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Online Behaviour Related to Child Sexual Abuse

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Online Behaviour Related to Child Sexual Abuse Funded by the Mare Ainsaar European Union Lars Lööf (Eds) Online behaviour related to child sexual abuse Literature Report Online behaviour related to child sexual abuse Literature Report Content Introduction 7 Lars Lööf 1. Methodological issues. 9 1.1 Glossary 9 Ethel Quayle, Lars Lööf, Kadri Soo, Mare Ainsaar 1.2 Data collection procedures for the publications database 17 Kadri Soo, Mare Ainsaar 1.3 Regional, thematic and methodological coverage of online 19 activities related child sexual violence literature Mare Ainsaar, Kadri Soo 1.3.1 Methods 19 1.3.2 Countries 22 1.3.3 Who is studied? 27 1.3.4 On- and offline activities and different themes of research 28 1.3.5 Solely online activities: online sexual abuse/violence, 30 online grooming or solicitations 1.3.6 Online activities leading to offline abuse 32 1.4 Ethical issues of sexual abuse studies 35 Mare Ainsaar 2. Research evidence in to behavioural patterns which lead to becoming 37 a victim of sexual abuse Carl Göran Svedin 2.1 Online abuse; 37 2.1.1Pornographic material 38 2.1.2 Sexual solicitation 39 2.1.3 Self-deliberate exposure 41 2.2. Online activities and offline abuse 42 3. Risk factors of becoming a victim of Internet related sexual abuse 46 Kadri Soo, Zinaida Bodanovskaya 3.1 Individual risk factors 46 3.2 Environmental risk factors 48 Acknowledgements 4. Behavioural patterns of becoming an offender of sexual abuse and 50 This report and the ROBERT project are made possible through funding by the EC Safer Internet offending behaviour Programme. Our special gratitude goes to all contributors outside the project core team who helped Ethel Quayle us to complete the database: Rita Zukauskiene (Lithuania), Andrea Dürager (Austria), Miguel Angel 4.1 Grooming, child abuse images and the Internet; 50 Casado (Spain), Marios Vryonides (Cyprus), David Smahel (Czech Republic), Claudia Lampert 4.2 Typologies of offenders; (Germany), Cédric Fluckiger (France), Lukasz Wojtasik (Poland), Katri Lampainen (Finland), 54 Elisabeth Staksrud (Norway), Bence Ságvári (Hungary), Susanne Baumgartner (The Netherlands), 4.3 Comparison of online and offline abusers; 55 Carla Machado (Portugal), Georgi Apostolov (Bulgaria), Evgeni Bespalov, Galina Soldatova, Urvan 4.4 Self-generated content. 58 Parfentiev and Eduard Yakubovskiy (Russia), Linda Jonsson (Sweden), Linda Hutton (United 4.5 Risk factors of becoming an offender of sexual abuse and 59 Kingdom). Thank you also to our colleagues Alisdair Gillespie and Jasmina Byrne for valuable offending behaviour comments on the report. 4 5 Introduction Lars Lööf 5. Specific behavioural patterns and risks for special groups of 61 Young people today grow up in a technology-mediated world with almost unlimited access becoming a victim? to games, music and film, not to mention the enormous array of contacts with other youth 5.1 Experiences of Internet related sexual abuse and its risks 61 all over the world facilitated by the Internet. This opens tremendous possibilities that were among boys and girls unimaginable only half a generation ago. While such availability would uniformly be seen Kadri Soo as positive, there are increasingly concerns about the problems access to technology might 5.1.1 Sexual activities on the Internet 61 bring for young people. While the overwhelming majority of children and young people 5.1.2 Online encounters leading to offline sexual abuse 63 navigate safely through the Information and Communication Technologies, some children 5.2 Children with disabilities 65 fall victim to abuse and to violence. While there is concern across different countries about Kuno Sorensen, Zinaida Bodanovskaya online solicitation and grooming, there have been very few analyses to date that have ex- 5.3 Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons (LGBT) 66 plored how these contacts occur and what maintains these online relationships in the face of Zinaida Bodanovskaya, Anna-Maria Khramchenkova highly sexualised content. 5.4 Other vulnerable groups 67 Zinaida Bodanovskaya, Anna-Maria Khramchenkova The ROBERT project intends to make online interaction safe for children and young people. This will be achieved by learning from experiences of online abuse processes and the factors 6. Country studies 68 that make young people vulnerable as well as those that offer protection. As part of the ROB- 6.1 Denmark 68 ERT project a systematic review of studies, with a specific focus on sexually abusive online Kuno Sørensen experiences and offline sexual abuse that have started with an online contact or where the 6.2 Estonia 71 contacts between the perpetrator and the young person have relied heavily on information Kadri Soo, Mare Ainsaar and communication technologies has been made. This report will cover also some issues of 6.3 Germany 75 specific interest as we discuss young people who are at risk of sexual abuse in connection Julia von Weiler with information and communication technologies and seek answers questions as follows: 6.4 Italy 78 Elisa Vellani 6.5 Russia 84 I What patterns can be observed from the review on a European level that relate to areas Zinaida Bodanovskaya of concern across different countries? 