Where is the Harm? Technology Mediated Abuse and Exploitation of Children

By Dr. Ethel Quayle and Tink Palmer

INTRODUCTION

Technological advances have brought with them many benefits but have also been associated with potential challenges to young people and those tasked with their care. These may include: online solicitation or 'grooming'; the production, distribution and use of materials depicting child sexual abuse; exposure to materials that can cause psychological harm, lead to physical harm, or facilitate other detriment to a child; exposure to a medium that can facilitate harmful behaviour; and harassment and intimidation, including bullying. Clearly these are not caused by technology, but rather that technology affords new opportunities for them to take place. In the context of child protection we can see such activities as being part of a spectrum of sexually abusive and exploitative behaviours involving individuals, groups, and also peers. Sexually abusive practices towards children do not originate with the Internet and largely remain the same, but the contexts, and the opportunities they afford, have changed. For many practitioners working in the area of child protection, technology mediated sexual crimes are new and may at times be perceived as either irrelevant or posing challenges to existing knowledge and procedural frameworks (von Weiler, 2010). In part this may arise out of confusion as to what additional harm may be associated with the addition of technology over and above that related to other sexually abusive practices (Renold & Creighton, 2003).

Research in this area is still in its infancy in operationalizing definitions of sexual crimes against children associated with technology (Palmer, 2004; Gallagher, 2007), examining the associated harms, and understanding the needs of young people in response to such crimes. Our ability to demonstrate harm has posed a considerable challenge to those lobbying for the political goodwill to effect change in legislation, policy, and procedure (Jones & Skogrand,
2005) in relation to the Internet and as Stewart (2010) has argued "in a state founded on liberal values, it is intuitively plausible to think that the criminal law should permit individuals to do what they wish unless their conduct harms others" (p.17). It is apparent that historically such arguments have justified the decriminalization of the sexual conduct of sexual minorities and the creation of new offenses as the harms caused by conduct, formerly thought benign, became clear. What we seek to do in this publication is to explore some of these challenges and to use case material to illustrate the ways in which children have been abused and exploited in the online environment and how we might, as policy makers and practitioners, respond to this.

SEXUAL SOLICITATION OR GROOMING

Much of the research related to sexual solicitation and grooming of young people in the online environment has come from the University of New Hampshire. They conducted telephone interviews with two cohorts of young people (Finkelhor, Mitchell, & Wolak, 2000; Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor 2006). In the first survey, they found that one in five young people had been subjected to an attempted solicitation, 66% of which were female, 77% were aged 14 or older, and 22% were aged 10-13 (and expressed more distress). While the majority of those soliciting young people were adults, juveniles may add up to 48% of the overall solicitations and 48% of aggressive solicitations, with one quarter coming from females. Five years later it was found that there was less sexual solicitation (although aggressive solicitations did not decline) and more exposure to unwanted material. In this second survey, 4% were asked for sexually explicit photographs and acquaintances played a growing role. It was suggested that "being female, using chat rooms, talking with people met online, talking about sex with someone met online, and offline sexual or physical abuse were all associated with increased risk for aggressive and online limited solicitations". The risk characteristics unique to aggressive solicitations included: sending personal information, using a cell phone, and feeling isolated, misunderstood, and depressed, with one warning sign possibly being a request for pictures (Mitchell, Wolak, & Finkelhor, 2007). In contrast, a Swedish survey indicated much higher aggressive sexual solicitations with 46% of the girls and 16% of the boys reporting requests for offline meetings. These young people also suggested that requests were 'commonly' made for adolescents to strip in front of the web cam or to watch the adult while he was masturbating into his web cam (Brottsförebyggande Rådet, 2007). The assumption has commonly been made that such acts of solicitation or grooming necessarily involve deception (Quayle & Taylor, 2002) but Wolak, Finkelhor, Mitchell, and Ybarra (2008) concluded that when deception does occur, it often involves promises of love and romance by offenders whose intentions are primarily sexual. Importantly, Hines and Finkelhor (2007) have argued that it is important to recognize the role that some youth—particularly older teens—play in these types of relationships. This is an important policy issue, because "if some young people are initiating sexual activities with adults they meet on the Internet, we cannot be effective if we assume that all such relationships start with a predatory or criminally inclined adult" (p. 301).

