BRITAIN: More, and younger, children are being sexually abused via the Internet, with some being sold online to paedophiles, according to a shocking new report from Barnardo's.
Some children are "advertised" with indecent photographs taken by relatives or friends in their own homes, while pre-pubescent girls and boys are among those suffering the increasingly violent assaults being broadcast around the world via the internet and mobile phones. Few of the victims are being traced or helped, according to the hard-hitting report which challenges governments not to abandon them.
The report, Just One Click, published at a London conference yesterday, says Internet message boards and chat rooms are being used to sell children for sex, promote when and where abuse can be watched online, and also inform the enquirer "how good a purchase was" by rating them from one to 10. And it warns of the dangers posed to children by third generation mobile phone technology which enables them to access web sites and other internet services paedophiles might be using, away from the supervision of their carers.
"What worries us most is that evidence is evolving that the children are getting younger and younger, the abuse more severe, and the settings more everyday," said the report's author, Tink Palmer.
"The children are forced to live with the fact that millions could have seen their abuse, yet the government has yet to fund any specialist programmes to help them and their families put their lives back together."
A UK-wide survey by the charity found 83 children who had been abused via the Internet or camera phones, of whom seven had been sold online and one had been abused live on the web. Barnardo's project manager Wendy Shepherd said she thought the current level of abuse on the web was just "the tip of the iceberg".
Det Insp Terry Jones, former head of Greater Manchester Police Abusive Images Unit and now Internet paedophilia consultant, said the development of digital cameras in the past three years had caused "an explosion in the number of child abuse images on the net".
Barnardo's called for the establishment of a Centre of Excellence in the UK, focusing on both finding the children and providing specialist help for the specific needs of children abused through new technologies.