6.6 Sweden 89 II How do different data collection methods impact on the type and the quality of the Carl Göran Svedin data obtained? (For example, telephone interviews, paper based surveys responded to 6.7 United Kingdom 93 in class-room settings, online questionnaires etc). Ethel Quayle III When compared with other research on difficult and sensitive issues involving young persons, what is indicated in relation to disclosure and how does this compare with Conclusions and further research needs 96 official statistics? Lars Lööf IV Which behavioural patterns and risks seem to differentiate between specific groups of young people? (e.g. in relation to gender or sexual orientation). References 106 V Are there any reports that explore the perception of the young person with regard to the expression of their sexuality online and their interpretation of abusive practices? VI What studies have examined specific behavioural patterns that can be seen as leading from online contact to abusive experiences? VII How can we understand resilience in relation to young people’s online behaviour? VIII Do the reports indicate new emerging research needs as yet uncovered? IX What are the individual risk factors, or risks related to the environment, leading to sexually abusive experiences? X How have the complex ethical issues in involving children been negotiated across stud- ies? 6 7 1 Methodological issues Relevant publications were added to a publications database, set up as a part of the project. 1.1 Glossary The emphasis of the work was on collecting information on publications related to online sexual abuse issues from 20 EU countries and Russia, but also publications from other parts Ethel Quayle, Lars Lööf, Kadri Soo, Mare Ainsaar of the world have been included if information was available to the project partners. The current report is the first analysis of literature collected by the ROBERT project in the database. The report consists of four major topics: The EU Safer Internet Project ROBERT has developed a common set of definitions and ter- minologies relevant to this study and other current pieces of work. In doing so it has drawn 1. Methodological issues including regional and methodological coverage of online child on existing research and policy writing in this area. sexual violence literature 2. Research evidence in to behavioural patterns which lead to becoming a victim of sexual Age of consent is the age at which the child is considered old enough to make an informed abuse including risk factors of becoming a victim of sexual abuse decision to consent to sexual contacts. All countries have defined an age at which children 3. Behavioural patterns which lead to becoming a sexual abuser and sexually abusive be- are considered mature enough to consent to sexual contact. For some countries in the world haviours including risk factors which lead to becoming a sexual abuser and sexually abusive same sex relationships have a different age of consent than do sex between a boy and a girl. behaviours Up to this age, most European countries’ legislation offer specific protection meaning that 4. Specific behavioural patterns and risks of becoming a victim of abuse in relation to par- any sexual contact with a child below the age of sexual consent is legally seen as abusive or ticular groups as being an act of rape even if the child claims s/he consented to the act. This is often termed statutory rape. If a child below the age of sexual consent has consensual sex with someone of The database on Internet related child sexual abuse literature is available for public use on similar age, many countries have provisions in place handling such acts outside of the legal the Child Centre webpage www.childcentre.info/ROBERT. systems. Some European countries also have different age of consent for sexual contacts with a person significantly older or between persons more or less of the same age. Child abuse defined by WHO “constitutes all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treat- ment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, re- sulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power.’’ Child The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a ‘child’ as a person below the age of 18, unless the laws of a particular country set the legal age for adulthood younger. However Gillespie (2010) has argued that such a definition, which uses an arbitrary cut off, is not with- out difficulties in the context of abusive images and that, “The difficulty of defining ‘‘a child’’ has a direct impact on the ability of the law to create laws relating to child pornography.
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