THE PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, AND USE OF MATERIALS DEPICTING CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Sexual abuse and exploitation involving the production of child abuse images, usually defined by law as child pornography, involve a spectrum of abusive and exploitative practices from the child who is sexually assaulted and photographed through to the young person who models adult clothes and sexual poses. Many of these images are clearly not illegal across most jurisdictions and raises yet again the question of whether harm has been done both in their production and use. Within an ethical framework, King (2008) has argued that child pornography not only harms its immediate victims, the children whose abuse is at its centre, but also harms other children through the actions and attitudes of its consumers. Viewed in this way, harm may be done not only to the children photographed but to other children either through providing a catalyst for the further abuse of children or through the establishment of normative values of children as legitimate sexual objects.

However, defining harm in relation to images that are legal is more of a challenge. We might wonder where the harm is when a child is photographed getting undressed on the beach with her family, or where there is a hidden camera in the showerhead, or when a young person takes photographs of themselves and uploads them onto their blog. Indeed our understanding of Stewart (2010) provides a useful framework for thinking about this not only in the context of harm but in relation to basic human rights. Kelly & Pringle (2009) consider that the question of what constitutes harm to children is a critical one and that might be considered in the context of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1990). This demands that we consider the responsibilities for states to act with 'due diligence' in fulfilling their obligations to children as 'rights bearers‘.

EXPOSURE TO MATERIALS THAT MIGHT CAUSE HARM

A recent review by Papadopoulos (2010) argued a clear link between sexualized imagery and violence against children, although the empirical evidence for this remains inconclusive. She argues that a "drip-drip" exposure of young people to sexualized materials was distorting young peoples‘ perceptions of themselves, encouraging boys to become fixated on being macho and dominant, while girls in turn presented themselves as sexually available and permissive. One outcome had been the rise of sexual bullying in which girls felt compelled to post topless or naked pictures on social networks. This report, commissioned by the Home Office in the United Kingdom, went on to recommend: a ban on "sexualized" music videos before the TV watershed; a ban on job centres advertising positions in lap-dancing clubs and massage parlours; that Internet service providers should block access to pro-bulimia and pro-anorexia websites; and the creation of a website where parents can report any "irresponsible marketing" they believe sexualizes young children. Sexualization is, not withstanding, a complex and nuanced term (Smith, 2010) that may refer to changes in the way that young people are perceived and the practices that follow from this, but also may refer to changes in the behaviour of young people themselves (Palmer, 2005) and may refer to a range of sexually problematic behaviours in both the online and offline environment.

However, the report does not consider some of the difficulties in imposing solutions on young people, particularly in the context of the role of the Internet in sexual exploration and development, and that accessing sexual content online may be 'normative' (Mossige, Ainsaar, & Svedin 2007). Many young people, including those whose sexual preferences leave them feeling confused or marginalized, may find that the Internet is one social space in which they can be themselves and can explore their emerging sexuality. Basic human rights in relation to young people cannot be construed as unidimensional, even though sexual agency in young people is often a source of anxiety in adults (Cassell & Cramer, 2008).

WHAT ABOUT RESPONSES TO CHILDREN AND FAMILIES CAUGHT UP WITH THESE ABUSES?

At present there is no cohesive, uniform approach to the identification of young people at the centre of these abusive scenarios, or what constitutes best practice in relation to investigation, assessment, or intervention. Equally little consideration has been given to the parents or carers involved. In the UK where an adult is suspected to be accessing illegal material online, response from police forces vary from dawn raids on the house to the offender receiving a letter notifying him of police concern. At present, we have a very fragmented view of the factors that indicate risk of an association between downloading illegal images of children and the commission of a contact offence against a child. The need to understand this is driven, not only by law enforcement but also by child protection agencies, and at present decisions are based on a paucity of empirical evidence. Practitioner questions that we need to ask include:

1. Does the carer accessing abusive images put the child/children within the immediate household at risk?

2. Should the carer or child be removed from the family home?

3. Is the risk so low that to do so would further traumatize the very children we are trying to protect?

4. Does the fact that the offending carer is also part of a distribution network increase the risk to children in his immediate surroundings?

