Internet Child Abuse Rising

In news today there is a report saying that the occurrence of child abuse on the Internet is growing.

This alarming news is sure to worry parents around the world. According to the reports there has been an increase in the number of websites that display inappropriate images of children.

The information about this worrying trend comes from the Internet Watch Foundation. According to the Internet Watch Foundation, 2006 brought them over 31,000 reports of child abuse images on websites. This figure is significantly larger than the number of 2005 reports. The Internet Watch Foundation said that it is a 34 percent rise in reports.

The Internet Watch Foundation goes on to say that the pictures are extremely disturbing images of various children being abused including sadistic and penetrative sexual acts. It also said that of the websites selling these abusive images of children around 60 percent of them of providing images showing children being raped. The chief executive of the Internet Watch Foundation, Peter Robbins, said, "Sadly we have to report new trends regarding the young age of the child victims in the images we assess and the dreadful severity of abuse they are suffering."

Of the images reported to the Internet Watch Foundation it was discovered that the majority were of girls under the age of 12. The exact figures are that 80 percent are girls and 91 percent look like they are younger than 12.

When attempting to trace the child abuse websites images it was found that most of them could be tied to the US and Russia. It was also thought the they were being run by "organised criminal gangs." Of the 3.007 sites reports no more than one percent of them can be tied to the UK. Over half of the websites were found to be hosted in the US, making the US the worst offender.

The Internet Watch Foundation is based in the UK. It's purposed it to act as a place where members of the public and those working in IT can report suspicious websites and Internet content. This is the only group in the UK that is currently allowed to record and track suspicious Internet content.

Putting an end to these horrid websites is extremely difficult. The websites often keep their images in a remote location and the images are often stored in little pieces making them difficult to find. In their report the Internet Watch Foundation says. "By distancing the parent site from the actual images and breaking up the image itself, those operating commercial child abuse websites are clearly trying to protect their content from removal and complicate the detection process."

The UK home officer, Veron Coaker, commented on the work that the Internet Watch Foundation is doing, "The IWF has made dramatic and continued progress in tackling the availability if illegal images of child abuse and has made a significant and ongoing contribution to the eradication of exploitation sites hosted in the UK, and the prevention of access to sites hosted abroad."

Sources
http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/crime/online-child-abuse-images-growing-problem-$1076949.htm
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10434742
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6549717.stm