forced to stay at home, violence within families may increase, and children are at higher risk of abuse. And when they are online, sexual exploitation is waiting for them as they spend more time online.
ECPAT also mentioned an increase in the number of attempts to access illegal blocked websites featuring child sexual abuse material. From Spain to Denmark for example, they see a three-folded increase in online searches to access illegal sites. More conversations between offenders in forums about opportunities to exploit children are also appearing more frequently.
Sources from the Australian Federal Police and the US HSI have also confirmed these trends.
Authorities in other countries have also reported an increase in online grooming for sexual purposes, and sexual extortion where the offender threatens children so they can get more pictures of them.
Organizations in Southeast Asia have warned that a spike in exploitation may come, especially in the Philippines when the issue is already widespread. They say that as families lose their income, they may see an opportunity to “live-streaming shows'' as the demand from offenders across the world has continued to increase, especially as offenders cannot move or travel during the crisis.
"Reports are also coming in from the police that other types of live-streaming are coming up, different to the ones we have been seeing in the Philippines in recent years.'
ECPAT also saw an increase in online child sexual abuse since schools recently closed in Cambodia.
And also because of this pandemic, another form of child sexual exploitation is happening. Like 'delivery' or 'drive thru' service for predators to sexual exploit children, simply because offenders are unable to go to places where they usually sexually exploit children.
In other words, child exploitation and abuse continue to happen during the coronavirus pandemic, simply because all the conditions meet.
Not only the pandemic increases online targeting of children by offenders, as an increasing number of children can also be affected by sexual abuse.
With more children and teenagers spend more of their time unsupervised, they are more likely to get access to content that is beyond their cognitive ability to understand.
Because many young generations learn about consent sex from online porn, this makes males more aggressive in their encounters, and more females reporting sexual extremes that are rough and painful.
By the time the coronavirus restrictions being lifted, many people all over the world are going to continue to live a lot more of their lives online than before. Going forward, offenders and predators are going to lurk more on the web than ever before, if there is nothing stopping them.
It should be noted that given that many people are spending a lot more of their time online, both offenders and potential victims have an increased chance of meeting. So it is natural to fear that child exploitation is on the rise.
However, the increased number have yet to really represent what is going on.
This is partly because the more people spend online, the more likely they understand how to report abuse. More parents may also have figured out ways to report.
According to Dr Tijana Milosevic, postdoctoral researcher at Dublin City University’s Anti-Bullying Centre, which is undertaking research for the study:
"We should not be presuming that just because children are using more technology that there will necessarily be an increase in cyberbullying. This increased reporting may not be because there is more abuse – it could be but we don’t exactly know."