We also need to be mindful of the potential support needed by the family and their immediate social network. These include the wife/partner and mother/carer of the children; the children living in the household; the extended family; friendship groups; schools; nurseries; and after-school clubs.

In the context of children engaged in abusive practices that have involved images, it is going to be necessary for police officers, social welfare workers, and child professionals to re-evaluate their working practices in the light of what we have learned. Palmer (2005) suggested that there are three key areas which need to be addressed: managing the discovery/disclosure process and the investigative interview of the child; assessment of the recovery needs for the child; and the nature and content of the ensuing intervention programmes. We need to rethink how we approach child victims of abusive images once they have been identified and their whereabouts discovered. Söderström (2006) has argued that the impact of disclosure on child victims should never be underestimated and that when they are informed that their images have been discovered the children feel impotent because they will have had no control over the disclosure process – they have not been able to choose when to disclose, what to disclose, how to disclose, and to whom they want to disclose.

In some cases, the child victims are so acclimatized to their situation that they see what is happening to them as ‗normal‘ and reject any assistance. One implication of this is that more thought needs to be given to the timing and necessity of investigative interviews. In these situations, the police have first hand evidence of what has occurred ‗objectively‘ to the child and need to tailor their interviews to specific information they may need to know rather than expecting the child to relate what occurred. The discussion above on the silencing of children who are subjects of abusive images would contend that they would get little information from the child other than that suggested/prompted by the interviewer (Quayle, Lööf, & Palmer, 2008). Thus, to improve our forensic and investigative practice we need to address the following questions:

1. Is it always necessary, for evidential purposes, to interview children made the subjects of abusive images?

2. In what circumstances might it not be necessary?

3. Might we need to interview the child for other purposes?

4. When would we do this and why?

5. How do we need to change the way we assist children whose abuse has been the subject of photography and disclose what has happened to them?

To conclude, offences against children in both the online and offline environment are not discrete, take place within a context, and challenge some of the assumptions that we make regarding the agency of children. For practitioners there are challenges regarding the heterogeneity of the offences and the responses of the children and their families caught up in these scenarios (Jonsson, Warfvinge, & Banck 2009) which require a willingness to ask questions and to be tolerant of the ambiguity of not always knowing more than the young people with whom we work.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Ethel Quayle is currently working with the Scottish Policing authority on a project called Aiding and abetting: The role of social networks in Internet facilitated crimes against children. She was a researcher and project director with the Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe (COPINE) project. Dr. Quayle specializes in internet offending behaviour and has co-authored 'Child Pornography: An Internet Crime' (2003), Brunner and Routledge; 'Only Pictures? Therapeutic Approaches with Internet offenders' (2006) and 'Viewing Child Pornography on the Internet: Understanding the Offence, Managing the Offender, Helping the Victims' (2005) both by Russell House Publishing, and has published in academic and professional journals. Dr. Quayle is currently a lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Edinborough.

Tink Palmer has specialized for the last 25 years in child sexual abuse and is an experienced clinical and forensic practitioner, manager, trainer, policy maker and strategist. Between 1995 and 2002, Tink was the manager of Bridgeway, a project run by the children‘s charity Barnardo‘s that offered assessment and therapeutic intervention to children and their families where sexual abuse occurred.

In 2004, she jointly authored a report entitled "Just one click!" which outlined the ways in which the new technology can act as a conduit for the abuse of children, the differential impacts on the young victims and new approaches to intervention programs. In 2008, she co-authored the thematic report for the World Congress III against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents entitled "Child pornography and sexual exploitation of children online". In 2009, she started the Marie Collins Foundation to raise awareness regarding the abuse of children and young people via the internet and mobile phones and to offer services to children, young people and their families affected in this way. Currently, Tink is the Chief Executive Officer of the Marie Collins Foundation.

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